#35. Kennedy, John Fitzgerald

Linda Lou Burton posting from Little Rock, Arkansas –John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917-1963) was the 35^th President of the United States, from 1961 to 1963. He was the youngest person ever elected president; his assassination, 1,036 days into his presidency, was one of the most shocking, and widely viewed events ever witnessed. Television saw to that. Ford Theater, where Abraham Lincoln was killed while watching a play in 1865, had an estimated 1,700 persons in attendance that night; certainly not all in a position to see what happened; or even hear the gunshot, as it was fired deliberately after a laugh line. James Garfield was headed for a vacation when he entered the railroad station in Washington that July morning in 1881; only a small crowd in the waiting room witnessed the gunman step forward and fire. William McKinley was attending the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, New York when he was killed by an assassins bullet; he was in the Temple of Music surrounded by a crowd; only a few were close enough to realize what happened. After the 1901 assassination of President McKinley, Congress directed the Secret Service to hereafter protect the president of the United States.

John Kennedy was riding in a Lincoln Continental convertible in a well-publicized parade; headed for the Dallas Trade Mart to make a speech November 22, 1963; wife Jackie sat beside. Texas Governor Connally and his wife Nellie were also in the car. A Secret Service agent was driving; another sat in the front; a third, Agent Clint Hill, was following closely on the running board of the car behind. Rifle shots were fired from a sixth-story window of a building along the route as bystanders waved.

I’d just put my kids down for their afternoon nap when I first heard garbled radio accounts that “the president was shot!” Stunned reporters struggled for what to say; I turned on my TV; CBS was the first to report the news, interrupting As the World Turns. I called my husband at work to see if he’d heard anything. At 2:38 Walter Cronkite, waiting in New York for confirmation of Kennedy’s condition, was handed a sheet from the AP news ticker. He put on his glasses, took a few seconds to read the sheet, and looked into the camera with this message: President Kennedy died at 1 PM Central Time, 2 o’clock Eastern Standard Time, some thirty-eight minutes ago.

I walked into my sleeping children’s bedroom, and cried. My kids were the same age as Jackie’s and John’s. How was Jackie going to tell her children something like that?

Suspect Lee Harvey Oswald was quickly apprehended; the media swarmed the jail. Over the next four days the networks were on the air non-stop. We’d just returned from church Sunday and switched on the TV as Jack Ruby shot Oswald. It happened in the basement of the Dallas Police Headquarters; NBC was covering, live. All networks covered the funeral on Tuesday, 50 cameras showed every detail; little John-John saluting the casket as it passed; inside the rotunda of the Capitol little Caroline putting her hand beneath the draped flag on her father’s coffin. A country mourned with prayers, and tears, and muted disbelief.

The Other Side, and Image

And yet, there was another side. In various schoolrooms, bars, and gatherings around the country, applause greeted the news of Kennedy’s death. You see, John Kennedy didn’t become our president by a landslide. He was relatively unknown politically; he was too young. He was a Catholic. He was a rich stuck-up Bostonian with a weird accent. His daddy was a crook. Yet on election day, electoral votes, and charm, and television skewed in Kennedy’s favor.

You see, the 1960 campaign gave us the first televised debate ever. The Kennedy-Nixon Debate, up close and personal from the comfort of our own living room. Interestingly, those who listened to that first debate on the radio scored higher points for Nixon. But television favored Kennedy.

Nixon had been on the public’s radar for eight years as Eisenhower’s VP. He knew about campaigns, and was accustomed to landslide victories. But IMAGE was a new factor in the game. Kennedy met with the debate’s producer ahead of time; he checked the lighting, the temperature, the camera placement. Kennedy wore makeup, and a blue suit and shirt to cut down on glare and appear sharply focused against the background. Nixon refused the offer of makeup; his stubble showed; he looked exhausted and pale. His gray suit seemed to blend into the set; he appeared to be looking at the clock and not the camera; he kept wiping sweat off his face. Kennedy, looking young and energetic, spoke directly to the camera. Result: almost overnight, age and experience lost its importance. We had ourselves a rock star.

The Second Child

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born May 29, 1917, in Brookline, Massachusetts, the second of Joseph (aka Papa Joe) and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy’s nine children – Joseph Jr, John, Rosemary, Kathleen, Eunice, Patricia, Robert, Jean, and Edward. John’s grandfathers, both Irish immigrants, over time had served Boston as ward boss, state legislator, mayor, and even US Congressman. Papa Joe Kennedy was a businessman. A very shrewd businessman.

I’ll try to keep it short about Papa Joe; he became wealthy through investments in Hollywood, importing liquor, and real estate. He had multiple affairs with women; Gloria Swanson was one on the list. He donated big bucks to political campaigns and got juicy political appointments, such as Ambassador to the UK. He hobnobbed with royalty at Windsor Castle, and tried to meet with Hitler, who, he believed, was “on the right track.” He didn’t like Jews but he did like Joe McCarthy. He believed that Roosevelt would fall, and hoped to succeed him. That didn’t happen. So Papa Joe lined up his firstborn son to be president; but Joe Jr, a US Navy bomber pilot, was killed over the English Channel in August 1944. Papa Joe turned his attention to #2 son, John.

He Kept Going

John was intelligent, handsome, charming, and, more or less, willing to do what Dad expected of him. But John was also burdened with severe health problems. According to family records, autoimmune disease showed up in his first two years of life—he suffered from almost constant infections during infancy. A bout with scarlet fever was so dire a priest was called to administer last rites. In the first half of his life —  twenty-three years — he attended school (Choate, then Harvard, where he graduated cum laude) while dealing with bronchitis, chicken pox, ear infections, colitis, celiac disease, and more; he was hospitalized for possible leukemia, and he began to experience spinal pain. But he kept going.

The last half of his life pain built on top of pain. He was rejected by the Army in 1940 due to chronic back problems, asthma, and ulcers; classified 4F.  But Papa Joe had a friend who got him into the Navy; in 1942 he became skipper of PT-109; his heroism there earned him a Navy Cross; and more back problems. Three more times a priest was called to administer last rites; but he kept going. He was 30 when he was diagnosed with Addison’s disease; that’s when your body stops producing the hormones you need to balance your metabolism, blood pressure, stress response, and immune system. Wow! that’s pretty much everything you need to keep going. He was so seriously ill a priest was called; last rites administered. He was 33 when his spine got worse; and then, another attack of Addison’s while he and Robert were in Asia; he became delirious, then comatose. Last rites: #3. The year: 1950. With the aid of an unbelievable list of medically-prescribed drugs, he kept going.

Politics and Marriage and General Hospital

In 1952 he was elected US Senator. And he met the beautiful Jacqueline Bouvier; they married the next year; he was 36, she was 24. Over the next 10 years, John was hospitalized nine times. He had spinal surgery, developed a urinary tract infection, slipped into a coma, and wasn’t expected to last the night; a priest was called for last rites for a fourth time. Jackie had a miscarriage, and then daughter Arabella was stillborn.

Was the public aware, or tuned into, much of this? Not really. Great joy in January 1957 when daughter Caroline was born healthy; John started campaigning in earnest. On November 25, 1960 son John was born, just 17 days after John Fitzgerald Kennedy was elected President of the United States. Boom!

January 20, 1961 Inauguration Day for John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Priests and preachers and rabbis offered their blessings. Marian Anderson sang the Star Spangled Banner. Robert Frost wrote a special poem, and recited it, despite the sun in his eyes. Carl Sandburg and John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway were invited guests. Outgoing president Eisenhower was front and center there, the oldest president ever in office (at that time) handing off to the youngest. Former president Truman was there, and future presidents Johnson, Nixon and Ford were there, making it the largest “presidential fraternity” ever assembled. Plus First Ladies! Jackie Kennedy of course; Edith Wilson, Eleanor Roosevelt, Bess Truman, Mamie Eisenhower, and (as we count today, knowing the future) Lady Bird Johnson, Pat Nixon, and Betty Ford were there. Chief Justice Earl Warren administered the Presidential Oath, a Kennedy Bible was used. Then President Kennedy delivered his address, considered by many to be the best inaugural speech in American history. And the first seen by a television audience, in color.

Home viewers watched the parade too, it lasted three hours; sixteen thousand members of the US armed forces marched with displays of modern weaponry like the Minuteman missile and the supersonic B-70 bomber. Another sixteen thousand marchers were civilians – federal and state officials, high school bands, Boy Scouts, forty floats. Frank Sinatra hosted the Inaugural Ball; Broadway theaters suspended shows so actors could attend; Hollywood biggies spoke and performed as donations rolled in for the Democratic Party. Jackie stayed till 1:30 in the morning; John headed to a second party hosted by Papa Joe.

Let’s Talk About Jackie

Jacqueline Lee Bouvier (1929-1994) was born July 28, 1929 in Southampton, New York, the first child of John “Black Jack” and Janet Lee Bouvier, Wall Street stockbroker and NY socialite. Sister Caroline Lee was born four years later. The stock market crash of 1929 wasn’t the only instability in the Bouvier family; alcoholism and marital affairs caused a separation by 1936, a divorce in 1940. Janet remarried; then Jackie had Hugh Auchincloss (Standard Oil wealth) for a step-father, and three step-siblings; Janet and Hugh had two more children by 1947. And Jackie lived a pampered life in Virginia, becoming an excellent horsewoman and student, graduating top of her class. Vassar, Sorbonne, on her resume; the Kennedy years you already know. She is considered one of the top-notch First Ladies; gracious and charming in her pillbox hat, and unbelievably brave; you’ve seen the picture as she stood beside Lyndon Johnson on Air Force One that day in her pink suit stained with her husband’s blood. The American public didn’t like it when she married Greek oil magnate Aristotle Onassis in 1968 and moved her kids out of the country; he died in 1978 and she returned, working at Doubleday and Viking Press, and getting back into the public eye. She was forgiven, and remains one of the most popular women in American history. She died of cancer in 1994, age 65, and is buried in Arlington Cemetery beside John Kennedy, and their children Arabella, who was stillborn in 1956, and Patrick, who lived two days and died just 106 days before his father’s assassination.

The Aftermath

As for children Caroline and John, they grew up; John was killed in 1999 as he piloted a small aircraft; his wife and sister-in-law also died in the crash. Caroline was appointed US Ambassador to Japan under Obama’s administration; and then Ambassador to Australia by Joe Biden in 2022; choosing to live far from the USA. As for pushy Papa Joe; he lived long enough to see his son Robert assassinated by a gunshot wound to the head in 1968 as he was campaigning for the Democratic party nomination. And his son Edward drive a car off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island in 1969, drowning his passenger, 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, who was left trapped inside.

The weirdest thing in this tale of ambition and woe and television impact? Doctors tell us that if John Kennedy had not been wearing the stiff backbrace that he was confined to for the greatest part of his life, he likely would not have been killed that day. The first, and survivable, shot hit him in the back. Without a backbrace, that shot would have knocked him forward, out of range of the second shot, which, since he remained erect, hit directly in the back of his head. And the other weird thing? Records released after 2002 show that due to the overwhelming amount of drugs he was taking, and the fragility of his health, he likely would have died within a year or two anyway.

That shining spot called Camelot? John Fitzgerald Kennedy, despite all the coverups and innuendo and alleged womanizing (with all those meds, and braces?) did something good for his country; his youth and positive encouragement gave a lot of people hope. But the price tag for that rock star image was huge.

I liked him. But no party.