Country Vacations & Resorts

Time in Office: January 1961 to November 1963
Terms: Less than one – assassinated
Birthday: May 29, 1917
Birth Place: Brookline, Massachusetts
Date of Death: November 22, 1963
Place of Death: Dallas, Texas
Buried: Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia

Notes:
~ First Boy Scout to become President
~ Was so ill, he once received “last rites”
~ Appeared with Nixon on the first televised Presidential debate
~ Youngest man elected President
~ Created the Peace Corp
~ Kennedy and Taft – Only 2 Presidents buried at Arlington
~ First of 6 Presidents to have served in the US Navy

What hasn’t already been written or said about America’s 35th President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy?

That he was a rather sickly child? That he lived in the shadow of a near paragon of an older brother? No matter what has been said about JFK – he was certainly never boring!

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born in Massachusetts but raised mainly in New York. His prominent, wealthy, and politically active family provided a private school education and vacation homes in Hyannisport, Massachusetts and Palm Beach, Florida. He attended first Canterbury School in Milford, Connecticut and then the Choate School in Wallingford where he graduated high school in 1935.

Kennedy made his first trip abroad in September 1935 – to London with his family. It was planned for him to attend school there, but by October he was back in the US instead and enrolling late at Princeton University. He spent only 6 weeks there until becoming ill. He recuperated at his family’s home in Palm Beach and then spent the Spring of 1936 working on a ranch in Benson, Arizona. In September 1936 he enrolled at Harvard.

“Jack” as he was called, led an envious college existence in between extended trips abroad – to France and Europe in 1937, to London with his father and to Cannes in 1938, and to the Soviet Union, the Balkans, the Middle East, and Czechoslovakia and Germany – heading back to London – all before September 1939. After starting as a somewhat indifferent college student, Kennedy made the Dean’s List at Harvard in his junior year, and by 1940, his thesis had been published as “Why England Slept.” In 1941 he spent some time auditing classes at Stanford University and later in the year, traveled to South America. This is a lot of travel for someone still under the age of 25. Kennedy was published again in 1955. His second book, “Profiles in Courage” won a Pulitzer Prize.

Joining the Navy in 1941, Kennedy served with distinction and honor in Panama, the Pacific Theater, and the Solomons Islands. On August 12, 1944, Kennedy’s older brother Joe was killed in action flying a mission over England. The family’s political expectations for Joe now fell on JFK. He was elected US Representative in 1946 and in 1951, as a Massachusetts congressman, Kennedy, his brother Robert, and his sister Patricia traveled for seven weeks in India, Japan, Vietnam, and Israel. Elected Senator in 1952, Kennedy married Jacqueline Bouvier in 1953, and was on the Democratic ticket for Vice President in 1956. He was nominated and then elected President, November 1960. Kennedy – along with his wife Jacqueline and other family members, traveled nearly non-stop across the US during these campaigning years.

Trips, accompanied by his wife Jackie, to Paris and Vienna in 1961 involved political issues surrounding Nikita Khrushchev which continued with the botched Cuba invasion, (Bay of Pigs) and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Also looming as an issue during Kennedy’s brief administration was the growing political unrest in Laos which, despite Kennedy’s calls for peace and after his assassination, developed into the Vietnam War.

Kennedy visited West Berlin in June 1963 where he gave this (now) famous speech at the Berlin Wall:

Kennedy's Berlin Speech

He also made a visit in 1963 to the home of his ancestors when he visited the Republic of Ireland. For a man who suffered chronic back pain, was diagnosed in with Addison’s disease in 1947, and who had other endocrine-related health issues, Kennedy refused to let pain control him.

Presidential Travels – John F. Kennedy

Anyone alive and old enough to remember November 22nd, 1963 can probably tell you where they were when they heard the news that President Kennedy had been shot while in Dallas, Texas. Thirty minutes later came the televised announcement that he had died.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy is buried at Arlington National Cemetery – his grave lit with an Eternal Flame. In only the first 3 years, an estimated 16 million people visited Kennedy’s grave. His two deceased minor children and later, his wife Jacqueline (May 1994), were buried there with him.

Links:
Kennedy Space Center
Kennedy International Airport
Visitor info – Arlington National Cemetery

Next, The 36th President of the United States, Lyndon B. Johnson

America’s 34th President, Dwight D. Eisenhower

Traveling with American Presidents Series

More on US Presidents, their homes, and their Presidential Libraries:

The Ideals Guide to Presidential Homes and Libraries