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To this day, in many Irish homes in the U.S. and abroad, there are often two
portraits prominently displayed side by side: Jesus and John F.
Kennedy.
That's not to suggest that the United States' 35th president was godlike,
but to many people, JFK was a towering symbol of youth, hope and promise for
mankind during one of the most turbulent and emotional periods in United
States history.
Assassinated in November 1963, just over 1,000 days into his presidency, Kennedy remains a mythic figure in the United States and around the world
due to his pioneering stance on civil rights, his push for space exploration,
his idealistic Peace Corps initiative and his conviction in standing up to
the Communist threat. The idealized presidency of Kennedy and his equally
famous late wife, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, is so potent that his time in
office is often still referred to as "Camelot," evoking the image of the
mythical kingdom of King Arthur's court. The shock of his assassination
remains so great to this day that dozens of conspiracy theories regarding his
murder abound, implicating everyone from the CIA to the Mafia.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, on May 29, 1917
into an Irish Roman Catholic family of nine children that would become the
American equivalent of political royalty thanks to its multigenerational call
to public service. After graduating from Harvard in 1940, Kennedy joined the
Navy, where the future president became a hero for the first time when, in
1943, his PT boat was rammed and sunk by a Japanese destroyer. Though
seriously injured, Kennedy heroically led his surviving crew members to
safety and was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal.
Kennedy was elected a Democratic congressman from Boston in 1946, and, in
1953, a senator from his home state. He married Jacqueline Bouvier on
September 12, 1953. In 1955, while recuperating from a back operation,
Kennedy wrote "Profiles in Courage," a series of eight profiles of U.S. senators that focused on the power of the human spirit. The book won a Pulitzer
Prize in 1956 and became a part of the curriculum in schools across the
country.
Kennedy missed out on the Democratic nomination for Vice President in 1956,
but was nominated for President in 1960. Though he won by a narrow margin of
the popular vote over Richard Nixon, many ascribed Kennedy's charm and
youthful good looks during widely viewed televised debates — as opposed to
the more seasoned Nixon's sweaty, unshaven, not-ready-for-prime-time image —
as a key factor in his presidential victory, the first by a Roman Catholic.
In one of his most famous addresses, Kennedy posed the challenge, "Ask not
what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country,"
during his inaugural address, in which he also asked other nations to band
together to fight the common enemies of man: "tyranny, poverty, disease and
war itself."
With his call to arms still fresh, the 43-year-old Kennedy launched a series
of economic programs that brought the country into its longest sustained
expansion since WWII, called for new civil-rights legislation and launched
the Peace Corps, an all-volunteer youth workforce charged with improving the
lives of peoples in developing nations.
As part of his idea of a "New Frontier," and as a reaction to the Soviet
Union's launching of the first spacecraft, Kennedy established the $22
billion "Project Apollo," aimed at landing an American astronaut on the moon
by the end of the decade.
Because he was the youngest president to date and the father of two young
children, Kennedy and his wife brought a previously unseen exuberance to the
White House. They invited artists, musicians, poets, actors and athletes to
visit them and made the presidential residence a place where the arts and
culture were celebrated and children could often be seen playing. A
workaholic who still found time to dote on his children, after his death it
was suggested that the handsome president — often linked to Hollywood
starlet Marilyn Monroe — was not always faithful to his wife.
Even as he was launching an ambitious domestic agenda, Kennedy was dealing
with a serious foreign-relations threat close at hand. In April of 1961,
Kennedy green-lighted a plan to have a group of Cuban exiles invade their
homeland and depose Communist dictator Fidel Castro. The plot, called the Bay
of Pigs, was a colossal failure and soon led to moves by Russia to place
nuclear missiles in Cuba as a deterrent. In October of 1962, it was
discovered that missiles had, in fact, been mobilized on the neighboring
island nation.
Though the world only recently realized just how close the U.S. and Cuba came
to nuclear war, the Russians eventually agreed to remove the missiles and
Kennedy convinced them that the arms race was futile, helping to inaugurate
the test ban treaty of 1963.
The joy of a move toward a more peaceful world was shattered on November 22,
1963, when Kennedy was killed by an assassin's bullet while riding in a
motorcade through Dallas. The youngest president to date became the
youngest president to die in office. Despite the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald
hours after the shooting, conspiracy theorists insist even today that the
assassination of Kennedy was the work of more than just a "lone gunman."
Among the most popular conspiracy theories — available on dozens of Web sites,
books and in Oliver Stone's controversial 1991 film "JFK" — are that
everyone from the Russian and/or Cuban governments to the CIA and the Mafia
plotted to kill the president for everything from his brother Robert's
aggressive pursuit of mobsters to allegations that he was considering
pulling back from Vietnam before declaring a decisive victory.
Many Americans can still recall where they were the day Kennedy was shot and
his eloquence, drive and compassion continue to inspire leaders such as Bill
Clinton, as well as artists from shock rocker Marilyn Manson to director
Stone.
By Gil Kaufman
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