John F. Kennedy Read online

  “Did you hear the election returns, Dad?”

  “Of course, Joe,” Mr. Kennedy replied. “Don’t forget I campaigned for F.D.R. How about you boys? Did you listen at school?”

  Both boys spoke at the same time. “No, sir,” Joe Jr. said. “Yes, sir,” Jack said.

  Mr. Kennedy looked sharply at the two of them. “You said no, Joe! Why not? That’s a peculiar lack of interest for a fellow who might be president someday!”

  “It wasn’t that, Dad. Radios aren’t allowed in dorms at Choate,” Joe Jr. explained.

  “Hmmm.” Mr. Kennedy turned toward Jack. The boy was squirming uncomfortably. “You said yes, Jack. How did you hear the returns?”

  “Well, I—uh—used to listen to the radio at the Leinbach’s last year. I still drop by to see them and, once in a while, I listen to the radio. Besides, Mr. Hemenway asked us to listen to the presidential campaign speeches. He says history isn’t just a study of the past. It’s knowledge of the present. Someday, I bet Mr. Hemenway will start a regular course in public affairs. We even ran a mock election.”

  “Who won?” Kick asked.

  “Who won? At Choate? Don’t ask silly questions! It was a Hoover landslide,” Jack said. “But don’t worry, Dad. I voted for F.D.R.”

  Mrs. Kennedy’s voice sounded slightly troubled as she asked, “Academics and athletics are important, but so is your faith. Are you sure you’re being true to your church, Jack?”

  “Mother, I’m down in Wallingford at Holy Trinity every Sunday morning!”

  “Good for you! But remember, religion isn’t just for Sunday. It should be a part of every day.” She added, “And not just for Jack, but for each one of us.”

  CHOATE CHARTS THE COURSE

  WHEN HIS CHOATE School classmates voted him “Most Likely to Succeed,” Jack Kennedy thought the boys in his graduating class were joking. So did everyone else, including his teachers and his family. In both academics and athletics, Jack had always played second fiddle to his dynamic older brother, Joe Jr.

  Yet the experiences of this period influenced all of his life. The friendships made during these years were of lifelong duration. A world of ideas was discovered, and a world of ideals was revealed. Young Jack Kennedy began to grow up at Choate.

  In his senior year, he finally wrote to his father, “Dad, I’ve definitely decided to stop fooling around.”

  His father’s reply was prompt and encouraging. “Now, Jack, I don’t want to give the impression that I’m a nagger, for goodness knows that is the worst thing any parent can be. After long experience in sizing up people, I definitely know you have the goods and can go a long way. Now aren’t you foolish not to get all there is out of what God has given you? After all, I would be lacking even as a friend if I did not urge you to take advantage of the qualities you have.”

  The school yearbook, The Brief, also reported that Jack Kennedy, like his father and older brother Joe Jr., would enter Harvard in the fall of 1935. But where The Brief was correct in prophesying Jack’s ability to succeed, the yearbook was wrong in predicting the college he would attend.

  Jack enrolled at Princeton with Lem Billings, his roommate at Choate. Although Mr. Kennedy found it hard to believe that Jack could prefer any institution to Harvard, he was both amazed and pleased at his son’s show of independence. Jack was amazed and pleased himself!

  His father did insist, however, that Jack spend the summer studying at the London School of Economics as Joe Jr. had previously done. Unfortunately, Jack had barely enrolled when he fell ill with jaundice and was forced to return home from London. He regained his health in the sun and sand of Hyannis Port and entered the fall session at Old Nassau. Billings was once more his roommate.

  A return attack of jaundice interrupted the freshman year at Princeton. Much as Teddy Roosevelt went West to build up his frail body several decades before, so Jack Kennedy went to Arizona and worked on a ranch to recuperate.

  The following fall, he bowed to his father’s wishes and entered Harvard. A familiar pattern repeated itself. Jack found himself running a poor second to Joe Jr. At Harvard, his brother was the Big Man on Campus—a varsity football player, a leading campus politician, and a superior student.

  Jack, on the other hand, was never able to make varsity in any sport. However, he did play on the junior varsity football team until he injured his spine in a scrimmage. He also earned a place on the Harvard swimming team. In his second year, he won a spot for himself on the business board of the Harvard Crimson, but in college politics, he was always a loser.

  However, national politics were of vital interest to the whole Kennedy family. Joseph Kennedy, one of the chief Roosevelt supporters in 1932, backed F.D.R. again in 1936. Roosevelt campaigned successfully against Governor Alfred Landon of Kansas. “Life, Liberty, and Landon” was the Republican slogan, but the American voters put the New Deal back in operation.

  It was late in 1937 that President Roosevelt announced the appointment of the new Ambassador to the Court of St. James, Joseph P. Kennedy. Bostonians were not the only ones to be stunned by Roosevelt’s choice. To send an Irish Catholic to London astonished everyone! But Joseph Kennedy and his gracious wife dazzled all of Britain. The large family of handsome boys and girls was an exciting addition to the staid diplomatic circles.

  Summer vacations from college were spent traveling in Europe or at the Embassy in London. The Kennedys also rented a villa on the French Riviera.

  During his Junior year at Harvard, Jack was allowed a leave of absence to study international relations firsthand. Young Kennedy observed the turmoil of Europe with his mind as well as with his eyes. He asked opinions, made comparisons, came to conclusions. The carefree school boy began to disappear. In his place developed the man who would one day represent the people of America.

  When Jack returned to Harvard, he showed a marked maturity of thought. His thesis in political science showed such understanding of international affairs that he was urged to expand the paper into a book. Why England Slept was a bestseller and considered a remarkable work for so young an author.

  In June of 1940, John F. Kennedy graduated from Harvard with honors in political science. Not even the cum laude on his diploma made him as happy as a cable from Ambassador Kennedy: “Two things I always knew about you. One—that you are smart. Two—you’re a swell guy.”

  That spring of Jack Kennedy’s graduation marked a black-bordered year for Europe. The German Nazis staged their first great offensive after Poland. Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, and Belgium collapsed under the Blitzkrieg. Hitler’s troops outflanked the supposedly impregnable Maginot line and swept on over France.

  The continent of Europe was in Nazi hands as the British forces prepared to evacuate Dunkirk. The curtain of history rose on World War II.

  A SKIPPER FOR UNCLE SAM

  “SORRY!” THE AIR corps flight surgeon said the back injury Jack Kennedy had suffered while playing JV football disqualified him.

  “Sorry!” The army doctors turned him down. His back could not stand combat strain.

  “Sorry!” The navy physicians said. “It’s that bad back of yours.”

  Unlike Joe, who was winning his wings as a navy pilot, Jack had a struggle to get into uniform. Although America was officially at peace, the summer of 1941 found the nation on the brink of the war that was raging in Europe. Jack wanted to be a part of whatever might happen.

  In a desperate effort to strengthen his back, he put himself through a program of rigorous exercises. After five months of daily dozens, he was declared fit for the navy. Proudly he donned the blue uniform, but he was disappointed at being assigned a desk job in the Pentagon. He pulled every string to win a combat assignment. After Pearl Harbor, he hounded everyone in the hope of getting sea duty.

  He finally realized his ambition when he was sent to Patrol Torpedo Boat School in Rhode Island. For six months, Jack learned how to handle the dangerous PT boats. His years of sailing on the waters of Nantucket Sound w
ere now a boon. He was considered “an old salt.”

  Early in 1943, his address become APO, San Francisco. The vast air, sea, and ground attack that was taking shape in the South Pacific included Jack Kennedy, Skipper of PT 109.

  To her young and enthusiastic skipper, this PT boat was something more than special. Riding her at high speed was an exhilarating bout with wind and spray. In choppy seas she slapped the water so hard that a sailor had to keep his balance by the spring of his knees, like a skier on a bumpy slope.

  PT 109 saw hard and dangerous service. By August 1943, she had completed thirty successful missions and her crew almost believed she was indestructible.

  The thirty-first mission was different.

  That night PT 109 was patrolling the dark waters off the Solomon Islands. Skipper Kennedy was at the wheel, and all hands were at their stations, their eyes straining to see any Japanese target.

  Suddenly the lookout yelled, “Ship at two o’clock!” and out of the inky darkness loomed the towering shape of an enemy destroyer. Before anyone could move, the destroyer struck the 109 like a charging skyscraper and rushed on through the night.

  The wheel was torn from Kennedy’s grasp and he was flung against the deck, flat on his back. With a violent wrench, the boat broke in two. Orange flames exploded in the engine room, knocking “Pappy” McMahon, the engineer, against a bulkhead. Flames of the high octane gasoline scorched his body and spilled over the waters. His half of the boat quickly sank and he fought his way back to the surface, only to find himself in a sea of fire.

  The gasoline was still burning on the water as Kennedy struggled to his feet. His half of the seventy-seven-foot hull stayed afloat. Three of the crew were still aboard. The able swimmers dived into the water, searching for survivors.

  In a few moments Jack found McMahon. He was in agony, his hands, arms, and face seared black by the flames.

  “Skipper, I’m done for,” McMahon gasped.

  “Stick with me, Pappy,” Kennedy said, and gently towed the suffering seaman to the boat.

  Harris, the Gunner’s Mate, had an injured leg. “I can’t swim, Skipper.”

  “Try, Harris,” Kennedy urged.

  “I can’t,” Harris cried. “I can’t make it.”

  “For a man from Boston, Harris, you’re certainly putting up a great exhibition out here!” Jack said in a matter-of-fact tone. He guided Harris safely back to the wreck.

  Dawn was rising in the east before the men gave up hope of finding the two missing crewmen. Then, examining the wreckage, they discovered that the first-aid kit was gone and there was no food except for a box of saltwater taffy. The only weapons they had were two knives and Kennedy’s sidearms. They were in shark-infested waters, surrounded by Japanese.

  “We’re not exactly shipshape,” Jack said, “but we’re alive.” He went on to discuss their plight. “There’s nothing in the book about this. A lot of you have wives and children. What do you want to do? I have nothing to lose.”

  The men decided unanimously against surrender. They chose to swim to a coral island three miles away. This island was too small to be occupied by the Japanese. They prepared for the long haul by using a timber from the boat for a raft. Clinging to the timber, they pushed it along toward the island by kicking their feet.

  McMahon could not hold on to the raft with his burned hands, but he could float in a life jacket. Tying the straps of the jacket together, Kennedy took the straps in his teeth. “I’ll tow Pappy,” he said and started to swim toward the island, towing McMahon behind him.

  The sun was low in the afternoon sky when Kennedy heard the sound of waves on the reef and knew they had reached the island at last.

  By this time he had been swimming for more than five hours.

  “Pappy,” Kennedy said weakly, “we’re in!”

  All the world knows the grim story of the crew’s fight to stay alive, of their Skipper’s long swim for help, of the eventual rescue.

  Jack Kennedy had almost given up hope, but when the boat arrived to take the crew back to base, his wry sense of humor sprang to life.

  “Where have you been?” he asked lazily.

  “Hey, Jack!” the skipper of the rescue boat shouted. “We’ve got some food for you.”

  “No, thanks,” Jack said. “Just had a coconut!”

  The journey back to Rendova was as hilarious a mission as the United States Navy ever undertook in the South Pacific. The two Gizo natives who rescued the crew had attended mission schools before the war. They had learned one song, which they sang over and over again.

  The waters of the Solomons echoed and reechoed with the rousing refrain: “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so—”

  The navy awarded John F. Kennedy the Purple Heart and the Navy and Marine Corps Medal. Admiral William F. Halsey signed the citation which said in part, “His courage, endurance, and excellent leadership contributed to the saving of several lives and was in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Navy.”

  Rotated home from the South Pacific, Jack was hospitalized for malaria and spinal surgery. He was still in the navy hospital, recuperating, when his parents received a telegram from the War Department. Joe Jr. had been killed in action over in Europe.

  The whole Kennedy family was plunged into deepest gloom. Jack’s own grief took tangible form in a privately published book of tribute to his brother, As We Remember Joe.

  The words of family and friends were eloquent, but none were more touching than Jack’s own thoughts. “It is the realization that the future held the promise of great accomplishment for Joe that made his death so particularly hard for those who knew him. . . . His life as he lived, and finally as he died, could hardly have been improved upon. And through it all, he had a deep and abiding faith—he was never far from God—and so I cannot help but feel that . . . ‘Death to him was less a setting forth than a returning.’ ”

  PEACE, POLITICS, AND POWER

  SAN FRANCISCO’S MAGNIFICENT Opera House was ablaze with lights. The brilliant colors of the massed flags, the great throngs of world leaders made the opening of the United Nations Conference an exciting adventure.

  A reporter for the Hearst-owned International News Service, Jack Kennedy was waiting for the ceremonies to begin. He was also doing some serious thinking. After his discharge from the Navy, he had been at loose ends. He knew he did not want to make the law his career, although he had considered entering Yale Law School after his Harvard graduation. His pre-war graduate work at Stanford University convinced him that business was not for him.

  Jack’s previous success in writing encouraged him to try newspaper work. But the longer he lived the life of a reporter, the more he realized he wanted to make news, not just tell about it. He didn’t want to report history—he wanted to make history!

  Jack longed to discuss his future with his father. But the tragic death of Joe Jr. had been a severe shock to Mr. Kennedy. For weeks, he had seemed unable to rouse himself, to take any interest in the world around him.

  In an effort to be helpful to Jack, however, the elder Kennedy urged his son to think seriously about a political career. Jack needed little urging. Politics was in his Irish blood. The congressional seat of James Michael Curley, Democrat, was vacant in 1946. John Fitzgerald Kennedy wanted to run for that seat!

  The professional politicians paid little attention to the shy, thin, freckle-faced young man, but this did not bother him. Instead of trying to get inside the smoked-filled back rooms of partisan politics, Jack Kennedy walked the streets of the Eleventh Congressional District in an unheard-of door-to-door campaign.

  The Kennedy-Fitzgerald name was a magic combination that opened Irish doors and hearts. Since Cambridge was part of the district, Jack’s Harvard friends also helped. But the old pros in Boston’s Democratic wards roared with laughter when Jack enlisted the help of his former Choate roommate, Lem Billings. For Billings was a Protestant and a Republican! What could he do to help a Ca
tholic and a Democrat in Irish Boston?

  Ward heelers felt the same way when they saw redheaded Paul Fay arrive from the West Coast to help his old navy buddy. Jack’s former PT boat crew arrived in force. And then, of course, there was the family!

  “Oh, that family!” Afterward, when the pros were wondering what hit them, no one could agree whether it had been Jack’s remarkable family or his friends that had been their undoing! But no matter how anyone helped, it was Jack Kennedy himself who shook the hands, rang the doorbells, stood outside factory gates to meet the workers. It was Jack who talked to the people and listened to their problems.

  When the election returns showed victory, Grandpa Fitzgerald danced an Irish jig and sang “Sweet Adeline” at the campaign headquarters. Jack was in! Representative Kennedy was to stay in, too, through several campaigns that successfully returned him to Washington.

  When John F. Kennedy took his seat in the House in January of 1947, he was twenty-nine years old. With his shy, boyish smile, his unruly shock of hair, and his lean, lanky frame, he looked years younger. In his first week on the Hill, the young congressman was frequently mistaken for a Capitol page boy.

  Wearing a dark suit similar to those worn by a page, Jack walked down the aisle of the House one day to take his seat.

  A veteran congressman snapped his fingers at him and demanded a copy of a bill.

  Kennedy smiled politely. “Where do I get it?”

  The old-timer scowled and bellowed, “How long you been a page, son?”

  Jack couldn’t control his mirth. While the elderly gentleman fumed, the younger man doubled up with laughter. Jack managed to say, “Sir, I’m a congressman. From Massachusetts.”