kennedytributepage

**Statesman and 35th U.S. president (1961-63), born on May 29, 1917, in Brookline, Massachusetts; the second of Joseph and Rose Kennedy's nine children. Kennedy was the youngest man elected president of the United States, dying from an assassin’s bullet after serving less than one term in office.

Kennedy attended private elementary schools, including a year at Canterbury School in New Milford, Connecticut, and four years at Choate School in Wallingford, Connecticut. He spent the summer of 1935 studying at the London School of Economics. He entered Princeton University but was forced to leave during his freshman year because of an attack of jaundice. In the fall of 1936 he enrolled at Harvard University, graduating cum laude in June 1940. During World War II, he commanded a PT (torpedo) boat in the Pacific. When the boat was rammed and sunk by a Japanese destroyer in August 1943, Kennedy, despite serious injuries, led the surviving crew through miles of perilous waters to safety.

After the war, Kennedy worked for several months in 1945 as a reporter for the Hearst newspapers, covering a conference in San Francisco that established the United Nations. In 1947, he became a Democratic Congressman from Boston, and in 1952, successfully campaigned against Henry Cabot Lodge in Massachusetts to advance to the Senate. He married Jacqueline Bouvier on September 12, 1953, and the couple had two children, Caroline Bouvier (born 1957) and John Fitzgerald (born 1960). Another son, Patrick Bouvier, died shortly after birth in 1963.

While recuperating from back surgery, Kennedy wrote Profiles in Courage (1956), a study of courageous political acts by eight United States senators, which won a Pulitzer Prize. Kennedy campaigned for and nearly gained the Democratic nomination for vice president in 1956, and four years later was a first-ballot nominee for president. A young, handsome and personable candidate with a beautiful wife, Kennedy enjoyed the friendship and support of many high-profile Hollywood celebrities, who helped raise money for his campaign. Kennedy engaged in a series of television debates with the Republican candidate, Richard M. Nixon, which were seen by millions. After winning the presidency in 1960 by a narrow margin, Kennedy became the 35th president of the United States, the youngest president ever elected, and the first Roman Catholic president.

Kennedy’s economic programs launched the country on its longest sustained expansion since World War II. He promoted social legislation, including a federal desegregation policy in schools and universities, along with Civil Rights reform. And in formation of the Alliance for Progress and the Peace Corps, he brought Americans to the aid of developing nations.

In the height of the Cold War period, Kennedy displayed moderation and a firm hand in foreign policy. In April 1961, a force of anti-Castro Cubans, under direction of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency prior to Kennedy’s election, failed in their invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. Kennedy accepted responsibility for this political misstep, which was considered an enormous setback in foreign relations. At the risk of all-out nuclear war, Kennedy engaged in a showdown with the Soviet Union over its missile installations in Cuba, which were ultimately withdrawn by the Soviets in October, 1962. Kennedy attempted to slow the arms race by negotiating a partial nuclear test ban treaty with the Soviet Union in 1963.

On November 22, 1963, Kennedy was assassinated by rifle fire while being driven in an open car through Dallas, Texas. The alleged assassin, 24-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald, was shot and killed by night club owner Jack Ruby two days later, while under heavy police escort on a jail transfer. Much controversy remains concerning the Kennedy assassination, and speculation about conspiracy theories abounds, despite the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Oswald most likely acted alone.

**Robert F. Kennedy was a man of passionate conviction, carrying a message of change, and for the forlorn and dispossessed of America, a message of hope. - Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

Robert Francis Kennedy was born on November 20, 1925, in Brookline, Massachusetts, the seventh child in the closely knit and competitive family of Rose and Joseph P. Kennedy. "I was the seventh of nine children," he later recalled, "and when you come from that far down you have to struggle to survive."

He attended Milton Academy and, after wartime service in the Navy, received his degree in government from Harvard University in 1948. He earned his law degree from the University of Virginia Law School three years later. Perhaps more important for his education was the Kennedy family dinner table, where his parents involved their children in discussions of history and current affairs. "I can hardly remember a mealtime," Robert Kennedy said, "when the conversation was not dominated by what Franklin D. Roosevelt was doing or what was happening in the world."

In 1950, Robert Kennedy married Ethel Skakel of Greenwich, Connecticut, daughter of Ann Brannack Skakel and George Skakel, founder of Great Lakes Carbon Corporation. Robert and Ethel Kennedy later had eleven children. In 1952, he made his political debut as manager of his older brother John's successful campaign for the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts. The following year, he served briefly on the staff of the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Senator Joseph McCarthy. Kennedy's investigative work confirmed reports that countries allied with the United States against Communist China in the Korean War were also shipping goods to Communist China, but did not imply, as Senator McCarthy often did, that traitors were making American foreign policy.

Disturbed by McCarthy's controversial tactics, Kennedy resigned from the staff after six months. He later returned to the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations as chief counsel for the Democratic minority, in which capacity he wrote a report condemning McCarthy's investigation of alleged Communists in the Army. His later work as chief counsel for the Senate Rackets Committee investigating corruption in trade unions won him national recognition for his investigations of Teamsters Union leaders Jimmy Hoffa and David Beck.

In 1960 he was the tireless and effective manager of John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign. After the election, he was appointed Attorney General in President Kennedy's Cabinet. While Attorney General he won respect for his diligent, effective and nonpartisan administration of the Department of Justice.

Attorney General Kennedy launched a successful drive against organized crime - convictions against organized crime figures rose by 800% during his tenure - and became increasingly committed to the rights of African Americans to vote, attend school and use public accommodations. He demonstrated his commitment to civil rights during a 1961 speech at the University of Georgia Law School: "We will not stand by or be aloof. We will move. I happen to believe that the 1954 [Supreme Court school desegregation] decision was right. But my belief does not matter. It is the law. Some of you may believe the decision was wrong. That does not matter. It is the law."

In September 1962, Attorney General Kennedy sent U.S. Marshals and troops to Oxford, Mississippi to enforce a Federal court order admitting the first African American student - James Meredith - to the University of Mississippi. The riot that had followed Meredith's registration at "Ole Miss" had left two dead and hundreds injured. Robert Kennedy saw voting as the key to racial justice and collaborated with President Kennedy when he proposed the most far-reaching civil rights statute since Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, passed after President Kennedy was slain on November 22, 1963.

Robert Kennedy was not only President Kennedy's Attorney General, he was also his closest advisor and confidant. As a result of this unique relationship, the Attorney General played a key role in several critical foreign policy decisions. During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, for instance, he helped develop the Kennedy Administration's strategy to blockade Cuba instead of taking military action that could have led to nuclear war and then negotiated with the Soviet Union on removal of the weapons.

Soon after President Kennedy's death, Robert Kennedy resigned as Attorney General and, in 1964, ran successfully for the United States Senate from New York. His opponent, incumbent Republican Senator Kenneth Keating, labeled Kennedy a "carpetbagger" during the closely contested campaign. Kennedy responded to the attacks with humor. "I have [had] really two choices over the period of the last ten months," he said at Columbia University. "I could have stayed in - I could have retired. [Laughter.] And I - my father has done very well and I could have lived off him. [Laughter and applause.] ... I tell you frankly I don't need this title because I [could] be called General, I understand, for the rest of my life. [Laughter and applause.] And I don't need the money and I don't need the office space ... [Laughter.] ... Frank as it is - and maybe it's difficult to believe in the state of New York - I'd like to just be a good United States Senator. I'd like to serve." Kennedy waged an effective statewide campaign and, aided by President Lyndon Johnson's landslide, won the November election by 719,000 votes.

As New York's Senator, he initiated a number of projects in the state, including assistance to underprivileged children and students with disabilities and the establishment of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation to improve living conditions and employment opportunities in depressed areas of Brooklyn. Now in its 32nd year, the program remains a model for communities all across the nation.

These programs were part of a larger effort to address the needs of the dispossessed and powerless in America - the poor, the young, racial minorities and Native Americans. He sought to bring the facts about poverty to the conscience of the American people, journeying into urban ghettos, Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta and migrant workers' camps. "There are children in the Mississippi Delta," he said, "whose bellies are swollen with hunger ... Many of them cannot go to school because they have no clothes or shoes. These conditions are not confined to rural Mississippi. They exist in dark tenements in Washington, D.C., within sight of the Capitol, in Harlem, in South Side Chicago, in Watts. There are children in each of these areas who have never been to school, never seen a doctor or a dentist. There are children who have never heard conversation in their homes, never read or even seen a book."

He sought to remedy the problems of poverty through legislation to encourage private industry to locate in poverty-stricken areas, thus creating jobs for the unemployed, and stressed the importance of work over welfare.

Robert Kennedy was also committed to the advancement of human rights abroad. He traveled to Eastern Europe, Latin America and South Africa to share his belief that all people have a basic human right to participate in the political decisions that affect their lives and to criticize their government without fear of reprisal. He also believed that those who strike out against injustice show the highest form of courage. "Each time a man stands up for an ideal," he said in a 1966 speech to South African students, "or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."

Kennedy was also absorbed during his Senate years by a quest to end the war in Vietnam. As a new Senator, Kennedy had originally supported the Johnson Administration's policies in Vietnam, but called for a greater commitment to a negotiated settlement and a renewed emphasis on economic and political advancement within South Vietnam. As the war continued to widen and America's involvement deepened, Senator Kennedy came to have serious misgivings about President Johnson's conduct of the war. Kennedy publicly broke with the Johnson Administration for the first time in February 1966, proposing participation by all sides (including the Vietcong's political arm, the National Liberation Front) in the political life of South Vietnam. The following year, he took responsibility for his role in the Kennedy Administration's policy in the Southeast Asia, and urged President Johnson to cease the bombing of North Vietnam and reduce, rather than enlarge, the war effort. In his final Senate speech on Vietnam, Kennedy said, "Are we like the God of the Old Testament that we can decide, in Washington, D.C., what cities, what towns, what hamlets in Vietnam are going to be destroyed? ... Do we have to accept that? ... I do not think we have to. I think we can do something about it."

On March 18, 1968, Robert Kennedy announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination. It was, in the words of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., "an uproarious campaign, filled with enthusiasm and fun ... It was also a campaign moving in its sweep and passion." Indeed, he challenged the complacent in American society and sought to bridge the great divides in American life - between the races, between the poor and the more affluent, between young and old, between order and dissent. His 1968 campaign brought hope and challenge to an American people troubled by discontent and violence at home and war in Vietnam. He won critical primaries in Indiana and Nebraska and spoke to enthusiastic crowds across the nation.

Robert Francis Kennedy was slain on June 5, 1968 at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California shortly after claiming victory in that state's crucial Democratic primary. He was 42 years old. Although his life was cut short, Robert Kennedy's vision and ideals live on today through the work of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial in Washington, D.C.

**The inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961 brought to the White House and to the heart of the nation a beautiful young wife and the first young children of a President in half a century.

She was born Jacqueline Lee Bouvier, daughter of John Vernon Bouvier III and his wife, Janet Lee. Her early years were divided between New York City and East Hampton, Long Island, where she learned to ride almost as soon as she could walk. She was educated at the best of private schools; she wrote poems and stories, drew illustrations for them, and studied ballet. Her mother, who had obtained a divorce, married Hugh D. Auchincloss in 1942 and brought her two girls to "Merrywood," his home near Washington, D.C., with summers spent at his estate in Newport, Rhode Island. Jacqueline was dubbed "the Debutante of the Year" for the 1947-1948 season, but her social success did not keep her from continuing her education. As a Vassar student she traveled extensively, and she spent her junior year in France before graduating from George Washington University. These experiences left her with a great empathy for people of foreign countries, especially the French.

In Washington she took a job as "inquiring photographer" for a local newspaper. Her path soon crossed that of Senator Kennedy, who had the reputation of being the most eligible bachelor in the capital. Their romance progressed slowly and privately, but their wedding at Newport in 1953 attracted nationwide publicity.

With marriage "Jackie" had to adapt herself to the new role of wife to one of the country's most energetic political figures. Her own public appearances were highly successful, but limited in number. After the sadness of a miscarriage and the stillbirth of a daughter, Caroline Bouvier was born in 1957; John Jr. was born between the election of 1960 and Inauguration Day. Patrick Bouvier, born prematurely on August 7, 1963, died two days later.

To the role of First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy brought beauty, intelligence, and cultivated taste. Her interest in the arts, publicized by press and television, inspired an attention to culture never before evident at a national level. She devoted much time and study to making the White House a museum of American history and decorative arts as well as a family residence of elegance and charm. But she defined her major role as "To take care of the President" and added that "If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do well matters very much."

Mrs. Kennedy's gallant courage during the tragedy of her husband's assassination won her the admiration of the world. Thereafter it seemed the public would never allow her the privacy she desired for herself and her children. She moved to New York City; and in 1968 she married the wealthy Greek businessman, Aristotle Onassis, 23 years her senior, who died in March 1975. From 1978 until her death in 1994, Mrs. Onassis worked in New York City as an editor for Doubleday. At her funeral her son described three of her attributes: "love of words, the bonds of home and family, and her spirit of adventure."

**Born on November 25, 1960, just weeks after his father's presidential election victory, he was the first child born to a U.S. president-elect. He weighed 6 pounds 3 ounces and was 20 inches long. As an infant, Kennedy was known as "John-John" -- a nickname mistakenly given to him by a reporter who misheard a conversation.

As he grew, John Jr. virtually had the run of the White House. And when he would careen into the Oval Office, in pajamas, bathrobe and slippers, his father would interrupt meetings to play and talk with him.

"Hello Sam!" his father would say, jokingly.

"No, No, No," the little boy would reply in the high-decibel way of 2-year-olds, "my name is John!"

John Jr.'s place in history was assured when he was only 3 years old. On November 22, 1963, his father was shot and killed by an assassin in Dallas. Two days later, on his third birthday, the nation and the world watched while the little boy saluted his father's passing casket. The image still conjures strong emotions.

In 1964, Jacqueline Kennedy moved her family to Manhattan, where she attempted to raise John and his sister as normally as possible. A former classmate of John's at New York's Collegiate School recalls of John, "He was as charming as people remember him, but he was one of the people who could raise hell with malice towards none."

The public fascination with the Kennedys and with John Jr. did not diminish. Photographers would wait outside his school for the boy to arrive. The school was very protective of him and his classmates. They helped him to lead a normal childhood and to have a normal school experience.

John attended Brown University in Rhode Island, graduating with a history major in 1983. After graduation, he appeared to be without direction -- trying his hand at theater, traveling the world and helping in his mother's urban improvement charity.

His good looks and personal charisma, along with the Kennedy family aura, combined to make him one of the most eligible bachelors in America. In 1988, he was named "sexiest man alive" by People magazine -- and known simply as "The Hunk" by one New York tabloid. That same year, John received a standing ovation at the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta -- where he made a speech introducing his uncle, Sen. Edward Kennedy.

At the time, it appeared John Kennedy might be following in his father's political footsteps. Soon after graduating from New York University Law School in 1989, he was hired by Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morganthau as a prosecutor. It took Kennedy three attempts to pass the bar exam -- and as was the case with much in his life, his academic endeavors were closely followed by the media.

"God willing ... I'll pass it the next time or I'll pass it when I'm 95," John quipped to reporters.

As a prosecutor, John worked in the investigations division -- attaining a 6-0 record in his efforts to prosecute white collar fraud and street crime cases. But he resigned in July 1993, apparently not fulfilled by the job." John said his heart was never really in it," a co-worker at the district attorney's office was quoted as saying in a 1995 Esquire article. "He was doing it for his mother."

Given his family legacy, John Kennedy was constantly considered for public office. When Democrat Ted Weiss, who represented the liberal stronghold of Manhattan's Upper West Side, died in 1992, John turned down a chance to run for the vacant seat. "I frankly feel there are many opportunities and avenues outside of elective office to become involved in issues," he said in a 1993 interview with Vogue, "issues that have the same broad scope that government or elected office provides you."

In New York, John was a fixture for the tabloid gossip columns. Pictures of him exercising and relaxing in Central Park and other public places were a near-regular feature in some papers. He was linked romantically with Madonna, Brooke Shields and several other celebrities. He also had a five-year relationship with actress Daryl Hannah.

In 1995, he appeared to find his stride -- in the field of publishing. He launched the glossy magazine George. Subtitled "not just politics as usual," George took a slightly askew look at government and at those who govern.

"Politics is really about personalities and ideas," said John during the launch of George. "It's about triumph and loss."

George also gave John an opportunity to work as a journalist. He interviewed notables such as former Alabama Gov. George Wallace and boxer Mike Tyson. Kennedy visited Cuba in 1997, looking to interview Cuban leader Fidel Castro -- the man who locked horns with Kennedy's father in the 1960s.

An article he wrote for the magazine criticizing two of his cousins as "poster boys for bad behavior" made headlines -- and reportedly caused some hurt feelings within the Kennedy family.

John Jr. and his sister also tried to keep their personal history personal. In 1997, they unsuccessfully protested a sale of Kennedy memorabilia by Guernsey's auction house.

In 1996, John Kennedy's reign as one of the world's most eligible bachelors came to an end when he married Carolyn Bessette in a secret ceremony on an island off the coast of Georgia. Bessette, a former publicist for Calvin Klein, met Kennedy in 1994, the year his mother Jacqueline died. Bessette appeared overwhelmed by the media assault she endured after the marriage. For his part, JFK Jr. asked the photographers who hounded them to back off -- but with little effect.

John received his pilot's license in 1998 and flew to a family Labor Day celebration at the compound in Hyannisport, Massachusetts. On July 16, 1999, Kennedy, along with his wife and her sister, were killed when their plane crashed into the waters off the coast of Massachusetts. They were buried at sea with their ashes being scattered at a site not far from where they died.