Background

Ethnicity: All of John Kennedy's grandparents were the children of Irish immigrants. He also had distant Scottish ancestry (his patrilineal Kennedy line traces back to Scotland, and President Kennedy had Scottish-born ancestors in the 1600s).

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born on May 29, 1917, at 83 Beals Street, in Brookline, Massachusetts, the United States. He was the second son of nine children born to the multimillionaire business executive and financier Joseph P. Kennedy and his wife, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy.

Kennedy's mother, Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald, was a Boston debutante, and his father, Joseph Kennedy Sr., was a successful banker who made a fortune on the stock market after World War I. Joe Kennedy Sr. went on to a government career as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and as an ambassador to Great Britain.

Both the Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys were wealthy and prominent Irish Catholic Boston families. Kennedy's paternal grandfather, P.J. Kennedy, was a wealthy banker and liquor trader, and his maternal grandfather, John E. Fitzgerald, nicknamed Honey Fitz, was a skilled politician who served as a congressman and as the mayor of Boston.

Education

John Kennedy, or Jack, as he was known, grew up in a home where political issues were frequently discussed and sometimes debated. His father's strong views evidently influenced his older brother, Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., more than they did him. All the Kennedy children, but particularly the four boys - Joseph, John, Robert, and Edward - were brought up with a strong sense of noblesse oblige and with little or no interest in enhancing their own very considerable financial fortunes. (Their father set up trust funds for each of them, which made them financially independent when they reached maturity.)

Public service, not private gain, was the ideal instilled in all the Kennedy children. When their private fortunes or family connections could enhance their ability to perform public service, as in getting their views known or in winning elections, for example, the Kennedy boys gladly used them.

He was educated through the 4th grade at the Edward Devotion School, the Noble and Greenough Lower School, and the Dexter School; all located in the Boston area. Despite his father's constant reprimands, young Kennedy was a poor student and a mischievous boy. Young Kennedy completed his preliminary education from various schools before the family shifted base to New York. Mischievous and playful, he excelled in English and history - subjects he had a profound interest in, but remained a mediocre student overall.

Jack Kennedy was a sickly child and adolescent. "When we were growing up together," his younger brother Robert later recalled, "we used to laugh about the great risk a mosquito took in biting Jack Kennedy - with some of his blood the mosquito was almost sure to die." During his illnesses, he became an avid reader and also a fatalist. He never let his frail condition keep him from throwing himself headlong into his family's fierce athletic competitions.

In 1931 he entered the Choate School, an elite preparatory academy in Connecticut, but was absent for long periods due to illness. Although he was obviously brilliant - evidenced by the extraordinary thoughtfulness and nuance of his work on the rare occasions when he applied himself - Kennedy remained at best a mediocre student, preferring sports, girls, and practical jokes to coursework. He graduated from Choate in 1935 and wished to enroll himself at the London School of Economics. But his constantly failing health forced him to return to America where he sought admission at Princeton University, but poor health, which plagued his entire life, soon forced him to withdraw.

He entered Harvard in 1936 and continued to perform modestly as a student, but public affairs then captured Jack’s attention. He was active in student groups and sports and he worked hard in his history and government classes, though his grades remained only average. He registered for a heavy academic load in the fall of 1937 so that he might travel to Europe in early 1938 to research an honors thesis on contemporary politics. That paper reviewed Great Britain’s prewar policies toward Germany and was published in 1940 as Why England Slept; it proved unexpectedly popular in an America unnerved by world events and became a best-selling book.

Career

In the months before the United States entered World War II, Kennedy attempted to enlist in the military, but his intestinal and back problems caused him to fail the physical examinations for both the Army’s and Navy’s officer candidate schools. Using his father’s connections, however, the future president was admitted to the Navy in October 1941.

After being called up and promoted to lieutenant, Kennedy was assigned to the Solomon Islands, where he was given command of his own P.T. (Patrol Torpedo) boat. On the night of August 1, 1943, his boat, the P.T.-109, was cut in half by a Japanese destroyer. Kennedy led his men to a nearby island, swimming the 3½ miles with the life jacket strap of one of his men clenched between his teeth.

In 1945 Kennedy was discharged from the Navy. Kennedy’s father was able to use his friendship with William Randolph Hearst to get his son a job as a reporter. Kennedy reported on such seminal events as the opening of the United Nations, Churchill’s re-election, and the Potsdam conference, where Truman first told Russian leader Josef Stalin about the atomic bomb.

With strong backing from his father, Kennedy ran for Congress in 1946. Although still physically weak from his war injuries, he campaigned aggressively, bypassing the Democratic organization in the Massachusetts 11th congressional district and depending instead upon his family, college friends, and fellow navy officers. In the Democratic primary he received nearly double the vote of his nearest opponent; in the November election, he overwhelmed the Republican candidate. He was only 29. Kennedy served three terms in the House of Representatives.

However, he was frustrated with the job. The reason for the same was that unlike the profiles he previously held, the work was dull and boring and stifled young, inexperienced representatives like him with rules and procedures. In 1952, seeking greater influence and a larger platform, Kennedy challenged Republican incumbent Henry Cabot Lodge for his seat in the United States Senate. Kennedy hired his younger brother Robert as his campaign manager. Robert Kennedy put together what one journalist called "the most methodical, the most scientific, the most thoroughly detailed, the most intricate, the most disciplined and smoothly working state-wide campaign in Massachusetts history - and possibly anywhere else."

In an election year in which Republicans gained control of both Houses of Congress, Kennedy nevertheless won a narrow victory, giving him considerable clout within the Democratic Party. According to one of his aides, the decisive factor in Kennedy's victory was his personality: "He was the new kind of political figure that people were looking for that year, dignified and gentlemanly and well-educated and intelligent, without the air of superior condescension." Kennedy continued to suffer frequent illnesses during his career in the Senate. While recovering from one surgery, he wrote another book, profiling eight senators who had taken courageous but unpopular stances. Profiles in Courage won the 1957 Pulitzer Prize for biography, and Kennedy remains the only American president to win a Pulitzer Prize.

Kennedy's eight-year Senate career was relatively undistinguished. Bored by the Massachusetts-specific issues on which he had to spend much of his time, Kennedy was more drawn to the international challenges posed by the Soviet Union's growing nuclear arsenal and the Cold War battle for the hearts and minds of Third World nations. In 1956, Kennedy was very nearly selected as Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson's running mate but was ultimately passed over for Estes Kefauver from Tennessee. Four years later, Kennedy decided to run for president.

In the 1960 Democratic primary election, Kennedy initiated his campaign for the Presidential election. He outclassed Senators Hubert Humphrey and Wayne Morse to face Senator Lyndon B. Johnson at the Los Angeles convention. Defeating the latter too, Kennedy was nominated by the Democratic convention as its candidate. He chose Johnson as his Vice Presidential candidate. Kennedy faced Republican candidate Richard Nixon, the then Vice President, in the general elections. He participated in the first televised United States presidential debate in the United States history. While he appeared relaxed and confident, Nixon was tensed and uncomfortable due to which people voted for Kennedy and favored him as the winner.

Kennedy won the general election, narrowly defeating the Republican candidate, Vice President Richard M. Nixon, by a margin of less than 120,000 out of some 70,000,000 votes cast. Many observers, then and since, believed vote fraud contributed to Kennedy’s victory, especially in the critical state of Illinois, where Joe Kennedy enlisted the help of the ever-powerful Richard J. Daley, mayor of Chicago. Nixon had defended the Eisenhower record; Kennedy, whose slogan had been "Let’s get this country moving again," had deplored unemployment, the sluggish economy, the so-called missile gap (a presumed Soviet superiority over the United States in the number of nuclear-armed missiles), and the new communist government in Havana.

A major factor in the campaign was a unique series of four televised debates between the two men; an estimated 85-120 million Americans watched one or more of the debates. Both men showed a firm grasp of the issues, but Kennedy’s poise in front of the camera, his tony Harvard accent, and his good looks (in contrast to Nixon’s "five o’clock shadow") convinced many viewers that he had won the debate. As president, Kennedy continued to exploit the new medium, sparkling in precedent-setting televised weekly press conferences.

Kennedy's election was historic in several respects. At the age of 43, he was the second youngest American president in history, second only to Theodore Roosevelt, who assumed the office at 42. He was also the first Catholic president and the first president born in the 20th century. Delivering his legendary inaugural address on January 20, 1961, Kennedy sought to inspire all Americans to more active citizenship. "Ask not what your country can do for you," he said. "Ask what you can do for your country."

Though Kennedy’s address radiated confidence, in reality, he found it challenging to match up to his optimistic vision due to the pressure of managing daily political realities at home and abroad. With an aim to help the undeveloped countries of the world, Kennedy announced the establishment of the Peace Corps, according to which 10,000 young people were appointed to serve in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The main aim of the mission was to develop trust and goodwill in undeveloped countries.

In his effort to restrict communism and foster stronger ties with Latin America, Kennedy established the Alliance for Progress. According to this, aid was provided to troubled countries and greater human rights standards were established, alleviating poverty in the region. When Kennedy assumed power, he was informed about Eisenhower’s plan to invade Cuba by the United States-trained anti-Castro Cuban exiles with the help of the CIA.

The main aim of this plan was to instigate the Cuban people to remove Castro from power. He flagged off the invasion which proved to be a failure, as most of the invaders were either killed or captured. Post the failed Bay of Pigs mission, Kennedy formed a Special Group and recruited General Edward Lansdale to come up with a strategy for the removal of the Castro government. In August 1961, to stem massive waves of emigration from Soviet-dominated East Germany to American ally West Germany via the divided city of Berlin, Nikita Khrushchev ordered the construction of the Berlin Wall, which became the foremost symbol of the Cold War.

However, the greatest crisis of the Kennedy administration was the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. Discovering that the Soviet Union had sent ballistic nuclear missiles to Cuba, Kennedy blockaded the island and vowed to defend the United States at any cost. After several of the tensest days in history, during which the world seemed on the brink of nuclear annihilation, the Soviet Union agreed to remove the missiles in return for Kennedy's promise not to invade Cuba and to remove American missiles from Turkey. Eight months later, in June 1963, Kennedy successfully negotiated the Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty with Great Britain and the Soviet Union, helping to ease Cold War tensions. It was one of his proudest accomplishments.

Kennedy’s contribution to the domestic policy brought about mixed results. He proposed new social programs to improve education, health care, and mass transit. He even suggested for a reformation in the tax system in which he proposed reduction of income tax and corporate tax rates. However, not much of what Kennedy prophesized came true except for a modest increase in the minimum wage and watered down tax cuts. Under Kennedy’s administration, the economic condition of the state which was under recession prospered notably. The GDP increased to 5.5% while industrial production increased by 15%. Inflation remained steady at 1% and as for the rate of unemployment, it came down markedly.

In his presidential campaign, Kennedy argued for coming up with a Civil Rights Acts, However, as much as Kennedy supported racial integration and civil rights, he did not do much to solve the issue initially. It was only in 1963 that Kennedy launched his civil rights legislation according to which the minorities and the suppressed were assured of access to public schools and other facilities and protection of voting rights.

On November 21, 1963, President Kennedy flew to Fort Worth, Texas for a campaign appearance. The next day, November 22, Kennedy, along with his wife and Texas governor John Connally, rode through cheering crowds in downtown Dallas in a Lincoln Continental convertible. From an upstairs window of the Texas School Book Depository building, a 24-year-old warehouse worker named Lee Harvey Oswald, a former Marine with Soviet sympathies, fired upon the car, hitting the president twice. Kennedy died at Parkland Memorial Hospital shortly thereafter, at age 46.

A Dallas nightclub owner named Jack Ruby assassinated Oswald days later while he was being transferred between jails. The death of President Kennedy was an unspeakable national tragedy, and to this date, many people remember with unsettling vividness the exact moment they learned of his death. While conspiracy theories have swirled ever since Kennedy's assassination, the official version of events remains the most plausible: Oswald acted alone. In 1967, Kennedy’s body was moved to a permanent burial plot and memorial at the Cemetery. His grave was lit with an eternal flame. The 37th Cadet Class of the Irish Army served as the honor guard at John Kennedy's graveside.

Achievements

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  Kennedy is known to have played an influential role in revolutionizing American politics. Though the initial days of his presidency brought out a negative image of the Kennedy-ruled White House, due to the Bay of Pigs fiasco and inimical Cold War, it was due to his skillful statesmanship and confident approach that he earned the title of a compelling, charismatic leader.
  
  Kennedy is the only president to have ever received a Purple Heart after he was wounded in action in 1943. He is the only American president to win a Pulitzer Prize for his work, Profiles in Courage, in the year 1957. Posthumously, Kennedy was proffered with the Pacem in Terris Award. The Latin for Peace on Earth - the award was named after a 1963 encyclical letter by Pope John XXIII that calls upon all people of goodwill to secure peace among all nations.
  
  There are hundreds of places around the world that have been named after John F. Kennedy. These include streets, parks, schools, and more like the John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York or the John F. Kennedy Arboretum in Ireland. Following his assassination, the Canadian government honored Kennedy by naming a mountain, Mount Kennedy. In 1965, Robert Kennedy climbed the top of the mountain to plant a banner of arms at the summit.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Why England Slept

    (In June 1938, Future British Prime Minister Winston Churc...)

    1940
  • Profiles in Courage

    (Written in 1955 by the then-junior senator from the state...)

    1955

Religion

John Kennedy was the first and to date only Roman Catholic United States President. He attended the installation in Rome of Pope Pius XII with his parents and family. Kennedy's church membership won back many disaffected Catholic Democrats, but it lost him a substantially larger number of Protestant Democrats, who apparently were not reassured either by his record of independence from papal influence or by his unequivocal endorsement of the principle of church-state separation.

Politics

In Congress, Kennedy supported higher wages, lower rents, better working conditions, and an increase in Social Security for the aged. He also supported the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan as a way forward internationally after the war. Though he wasn’t as strident as McCarthy, Kennedy was strongly anti-Communist, supporting the registration of Communists in the United States. He was also very critical of President Truman’s handling of Asia and agonized over the "Loss of China."

Although Kennedy famously challenged the Soviet Union in the first months of his presidency to land a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s, by September 1963 he had such concerns about the space program’s high cost that he proposed partnering with the Soviet Union on a joint expedition to the moon. "Why," he asked in an address to the United Nations General Assembly, "should man’s first flight to the moon be a matter of national competition? Why should the United States and the Soviet Union, in preparing for such expeditions, become involved in immense duplications of research, construction, and expenditure?"

Kennedy called his domestic program the "New Frontier." It ambitiously promised federal funding for education, medical care for the elderly, economic aid to rural regions, and government intervention to halt the recession. He also promised an end to racial discrimination, although his agenda, which included the endorsement of the Voter Education Project (VEP) in 1962, produced little progress in areas such as Mississippi where the VEP concluded that discrimination was so entrenched."

In his 1963 State of the Union address, he proposed substantial tax reform and a reduction in income tax rates from the current range of 20-90% to a range of 14-65% as well as a reduction in the corporate tax rates from 52 to 47%. Kennedy added that the top rate should be set at 70% if certain deductions were not eliminated for high-income earners. Congress did not act until 1964, a year after his death when the top individual rate was lowered to 70%, and the top corporate rate was set at 48%.

To the Economic Club of New York, he spoke in 1963 of "... the paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high and revenues too low, and the soundest way to raise revenue in the long term is to lower rates now." Congress passed a few of Kennedy's major programs during his lifetime but did vote them through in 1964 and 1965 under his successor Johnson.

Views

John Kennedy donated his congressional and presidential salary to charity. Kennedy’s father built a family fortune, and when the young politician entered Congress in 1947, he earned sufficiently ample annual income from trusts established by his father that he decided to donate his entire legislative salary to various charities. Kennedy quietly maintained the practice as president after becoming the richest man to ever take the oath of office.

Quotations: "One person can make a difference, and everyone should try."

"Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."

"This country cannot afford to be materially rich and spiritually poor."

"If not us, who? If not now, when?"

"Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate."

"Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth."

"Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names."

Membership

John Kennedy was a life member of the National Rifle Association.

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  Life Membership

  National Rifle Association

Personality

Kennedy described himself as, "an idealist without illusions" and considered his best quality to be curiosity, his worst irritability. Kennedy’s charm, grace, and wit were to a great extent responsible for his immense popularity as president. He seemed distant to some, but, according to historian and Kennedy aide Arthur M. Schlesinger, he remained a bit detached in order to counter his extremely sensitive nature.

For the most part, he controlled his temper. Kenneth P. O’Donnell and other longtime associates report that he exploded in anger only twice as a national figure, once over a scheduling foul-up near the end of the 1960 presidential campaign and again during the confrontation with the steel industry. The Kennedy style, idealized after his death as the romance of the mythical Camelot, was, according to Schlesinger, simply "the triumph, hard-bought and well-earned, of a gallant and collected human being over the anguish of life."

Kennedy was a big fan of the Boston Red Sox baseball team. This was something instilled in him by his grandfather, Boston mayor John Francis Fitzgerald, who was himself a member of The Royal Rooters, a turn-of-the-century Red Sox fan club.

He was also an avid reader, and at one point expressed his fondness for the James Bond novels of Ian Fleming. He said that a particular favorite was From Russia with Love. For this reason, the producers of the Bond series made From Russia with Love (1963) the second Bond film. Kennedy was a natural speed reader. He could read about 2,500 wpm (ten times the average reading speed). He would read six newspapers from front to back while he had breakfast.

John Kennedy was a fan of cigars and secured over a thousand cigars right before signing the Cuba Embargo which would ban all Cuban products from entering the United States. He only smoked cigars in public, although privately he also smoked cigarettes.

Physical Characteristics: Kennedy stood 6 ft 1 in tall and weighed 170 pounds at the time of his death. Strikingly handsome and youthful in appearance, he had sensitive blue eyes, a mass of reddish-brown hair, and sound straight teeth. He wore reading glasses from age 13. His right leg was .75 inch longer than his left; he wore corrective shoes to compensate. Although he was muscular and athletic, his health generally was poor. He suffered from chronic backache and was in pain much of his adult life.

Injury in World War II aggravated his back condition. In 1954 he underwent spinal fusion surgery, following which he developed a nearly fatal infection and received the last rites of the Catholic church. He rallied, but his back plagued him for the rest of his life. He wore a canvas back brace for support and found some relief in treatments administered by Dr. Janet Travell.

Quotes from others about the person

• "Courage is the virtue that President Kennedy most admired. He sought out those people who had demonstrated in some way, whether it was on a battlefield or a baseball diamond, in a speech or fighting for a cause, that they had the courage that they would stand up, that they could be counted on." - Robert F. Kennedy

Interests

• Sailboating

• Writers

  Lord Melbourne by David Cecil, Montrose by John Buchan, Marlborough by Sir Winston Churchill, John Quincy Adams by Samuel Flagg Bemis, The Emergence of Lincoln by Allan Nevins, The Price of Union by Herbert Agar, John C. Calhoun by Margaret L. Coit, Talleyrand by Duff Cooper, Byron in Italy by Peter Quennell, The Red and the Black by M. de Stendhal, From Russia With Love by Ian Fleming, Pilgrim's Way by John Buchan

• Sport & Clubs

  Golf, swimming, tennis, football, baseball, Boston Red Sox

• Music & Bands

  Frank Sinatra, Les Baxter, Richard Burton, Walter Huston, Robert Morse

Connections

Kennedy met his future wife, Jacqueline Bouvier at a dinner party. He was a congressman then. A year later, after being elected as the Senator, Kennedy walked the aisle with Jacqueline on September 12, 1953. Their daughter, Caroline Kennedy, was born on November 27, 1957, and their son, John Kennedy Jr., was born on November 25, 1960.

In addition to Caroline and John, Jr., the Kennedys had two other children. In 1956, Jackie gave birth to a stillborn girl whom the couple intended to name Arabella, and on August 7, 1963, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy was born five-and-a-half weeks early. The baby weighed under five pounds and died two days later from a pulmonary disease. The bodies of the two children were removed from Massachusetts in 1963 to be next to their father in Arlington National Cemetery.

Kennedy's love for Caroline and John, Jr., was genuine, and his grief over the loss of Patrick was deep; his marriage, however, was more show than substance. Kennedy was known to have had a number of extramarital affairs throughout his lifetime. He was rumored to have had sex with several high-profile beauties, including Marilyn Monroe and Angie Dickinson.

He also had illicit romances with less-well-known women, including Judith Campbell, a young woman who was also romantically involved with Sam Giancana, the reputed leader of the Chicago mafia. It was also alleged that Kennedy was involved with Ellen Rometsch, a high-priced call girl under surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as a suspected Communist spy. These affairs posed a threat to Kennedy's presidency because they subjected him to the possibility of blackmail and intimidation by individuals who might threaten to make them public.

Father:

Joseph P. Kennedy Sr.

John's father was a tough, successful businessman. He was a father with very high expectations and wanted the boys to win at sports and everything they tried. Because of his father’s job, Jack became very interested in European politics and world affairs.

Mother:

Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald Kennedy

Rose Kennedy was the grande dame of contemporary American politics, seeing three of her children find great success.

Spouse:

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

Jacqueline met Kennedy through a mutual friend, journalist Charles L. Bartlett. He introduced the two at a dinner party in May 1952, and they married a year later. After John proposed to her, she went on a 30-day trip to contemplate it. When she returned after a month, she accepted.

Acquaintance:

Marilyn Monroe

Allegedly, Monroe had affairs with John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert Kennedy. In May of 1962, on President John F Kennedy's birthday, Monroe took to the stage and sang one of the most salacious renditions of 'Happy Birthday' ever heard.

Sister:

Rosemary Kennedy

Rosemary was slower to crawl, slower to walk and to speak than her brothers, and she experienced learning difficulties when she reached school age. Despite her apparent intellectual disabilities, Rosemary participated in most family activities. John would often accompany Rosemary to dances.

Brother:

Joseph P. Kennedy Jr.

Growing up, Joe Jr. was a skilled athlete and bright student attending the Choate School in Connecticut, then Harvard University just like his father and all of his brothers. All signs were pointing to a career in politics - he even attended the 1940 Democratic National Convention with an eye for running for Congress in 1946.

But unlike his younger brothers John, Robert, and Ted, all of whom sought political office, Joe never got the chance. Joe was 29 when he died.

Sister:

Kathleen Cavendish

Kathleen was killed in a plane crash with her boyfriend, the Peter Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, 8th Earl Fitzwilliam, of whom her parents did not approve. She was flying to Paris to meet her father, to persuade him to approve of their marriage.

Brother:

Ted Kennedy

Ted Kennedy was the youngest brother of John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. He was elected to the Senate when he was 30 and continued to work in Congress throughout his life. Though marked by scandal, Kennedy was viewed as an icon of political progressivism and liberal thought by the time of his death, on August 25, 2009.

Sister:

Eunice Kennedy Shriver

Eunice Kennedy Shriver is known as a leader in the worldwide struggle to improve and enhance the lives of individuals with intellectual disabilities.

Sister:

Jean Kennedy Smith

Smith had accompanied President Kennedy on his famous visit to Ireland in 1963, and the Irish government and the Irish people enthusiastically welcomed her return as America's ambassador. She took an active interest in encouraging a peaceful settlement in the long-standing conflict in Northern Ireland, and one of her principal achievements was in persuading the Clinton administration to grant a visa to Gerry Adams, President of Sinn Fein, the political arm of the Irish Republican Army, to visit the United States in 1994. The visit is widely regarded as a key step in the success of the peace process in the years that followed.

Brother:

Robert F. Kennedy

After managing his brother John's presidential campaign, Robert Kennedy was appointed attorney general of the United States in 1960. As attorney general, he fought organized crime and was a key supporter of the Civil Rights Movement.

Sister:

Patricia Kennedy Lawford

In addition to her work in show business, Patricia Lawford was a tireless supporter of her brothers’ political campaigns. For John’s Congressional race in 1946, she and her sisters and mother held a number of tea parties in which they discussed John’s boyhood and his World War II experience.

In 1952 the "Kennedy teas" contributed to Kennedy’s election to the United States Senate in an upset win over the incumbent, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. During the 1960 presidential campaign, she traveled around the country speaking on her brother’s behalf, and she would later play an active role in the senate and presidential races of her brothers Robert and Edward.

Daughter:

Caroline Kennedy

Caroline spent her early years living in the White House during her father's term as president. Caroline was a frequent media darling; people couldn't get enough of the little girl who walked her father to the Oval Office each morning and rode her pony on the White House lawn.

When her father was assassinated by sniper fire, Caroline was not yet six years. The iconic image of her holding her mother's hand and her brother John Jr. saluting John F. Kennedy's flag-draped coffin during the nationally televised funeral procession remains one of the most tragic moments in American presidential history.

Son:

John Kennedy Jr.

John F. Kennedy Jr. was the second child born to John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy. He may be most remembered as a child at his father's funeral procession, bravely saluting his father's casket.

Although he found success in publishing, Kennedy's life was cut short when the plane he was flying crashed into the Long Island Sound off the coast of Martha's Vineyard in 1999.

Daughter:

Arabella Kennedy

One year before John and Jackie Kennedy welcomed Caroline to the world in 1957, the couple suffered the heartbreak of stillbirth when their first daughter - later referred to as Arabella - died at birth.

The couple never officially named her stillborn daughter, and the name Arabella Kennedy appears on no birth certificates, but Jackie would later refer to her lost first-born with the sentimental name of Arabella.

Son:

Patrick Bouvier Kennedy

Patrick Bouvier Kennedy was born three weeks early and died from respiratory distress syndrome. The death of Patrick, inspired his parents' further research into infant respiratory distress syndrome, saving the lives of millions.

Acquaintance:

Angie Dickinson

Angie Dickinson said Kennedy was "a devastatingly handsome, charming man" and called sex with him the "most exciting seven minutes" of her life.

Friend:

Lyndon Johnson

The relationship between the two giant liberal politicians, who were often noted to be friends and allies worked towards a common goal, is challenged and complicated. Johnson, who served as a member of Congress, completed Kennedy’s term after the assassination and went on to be elected president.

References

• JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956 A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian takes us as close as we have ever been to the real John F. Kennedy in this revelatory biography of the iconic, yet still elusive, thirty-fifth president.
  2020
• John F. Kennedy: The American Presidents Series: The 35th President, 1961-1963 The young president who brought vigor and glamour to the White House while he confronted cold war crises abroad and calls for social change at home John Fitzgerald Kennedy was a new kind of president.
  2012
• A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House As a special assistant to the president, Arthur Schlesinger witnessed firsthand the politics and personalities that influenced the now legendary Kennedy administration.
  1965
• An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963 An Unfinished Life describes the birth of the Kennedy dynasty, the complexity of Jack's early years, and the mixture of adulation and resentment that tangled his relationships with his mother, Rose, and his father, Joseph.
  2001