Biography: On November 22, 1963, when he was
hardly past his first thousand days in
office, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was killed by an assassin's bullets as his motorcade wound
through Dallas, Texas. Kennedy was the
youngest man elected President; he was the
youngest to die.
Of Irish descent, he was born in Brookline,
Massachusetts, on May 29, 1917. Graduating
from Harvard in 1940, he entered the Navy. In 1943, when his PT boat was rammed and sunk by a Japanese destroyer, Kennedy, despite grave
injuries, led the survivors through perilous
waters to safety.
Back from the war, he became a Democratic
Congressman from the Boston area, advancing
in 1953 to the Senate. He married Jacqueline
Bouvier on September 12, 1953. In 1955, while recuperating from a back operation, he wrote
Profiles in Courage, which won the Pulitzer
Prize in history.
In 1956 Kennedy almost gained the Democratic
nomination for Vice President, and four years later was a first-ballot nominee for
President. Millions watched his television
debates with the Republican candidate,
Richard M. Nixon. Winning by a narrow margin
in the popular vote, Kennedy became the first Roman Catholic President.
His Inaugural Address offered the memorable
injunction: "Ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country." As President, he set out to redeem his campaign pledge to get America moving again.
His economic programs launched the
country on its longest sustained expansion
since World War II; before his death, he laid plans for a massive assault on persisting
pockets of privation and poverty.
Responding to ever more urgent demands, he
took vigorous action in the cause of equal
rights, calling for new civil rights
legislation. His vision of America extended
to the quality of the national culture and
the central role of the arts in a vital
society.
He wished America to resume its old mission
as the first nation dedicated to the
revolution of human rights. With the Alliance for Progress and the Peace Corps, he brought
American idealism to the aid of developing
nations. But the hard reality of the
Communist challenge remained.
Shortly after his inauguration, Kennedy
permitted a band of Cuban exiles, already
armed and trained, to invade their homeland.
The attempt to overthrow the regime of Fidel
Castro was a failure. Soon thereafter, the
Soviet Union renewed its campaign against
West Berlin. Kennedy replied by reinforcing
the Berlin garrison and increasing the
Nation's military strength, including new
efforts in outer space. Confronted by this
reaction, Moscow, after the erection of the
Berlin Wall, relaxed its pressure in central
Europe.
Instead, the Russians now sought to install
nuclear missiles in Cuba. When this was
discovered by air reconnaissance in October
1962, Kennedy imposed a quarantine on all
offensive weapons bound for Cuba. While the
world trembled on the brink of nuclear war,
the Russians backed down and agreed to take
the missiles away. The American response to
the Cuban crisis evidently persuaded Moscow
of the futility of nuclear blackmail.
Kennedy now contended that both sides had a
vital interest in stopping the spread of
nuclear weapons and slowing the arms race--a
contention which led to the test ban treaty
of 1963. The months after the Cuban crisis
showed significant progress toward his goal
of "a world of law and free choice, banishing the world of war and coercion." His
administration thus saw the beginning of new
hope for both the equal rights of Americans
and the peace of the world.
I hope that you will appreciate my tribute to the Kennedy's Anna and myself would like to express our deep sympathy for the Kennedy's. Please use The Clickable links Below Pages 1-5 to view all of The pages that I have so far!!!
This GREAT site is owned by CampingDAD's Home Page. Want HTML"S Draac.Com? |
---|
[Sins Page] [ MORE/ON/JFK ] [Kennedy Page1] [page2] [page3] [page4] [page5] |