“Searching for
the Real John F. Kennedy (JFK, 1917-63),”
Dialogue Given June 20, 2016, 10-11AM, Adshead, Uplands Village,
Pleasant Hill, TN. 38578.
bfparker@frontiernet.net
Betty: Our book review title is “Searching for
the Real John F. Kennedy (JFK, 1917-63).”
Why? Because JFK as
U.S. President is wrapped in myth, legend, praised by admirers, put down by
critics. Assassinated Nov. 22,
1963, age 46, frozen in time, yet continually re-examined as a key figure in
history. What was the real JFK
like?
Frank:
To many people JFK was and is special: our youngest, most charismatic
president. He established the
Peace Corps (1961), proposed sending Americans to the moon and back, saved us
from nuclear destruction.
When? Oct. 16 to 28, 12
days in 1962. Why and how?
Betty:
When USSR’s Khrushchev secretly built nuclear missile sites in Cuba able to
pulverize the eastern United States.
President JFK cautiously negotiated a way to have those missiles removed
peacefully, saving the world from nuclear war. Ten months later he led a
USA-USSR-Great Britain partial nuclear test ban treaty agreement, Aug. 5, 1963,
a first step toward easing Cold War tensions.
Frank: When young U.S. President Kennedy was
pushed by war hawks in the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), Pentagon Joint
Chiefs of Staff, and State Dept. toward a nuclear war, he said NO. Those war hawks, knowing JFK’s
intention in his second term to “pulverize the CIA,” wipe them out—they had to
get rid of JFK--permanently.
Betty: Little-known even now was
a plan to assassinate JFK in Chicago, Nov. 2, 1963, but JFK, warned in time,
canceled his Chicago trip.
Frank: Twenty days later in Dallas, Texas,
Nov. 22, 1963, JFK was shockingly assassinated. And on each anniversary since he is
fondly remembered. Betty saw JFK
56 years ago during his 1960 presidential campaign trip through Austin, Texas,
where she worked for the American Friends Service Committee, and where Frank
taught at the University of Texas.
Betty: Assassinated JFK instantly became a
martyred legend, studied and re-studied to find what made him so
memorable. Admirers’ answer in one
word: HOPE. His soaring speeches, his charismatic personality, his uplifting
vision spread hope for peace worldwide.
Frank:
JFK’s assassination spread JFK myths and legends in thousands of JFK books,
articles, and films. He is revered at over 1,200 worldwide JFK-named schools,
institutes, streets, parks, squares, eternal flames, and other memorials.
Betty:
We searched for the real JFK from his childhood through his school and college
years to his last almost 21 years in U.S. government service: 4 years in the
U.S. Navy (1941-45), plus 14 years in Congress: 6 years in the House of
Representatives, 8 years in the Senate, 1953-60, plus U.S. President 1,037
days, just under 3 years.
Frank:
Then, in Dallas, Texas, JFK shot dead, universal grief, little John John
saluting his father’s casket.
Betty:
What were JFK’s successes, failures, motives, sins, dreams? How do we explain
this complex man?
Frank:
JFK was shaped by his dictatorial father, Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Sr., who
pushed his 9 children to be first and best. Joe Sr., growing up in East Boston,
Mass., fighting the then prevalent anti-Irish prejudice, skirted the law to
become increasingly rich, powerful, and influential. Why? To rise, to become
U.S. President himself. When that
failed, his drive was to see his first-born son, Joe Jr., become president.
When Joe Jr. died in World War 2, Joe Kennedy determined to win the presidency
for second son JFK.
Betty:
Sickly JFK, boy and man, five times given last Catholic rites for the dying,
hid his pain behind good looks and charm.
Little JFK admired, looked up to, yet competed with first-born Joe Jr.,
much favored, molded by Joe Sr. as future president.
Frank:
Joe Jr., died Aug. 12, 1944, piloting a dynamite-loaded plane, which exploded
targeting a Nazi buzz-bomb launch site in Nazi-occupied France. Then Joe, Sr.
thrust the presidential quest onto sickly, carefree JFK.
Betty: President Kennedy faced
big crises in his short presidency: First, the April 1961 failed Bay of Pigs,
Cuba, invasion. The invasion, led
by CIA-trained Cuban anti-Castro dissidents who had fled to Florida, was
planned under Pres. Eisenhower.
Military and CIA experts assured Kennedy the invasion would
succeed.
Frank:
When it failed, Pres. Kennedy, horrified, began to see his military-minded
advisors as determined war hawks.
He took full blame, privately realizing, too late, that his CIA and
Pentagon Joint Chiefs of Staff had set him up. They deliberately told new Pres. Kennedy that the invaders
would succeed; that Pres. Kennedy as Commander in Chief should order U.S.
bomber support so that Cuba could be retaken. What these war hawk advisors did not tell JFK was: 1-we set
the invasion up to fail; 2-so that Russia would retaliate; 3-so that the USA,
now more powerful can obliterate Russian communism forever. Pres. JFK knew he
faced a possible horrendous nuclear World War 3.
Betty: At home, the civil rights movement
burst upon the national scene with sit-ins, Freedom Riders, protest marches,
bloody clashes between black protesters and the police. JFK was slow to help
oppressed blacks. Why?
Frank:
Because JFK’s 1960 presidential win was the slimmest in U.S. history. He barely
won; even with father Joe, Sr.’s buying illegal votes for him in Chicago and
West Va. JFK needed conservative Southern votes to win his intended 1964
reelection. His other first term problems besides Civil Right protesters were:
1-a rising jobless rate which had to be solved, and 2-awesome USA-USSR Cold War
clashes. Those problems made him
cautious about alienating Southern white segregationists.
Betty:
Two events led President JFK to aid protesting African Americans and won him
black votes. First: Martin Luther King, Jr., jailed in a remote Georgia prison,
was likely to be beaten to death. JFK phoned King’s wife Coretta King to say
that Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, JFK’s brother, had influenced Georgia
authorities to free King.
Frank:
Second event that prompted JFK to aid Black American equal rights freedom
fighters was Martin Luther King, Jr.’s galvanizing
August 28, 1963, March on Washington “I have a Dream” speech which
impressed a near tearful Pres. JFK.
Betty:
JFK’s Civil Rights bill, introduced June 11, 1963, the strongest such bill in
U.S. history, was blocked in Congress, awaiting burial by die-hard Southern
conservatives. It was not passed
until JFK’s successor, President Lyndon Johnson (1908-73), a masterful
congressional manipulator, pushed it through with other JFK initiated “Great Society”
legislative proposals through Congress.
How did Pres. Johnson do it?
By appealing to Congress and the public’s great sorrow for the
assassinated JFK.
Frank:
USA-USSR Cold War competition, a clash of ideologies, involved the drive to be
first in space. Russia’s Sputnik went up first, but JFK proposed sending men to
the moon and returning them safely.
Betty
Another Cold War problem was how to stop USSR from communizing colonial people
who were seeking independence from their European masters. Communism was making
serious inroads in colonial countries whose leaders sought independence in
Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, especially Vietnam.
Frank: JFK’s most crucial Cold War problems
were: 1-the Russian-built Berlin Wall, August 13, 1961, to keep
Communist-controlled East Germans from escaping into the free West. And, 2-before mentioned October 1962
Russian-built missile sites in Cuba capable of wiping out the eastern USA.
Betty:
Interruption, Frank; a question: many will wonder how we amateurs have gathered
information about John F. Kennedy?
Frank: Our
last year’s book review titled “The Tumultuous 1960s…,” told of Pres. JFK’s
challenges: minority protests for equal rights at home plus abroad USA-USSR
Cold War crises in Berlin, Cuba,Vietnam.
Betty:
Earlier we explored JFK in our 2009 review titled: “The Kennedys of
Massachusetts,” We learned much about JFK, knew that JFK’s prime
shaper was his father, Joseph Patrick
Kennedy, Sr., knew that another negative key influence was JFK’s mother, Rose
Kennedy (1890-1995, died age 105), who,
having to live with open womanizer Joe, Sr., was often away from home, often
neglecting bedridden JFK and the other children.
Frank:
That sickly schoolboy JFK missed motherly care. At Choate school, Wallingford,
CT, JFK reportedly said to his roommate: my mother is a nothing, recalling when
from Choate school infirmary sick bed he had admonished his mother, about to
depart on a trip, with something like:
Fine mother you are, always leaving us when we need you.
Betty:
Another key factor shaping JFK was his lifelong poor health, hidden from the
public for political reasons. Ailments complicated his political career, led
him to seek quack treatments, and to ease excruciating pain with sexual
excesses.
Frank:
Still another powerful shaping factor was JFK’s guilt feeling that his older
brother Joe Jr. might have volunteered for his fatal secret mission to outdo
JFK’s earlier much over publicized PT Boat 109 heroism. Joe Jr. and younger JFK always tried to
best each other.
Betty:
JFK’s last shaping factor came from within, ennobled him for all time; it was
the heart and soul of the real JFK--what was it?
Frank:
Betty, John Kennedy grew in understanding. He changed from a moderate anti-communist member of the U.S.
House, then the U.S. Senate to a peace-seeking U.S. President. To save the
world from nuclear catastrophe during the Cuban missile crisis and other Soviet
encounters, JFK did the unexpected. He secretly went over the heads of his own
diplomats, CIA, and Pentagon advisors. He sent secret messages by trusted
intermediaries to and received replies from USSR’s Nikita Khrushchev.
Betty:
He did it after seeing aerial photographs of Russian nuclear missile sites
being built in Cuba, 90 miles from Florida.
Frank:
He did it when his military advisors urged, insisted that as Commander in Chief
he approve bombing the missile sites in Cuba. JFK, certain that the Russian
would retaliate, decided firmly, NO.
We must not destroy humanity and our planet with nuclear war.
Betty: JFK first thought of an embargo,
stopping all Soviet ships to Cuba. But an embargo is an act of war. He chose instead a less aggressive,
softer solution, a quarantine by USA warships to stop and search any USSR ship
headed toward Cuba believed to be carrying missiles.
Frank: Luckily, the quarantine gave Khrushchev
time to receive and ponder JFK’s sincerity about a solution fair to both sides:
JFK to pledge in a public speech not to invade Cuba. Khrushchev to remove the
Cuba missiles aimed at the USA. Later, quietly the U.S. would remove USA
missiles in Turkey aimed at the USSR.
Betty:
Tell me, Frank, did JFK’s resentful military, CIA, State Department hard-liners
actually scheme to eliminate JFK?
Frank:
Many historians believe so. JFK
knew that undercover CIA agents were involved in cover-up killing of believed
pro-Communist, independence-seeking leaders like Congo’s Pres. Patrice Lumumba
and others. Knowing that highly
placed U.S. agents had secretly killed before, JFK sensed that by opposing his
war hawks he might be targeted. Many historians believe that it was JFK’s
peacemaking efforts that led to his assassination.
Frank: Now,
before we shift to key JFK biographical events, we briefly mention the six best
books we used: by author, title, date, significance.
Betty:
1. Robert F. Dallek, An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963. NY: Little, Brown and Co., 2003, which
critics cite as the best one volume book on JFK.
Frank:
2. James W. Douglass, JFK and the Unthinkable: Why He Died and Why It
Matters. NY: Simon & Schuster, 2008, whose author is Catholic
peace disciple of peace-seeking monastic writer, Trappist Monk Thomas Merton
(1915-68), Gethsemani, Ky.
Betty: 3. Hersh, Seymour M. Hersh, The Dark Side of
Camelot. Boston: Little, Brown &
Co., 1997, respected journalist who uncovered JFK’s many sins.
Frank:
4. James W. Hilty, Robert Kennedy; Brother Protector. Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
1997, how Bobby as U.S. Attorney General and JFK worked so well reinforcing
each together.
Betty:
5. Gareth Jenkins, John F. Kennedy Handbook. NY: St.
Martin’s Press, March 1, 2006, rich in JFK photos
at practically every age.
Frank:
6. Larry J. Sabato, The Kennedy Half Century: The Presidency, Assassination,
and Lasting Legacy
of John F. Kennedy. NY:
Bloomsbury, 2013, especially good on how JFK’s 9 succeeding U.S. presidents of
both parties quoted JFK to support their various different political
approaches.
Frank:
NOW to JFK’s biographical highlights by Date and Event.
Betty:
(May 29, 1917): JFK born and lived
first 10 years in Brookline section of Boston, Mass. Kennedys then made upward moves to more exclusive
Bronxville, New York City, 3 years; moved again to Riverdale, N.Y. JFK attended the best nearby private schools.
Frank:
Growing up during the 1930s Great Depression, JFK knew little about it, read
about it later in college. With his father Joe, Sr. often away in Hollywood
making films and money, and his mother regularly in Europe or elsewhere,
servants cared for the children, with Joe, Jr., at meal time sitting at the
head of the table.
Betty: (Sept. 1931-35): JFK
attended 9th through 12th grades at Choate School, famous then and since for
educating many prominent Americans.
Older brother Joe Jr., already at Choate, was outstanding in academics
and sports.
Frank: JFK was a mediocre
student, but a rapid reader of history and political biographies. He was
mischievous, led rowdy friends who exploded a firecracker that broke a toilet
seat. The headmaster in chapel
held up the broken toilet seat and denounced the perpetrators.
Betty: To save JFK from
expulsion, Joe Sr. visited Headmaster George St. John (1859-1947), who told Joe
Sr.: Young JFK’s chief gift is making friends, adding: "When he
flashes his smile, he could charm a bird off a tree,” an early insight into
JFK’s winsome personality and later rare charisma.
Frank: JFK’s
later speeches contained striking insights from Choate Headmaster George St.
John’s powerful chapel messages.
Example: Headmaster St. John:
“Ask not what Choate can do for you, ask what you can do for Choate,”
used by JFK in his Presidential Inaugural as: “Ask not what your country can do
for you, ask what you can do for [your country.”
Betty:
(1934): JFK, often ill at Choate, was sent to Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.,
diagnosed with colitis, another lifelong problem.
Frank: (1935): JFK, a 1935 Choate graduate, age 18, ranked 64th in a
class of 112. Later that year JFK took his first trip abroad with his parents.
He intended studying at London School of Economics as Joe, Jr. had done. But
illness forced JFK’s return home.
Betty: (Fall 1936-1940): JFK attended Harvard
College, ages 19-23, from which his father and Joe Jr. had graduated. Joe Sr., then U.S. ambassador to
England (1938 to 40), during Harvard holidays and other breaks, sent Joe, Jr.
and JFK as investigating aides to U.S. Embassies in Europe, where they learned
much about Hitler’s Nazi Germany, Stalin’s USSR, Franco’s Spain.
Frank: Having gathered much
inside information about pre-World War 2 Europe, JFK wrote his Harvard senior
thesis on “Appeasement at Munich,” about why Britain was unprepared for World
War 2. Joe Sr. paid New York Times journalist
Arthur Krock to rewrite the thesis, published as Why England Slept. Through Krock’s
influence it became a New York Times best seller.
Betty: (1941-42): Joe Jr.
enlisted early as a Navy flyer.
The Army twice rejected JFK because of his health. Father Joe, Sr.
maneuvered JFK into U.S. Naval officer training through high Navy officials
bypassing a physical exam.
Frank: (1942-44): When
JFK’s PT Boat 109 was cut in half by a speeding Japanese destroyer on a dark
night in the Solomon Islands, South Pacific, JFK saved the lives of his 11 crew
members. He suffered a lower back injury, which plagued him the rest of his
life. Joe Sr. had major U.S. magazine publish articles about JFK’s heroim. Older brother Joe Jr.’s death, some
months later, Aug. 12, 1944, on a secret Navy mission piloting a dynamite-filled
plane haunted JFK, who feared that his own over publicized PT Boat 109 heroism
had prompted his brother to risk the hazardous mission on which he died.
Betty: (1945-46): JFK, discharged from the Navy (March 1, 1945), was hired as
a journalist by his father’s friend William Randolph Hearst to cover the United
Nations’ birth in San Francisco, and then to cover politics in Britain.
Frank:
(June 17, 1946): JFK, age 29, thin, gaunt, still suffering from his war wounds
and his bad back, won his first election (with father Joe, Sr.’s maneuvering)
to the U.S. House of Representatives, assembled a competent staff, met
constituents’ needs, and prepared for his upward political climb.
Betty:
(Fall 1947): JFK, age 30, ill in London, was for the first time accurately
diagnosed with Addison’s disease, a hormonal disorder that causes fatigue,
weakens the immune system, usually leads to early death. Joe Sr. arranged that
all JFK’s medical records in various physicians’ offices be kept under assumed
names. JFK’s Addison’s disease, kept from public notice, plagued JFK the rest
of his life.
Frank:
(1948-1952): JFK re-elected to the House of Representatives second term then
third term. In 1952 JFK, grandson
of low class “shanty Irish,” ran for the U.S. Senate against Boston’s highest
upper class Brahman Republican incumbent U.S. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge II
(1901-85). Lodge later laughingly
said: I was beaten by those damned Kennedy ladies (JFK’s mother, sisters,
Democratic women activists), by their ‘Vote for Kennedy’ teas and coffees held
all over Massachusetts.
Betty: (Sept.
12, 1953): U.S. Senator JFK, age 36, intent on becoming president, needing a
wife, married beautiful Jacqueline Bouvier (1929-94), at age 24 12 years
younger, the elder daughter of a Wall Street stockbroker. Jackie attended
Vassar, spent her junior year at French universities, and received her degree
from George Washington University, majoring in French Literature.
Frank: Jackie
became a Washington Times-Herald
photographer, met JFK at a 1952 dinner party. Like Rose Kennedy with Joe, Sr.,
Jackie (whose parents had divorced) was hurt by but quietly tolerated JFK’s
womanizing.
Betty: Jackie became a greatly admired First
Lady. After JFK’s assassination,
she modeled his unforgettable funeral after that of Pres. Lincoln. Later she
asked author Theodore White (1915-86) to write for Life
magazine an article emphasizing that JFK loved listening to recordings of the
musical “Camelot”, particularly its last line: “Don’t let it be forgot, that
once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as
Camelot,” creating the myth of JFK as a modern knight of Camelot
fighting off evil enemies.
Frank: (Dec 2, 1954): The U.S. Senate voted to censure Wisconsin Republican
Senator Joseph McCarthy (1908-57), whose false charges of government leaders
being communists ruined many careers, JFK was the only Democratic senator not
voting against McCarthy, ostensibly because he was ill in hospital on voting
day. He could have voted by note, phone, or proxy. JFK’s not voting against
McCarthy displeased leading Democrat Eleanor Roosevelt and other liberals to
oppose Kennedy’s 1960 Democratic presidential nomination.
Betty: (Dec 2, 1954, Cont’d.): Explanation: JFK probably deliberately missed
McCarthy censure vote because 1-Joe, Sr. was a strong McCarthy supporter,
2-McCarthy dated JFK’s sister Patricia, 3-JFK’s younger brother Bobby worked as
lawyer for McCarthy’s communist investigation sub-committee. Was JFK’s not
voting a moral lapse or family loyalty?
Frank: (1954-1956): U.S. Senator JFK, then ages 37-39, aided by
his speechwriter Theodore Sorensen (1928-2010), wrote his book, Profiles in
Courage, about earlier heroic U.S.
senators who stood steadfast for their principles against majority opinion. Joe Sr. got NewYork Times friend Arthur Krock, leading Pulitzer
prize board member, to persuade other board members to award the 1957 Pulitzer
prize to Profiles in Courage, making Kennedy the only president to receive the
Pulitzer prize.
Betty:
(Aug. 16, 1956): At the Democratic National Convention, JFK gained national
attention when he introduced its nominee, Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson
(1900-65), who then asked the convention to choose his vice presidential
running mate. JFK, in the running, lost to Tennessee’s Estes Kefauver, yet
JFK’s prominence at that 1956 Democratic convention boosted his candidacy for
the 1960 presidential run.
Frank:
(1957): JFK’s brother Bobby became chief prosecutor for the U.S. Senate Rackets
Committee investigating criminal use of labor union retirement funds. Bobby’s
relentless pursuit of 1-Jimmy Hoffa (1913-75), teamsters’ union head, and
2-mafia criminal heads, made mafia leaders hate the Kennedys enough to become
suspects in both JFK’s and Bobby’s assassinations.
Betty:
(Nov. 27, 1957): JFK’s daughter Caroline Bouvier
Kennedy born. She remains (2016) U.S.
Ambassador to Japan. On Nov 25, 1960, Jackie
gave birth to John F. Kennedy, Jr., who while piloting a private plane died in
a 1999 crash.
Frank:
(July 13, 1960): JFK won the hard-fought Democratic Convention battle to become
presidential nominee. On father Joe, Sr.’s advice, JFK chose Texan Lyndon
Johnson, JFK’s fiercest competitor as presidential nominee, as his vice
presidential running mate to help win Southern conservative votes.
Betty:
(Sept. 12, 1960): Fearing defeat from strong anti-Catholic bias, JFK faced the
religious issue boldly by saying to a Houston, Texas, Protestant ministerial
group (Sept. 12, 1960): I do not speak for my Catholic church. My Catholic
church does not speak for me. As U.S. president, my guide will be the U.S.
Constitution, not my church. JFK received a standing ovation, largely ending
anti-Catholic bias.
Frank:
(1960): First ever TV presidential debates. Republican Richard Nixon, better
known than JFK (Nixon was Pres. Eisenhower’s Vice President), with no makeup,
was bested by photogenic, handsome, articulate JFK, who convinced the TV
audience he was competent and ready to be president. Radio listeners preferred
Nixon’s content. JFK won the larger TV audience. Nixon did not challenge JFK’s extremely narrow
election win, despite talk that father Joe, Sr. bought JFK votes in Chicago and
West Virginia.
Betty: (Jan. 20, 1961): JFK Inauguration: freezing sunny
winter’s day, JFK sworn in, then as U.S. President
said famously: “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill,
that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any
friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
Frank:
Besides JFK’s soaring words: “Ask not what your country can do
for you. Ask what you can do for your country,” JFK also said these less
remembered lines: “My fellow citizens of the world…ask not what America can do
for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.” JFK, as he was
driven past the reviewing stand, stood, locked eyes with father Joe, Sr. in the
audience, tipped his top hat, tears welled, a moment to remember.
Betty: (March 1, 1961): JFK by Executive Order 10924 created the
Peace Corps.
Frank: (March
13, 1961): JFK announced a USA and Latin American "Alliance for
Progress."
Betty: (April
16-19, 1961): Joint Chiefs of Staff military and CIA advisors
urged JFK to approve the earlier planned, under Pres. Eisenhower, Bay of Pigs,
Cuba, invasion aimed at overthrowing Castro.
Frank: (Same,
April 16-19, 1961): JFK, though uneasy, accepted CIA advisers’
assurance that Florida-based U.S. Army-trained anti-Castro Cubans would invade
Cuba and install a government friendly to the US. JFK was shocked when an alerted superior Castro defense
force killed over 200 and imprisoned 1,197 invaders (later freed with large
U.S. ransom which JFK insisted be used only for needy Cuban children’s medicines).
Betty: (Same,
April 16-19, 1961): JFK took full responsibility for the failed
invasion but increasingly feared the military. This failed Cuban invasion plus
other later JFK peace-seeking moves, many believe, triggered angers leading to
the assassinations of both JFK and Bobby.
Frank: (May
25, 1961): JFK announced plans to land a man on the moon by the end of the
decade and return him to earth.
Betty: (May 31-June 3, 1961): JFK and
Jackie in Paris, talks with Pres. Charles DeGaulle who told JFK what to expect
in his planned talks with Khrushchev.
Jackie charmed the French with her beauty and mastery of the French
language.
Frank: (June
3-4, 1961): JFK-Nikita Khrushchev talks in Vienna, Austria, went badly for JFK.
Khrushchev was belligerent, as JFK later privately told brother Bobby: “Khrushchev
thought me young, inexperienced, naïve, weak; he wiped the floor with me.”
Betty:
(August 13, 1961): Khrushchev built the
Berlin Wall to stop East Germans from fleeing to the free West. The Wall was a
direct challenge to the three Allies (U.S., France, Britain) controlling the
other Berlin sectors.
Frank: (Dec. 19,
1961): Joe Sr. suffered a stroke, partially paralyzed, wheelchair bound, unable
to speak except for a guttural drawn-out “Nooo.”
Betty: (March
1962): JFK forced the steel industry to eliminate a price increase, which would
have hurt the economy.
Frank: (Oct. 16-28, 1962): U.S.A. photos of
Soviet nuclear missile sites in Cuba led to the Cuban Missile Crisis. JFK’s
naval quarantine of Cuba, and JFK’s secret contacts with Khrushchev avoided
nuclear war. Bobby Kennedy shared these secret negotiations with Soviet
Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin (1919-2010) in Washington, DC, to assure that the
secret messages reached Khrushchev.
Betty: (June
10, 1963): Five months before his assassination, Pres. JFK
gave his masterful peace speech at American University Commencement,
paraphrased: The peace we seek is not won by weapons of war but by making “life on earth worth living…[and enablng] men and nations
to grow…to hope, …to build a better life for their children--not merely peace
for Americans but peace for all [the world]--not merely peace in our time but
peace [for] all time.”
Frank:
June 26, 1963, Kennedy, after visiting the Berlin Wall, spoke in a nearby
square to 120,000, attacked the communist system, and famously shouted “Ich bin
ein Berliner.” Aug
5, 1963: JFK-led U.S.A.-Soviet
Union-Britain to a limited nuclear test-ban treaty agreement.
Betty: (Nov. 2, 1963): Plan to assassinate JFK
in Chicago was aborted. Told of the plan, JFK canceled his Chicago trip.
Frank:
(Nov. 22, 1963): JFK, with Jackie, went to Texas to heal a liberal-conservative
split among Texas Democrats whose votes JFK needed for his second term
election. Knowing that other Democratic leaders visiting Texas had been roughly
treated, JFK told Jackie: “We’re headed for nut country.”
Betty:
(Nov. 22, 1963, Cont’d.): Despite some heckling signs, JFK was well received in
San Antonio, Houston, Fort Worth, Dallas:
In Dallas, open limousine, cheering crowds, Democratic Gov. Connally’s wife
Nellie, sitting in the front seat looked back, said: “Mr. President, you can’t
say that Dallas doesn’t love you.”
Frank:
(Nov. 22, 1963, Cont’d.): Open Limousine slowed at Dealey Plaza, past Texas
Book Depository, Crack! Bullet into back of JFK’s neck, exited his Adam’s
apple. Crack! Crack! Third bullet, likely from front, tore off right side back
part of skull and brains. JFK, sped to Parkland Hospital, pronounced dead. Vice
Pres. Lyndon Johnson took the Oath of Office, Lady
Bird on one side, and widow Jackie in blood and brain stained pink suit on the
other. The world mourned.
Betty: Time now, Frank, for our conclusion.
Frank: The real JFK
did more in his under three years’ presidency than many presidents did in their
4 years or 8 years. We list 6 of his major achievements:
Betty: 1-He averted a
catastrophic nuclear conflict in the Oct. 1962, Cuba missile crisis.
Frank: 2-After calling civil rights a moral
crisis (June 11, 1963), JFK sent Congress the strongest ever Civil Rights Act
which, after JFK’s death Pres. Lyndon Johnson won Congressional passage of,
plus JFK’s drafted for his cut-off second term “Great Society” plans: Medicare
for the elderly, Medicade for the poor, clean air, water; wild life and
wilderness protection.
Betty: 3-JFK’s June 10,
1963, American University “Peace Speech” prepared the way for the limited USA,
USSR, Britain nuclear test ban, a milestone toward easing the Cold War.
Frank; 4-His Sept. 12,
1960, Houston Texas, address to Protestant ministers on separation of church
and state helped perpetuate the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution and
answered forever that a Catholic can be president.
Betty: 5-His January 20,
1961, Inaugural “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do
for your country,” ranks with Franklin Roosevelt’s 1933 “We have nothing to
fear but fear itself” speech in extending hope and courage in troubled times,
these two being the most remembered 20th century inaugural addresses.
Frank:
6, our last, omitting other accomplishments: JFK’s Peace Corps, March 1, 1961,
a lasting legacy, promising a happier future when adopted world wide to uplift
the world’s needy, poor, sick, troubled, marginal people everywhere.
Betty:
Frank, your 3 best short John Fitzgerald Kennedy quotes?
Frank:
1-“Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the
right answer.” 2-“Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to
mankind.” 3-“We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether
it is to sail or to watch - we are going back from whence we came.”
Betty:
Frank, end with what Kennedy’s closest advisor,
speechwriter Theodore Sorenson, said on hearing of JFK’s death.
Frank:
"How could you leave us, how could you die? We are sheep without a
shepherd
when the snow
shuts out the sky.” End.
Sources: Google.Com and Other Sources:
-Assassination articles in:
*JFK’s
May 25, 1961, proposal to send U.S. astronauts to the moon and return them: http://goo.gl/y1Z7l5 and: http://goo.gl/3LzIHp and: http://goo.gl/ieqBrl
And:
Katie Nodjimbadem, “Next Stop Mars,” Smithsonian, Vol. 47, No.
2 (May, 2016), pp. 72-73, plus, same issue, pp. 76-85.
*Parkers’ “Kennedys of
Massachusetts” paper:
http://goo.gl/ykBLeN and at: http://www.blogster.com/bfparker/kennedys-of-massachusetts
http://goo.gl/ykBLeN and at: http://www.blogster.com/bfparker/kennedys-of-massachusetts
*JFK’s father Joe, Sr.’s absolutism
shown in daughter Rosemary Kennedy’s failed lobotomy surgery: http://goo.gl/oJ2Hdn
*Joseph F. Kennedy, Jr. (1915-44),
JFK’s older brother; his life, World War 2 death and honors. (Joe, Sr. made
sure U.S. Naval authority awarded Joe, Jr. a posthumous Naval Cross and named a
destroyer USS Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Jr., on which
third-born son, Robert F. Kennedy (Bobby, 1925-68) in
1946 briefly served as seaman: http://goo.gl/GgxhYc
*Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Sr., U.S.
Ambassador to Great Britain, Pro-Hitler views: http://goo.gl/HV5VN1
And: http://goo.gl/Ztbvbw
JFK at Choate, exclusive private secondary school:
*JFK: General
information and at Choate School: http://www.sparknotes.com/biography/jfk/section1.rhtml
Choate and
Rosemary Hall (History, famous alumni, including JFK):
*JFK first campaign for U.S. Senate against Mass. Incumbent Boston
Brahmin Henry Cabot Lodge II: "Boston, dear Boston, the land of the bean
and the cod, Where the Cabots speak only to the Lodges, and the Lodges speak
only to God"
*JFK abstaining from U.S. Senate vote
censuring Republican Sen. Joseph McCarthy for false charges as communists in
U.S. government:
*JFK’s involvement in Bay of Pigs,
Cuba invasion to overthrow Castro (April 1961); http://goo.gl/7MrZer
*USSR nuclear missile sites in Cuba
capable of pulverizing Eastern USA including Washington, DC. (Oct. 16-28,
1962): http://goo.gl/hk6W9t
*JFK’s early years at Choate private
secondary school:
*JFK’s belief that CIA war hawks
involved in death of Congo Pres. Patrice Lumumba and others: http://goo.gl/cIrvhh
and: Reviews of David Talbot, The Devil’s
Chessboard…2015, confirm that CIA rogue elements in post WWII
USA-USSR Cold War years (then and likely since) secretly, illegally, tortured,
killed and deliberatly destabilized believed communist-oriented leaders and
countries: http://goo.gl/9D4sNW
*JFK illness treatment by quack physician: Dr. “Feel Good” Max Jacobson:
JFK illness and and use of quack Dr. Max Jacobson,
called “Dr. Feelgood,” later removed from medicine practise.
*JFK, how he illegally entered U.S.
Navy Officer Training bypassing physical exam:
JFK, shocking portrayal of questionable tactics
used to help JFK political climb to win the White House:
*Master of the U.S. House of
Representatives Tip O’Neill on how unpromising new young U.S. House member JFK
seemed to ever becoming U.S. President:
*Joe Kennedy, Sr.’s and JFK’s love
liaisons with movie star Marlene Dietrich and Marlene’s daughter Marie: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2009/03/dietrich-kennedy200903
*JFK with little son John F.
Kennedy, Jr. photo peering through the trap door of the Resolute desk.
This desk was made from wood taken from the ship HMS Resolute and was given
to President Rutherford Hayes by Queen Victoria of England in 1880, see: https://www.pinterest.com/brookesome/the-kennedys/
*JFK and wife Jackie: mutual
sadness on death of prematurely born son to be named Patrick brought them
closer together in last months before JfK’s assassination, each knowing of the other’s
infidelities: http://goo.gl/PdeYQi
*JFK, boyhood, seen in Choate
school sick bed by Kennedy family lady friend surrounded by books reading about
Winston Churchill (1874-1965) who also had a dictatorial father and whom Pres.
JFK later made an honorary U.S. Citizen. http://goo.gl/1Y05jB
*JFK, key articles about:
*JFK photo and article in Saturday Evening Post:
*For
Franklin and Betty J. Parker other writings, click on:
END. Comments and corrections to: bfparker@frontiernet.net
“Searching for
the Real John F. Kennedy (JFK, 1917-63),”
Dialogue Given June 20, 2016, 10-11AM, Adshead, Uplands Village,
Pleasant Hill, TN. 38578.
bfparker@frontiernet.net
Betty: Our book review title is “Searching for
the Real John F. Kennedy (JFK, 1917-63).”
Why? Because JFK as
U.S. President is wrapped in myth, legend, praised by admirers, put down by
critics. Assassinated Nov. 22,
1963, age 46, frozen in time, yet continually re-examined as a key figure in
history. What was the real JFK
like?
Frank:
To many people JFK was and is special: our youngest, most charismatic
president. He established the
Peace Corps (1961), proposed sending Americans to the moon and back, saved us
from nuclear destruction.
When? Oct. 16 to 28, 12
days in 1962. Why and how?
Betty:
When USSR’s Khrushchev secretly built nuclear missile sites in Cuba able to
pulverize the eastern United States.
President JFK cautiously negotiated a way to have those missiles removed
peacefully, saving the world from nuclear war. Ten months later he led a
USA-USSR-Great Britain partial nuclear test ban treaty agreement, Aug. 5, 1963,
a first step toward easing Cold War tensions.
Frank: When young U.S. President Kennedy was
pushed by war hawks in the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), Pentagon Joint
Chiefs of Staff, and State Dept. toward a nuclear war, he said NO. Those war hawks, knowing JFK’s
intention in his second term to “pulverize the CIA,” wipe them out—they had to
get rid of JFK--permanently.
Betty: Little-known even now was
a plan to assassinate JFK in Chicago, Nov. 2, 1963, but JFK, warned in time,
canceled his Chicago trip.
Frank: Twenty days later in Dallas, Texas,
Nov. 22, 1963, JFK was shockingly assassinated. And on each anniversary since he is
fondly remembered. Betty saw JFK
56 years ago during his 1960 presidential campaign trip through Austin, Texas,
where she worked for the American Friends Service Committee, and where Frank
taught at the University of Texas.
Betty: Assassinated JFK instantly became a
martyred legend, studied and re-studied to find what made him so
memorable. Admirers’ answer in one
word: HOPE. His soaring speeches, his charismatic personality, his uplifting
vision spread hope for peace worldwide.
Frank:
JFK’s assassination spread JFK myths and legends in thousands of JFK books,
articles, and films. He is revered at over 1,200 worldwide JFK-named schools,
institutes, streets, parks, squares, eternal flames, and other memorials.
Betty:
We searched for the real JFK from his childhood through his school and college
years to his last almost 21 years in U.S. government service: 4 years in the
U.S. Navy (1941-45), plus 14 years in Congress: 6 years in the House of
Representatives, 8 years in the Senate, 1953-60, plus U.S. President 1,037
days, just under 3 years.
Frank:
Then, in Dallas, Texas, JFK shot dead, universal grief, little John John
saluting his father’s casket.
Betty:
What were JFK’s successes, failures, motives, sins, dreams? How do we explain
this complex man?
Frank:
JFK was shaped by his dictatorial father, Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Sr., who
pushed his 9 children to be first and best. Joe Sr., growing up in East Boston,
Mass., fighting the then prevalent anti-Irish prejudice, skirted the law to
become increasingly rich, powerful, and influential. Why? To rise, to become
U.S. President himself. When that
failed, his drive was to see his first-born son, Joe Jr., become president.
When Joe Jr. died in World War 2, Joe Kennedy determined to win the presidency
for second son JFK.
Betty:
Sickly JFK, boy and man, five times given last Catholic rites for the dying,
hid his pain behind good looks and charm.
Little JFK admired, looked up to, yet competed with first-born Joe Jr.,
much favored, molded by Joe Sr. as future president.
Frank:
Joe Jr., died Aug. 12, 1944, piloting a dynamite-loaded plane, which exploded
targeting a Nazi buzz-bomb launch site in Nazi-occupied France. Then Joe, Sr.
thrust the presidential quest onto sickly, carefree JFK.
Betty: President Kennedy faced
big crises in his short presidency: First, the April 1961 failed Bay of Pigs,
Cuba, invasion. The invasion, led
by CIA-trained Cuban anti-Castro dissidents who had fled to Florida, was
planned under Pres. Eisenhower.
Military and CIA experts assured Kennedy the invasion would
succeed.
Frank:
When it failed, Pres. Kennedy, horrified, began to see his military-minded
advisors as determined war hawks.
He took full blame, privately realizing, too late, that his CIA and
Pentagon Joint Chiefs of Staff had set him up. They deliberately told new Pres. Kennedy that the invaders
would succeed; that Pres. Kennedy as Commander in Chief should order U.S.
bomber support so that Cuba could be retaken. What these war hawk advisors did not tell JFK was: 1-we set
the invasion up to fail; 2-so that Russia would retaliate; 3-so that the USA,
now more powerful can obliterate Russian communism forever. Pres. JFK knew he
faced a possible horrendous nuclear World War 3.
Betty: At home, the civil rights movement
burst upon the national scene with sit-ins, Freedom Riders, protest marches,
bloody clashes between black protesters and the police. JFK was slow to help
oppressed blacks. Why?
Frank:
Because JFK’s 1960 presidential win was the slimmest in U.S. history. He barely
won; even with father Joe, Sr.’s buying illegal votes for him in Chicago and
West Va. JFK needed conservative Southern votes to win his intended 1964
reelection. His other first term problems besides Civil Right protesters were:
1-a rising jobless rate which had to be solved, and 2-awesome USA-USSR Cold War
clashes. Those problems made him
cautious about alienating Southern white segregationists.
Betty:
Two events led President JFK to aid protesting African Americans and won him
black votes. First: Martin Luther King, Jr., jailed in a remote Georgia prison,
was likely to be beaten to death. JFK phoned King’s wife Coretta King to say
that Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, JFK’s brother, had influenced Georgia
authorities to free King.
Frank:
Second event that prompted JFK to aid Black American equal rights freedom
fighters was Martin Luther King, Jr.’s galvanizing
August 28, 1963, March on Washington “I have a Dream” speech which
impressed a near tearful Pres. JFK.
Betty:
JFK’s Civil Rights bill, introduced June 11, 1963, the strongest such bill in
U.S. history, was blocked in Congress, awaiting burial by die-hard Southern
conservatives. It was not passed
until JFK’s successor, President Lyndon Johnson (1908-73), a masterful
congressional manipulator, pushed it through with other JFK initiated “Great Society”
legislative proposals through Congress.
How did Pres. Johnson do it?
By appealing to Congress and the public’s great sorrow for the
assassinated JFK.
Frank:
USA-USSR Cold War competition, a clash of ideologies, involved the drive to be
first in space. Russia’s Sputnik went up first, but JFK proposed sending men to
the moon and returning them safely.
Betty
Another Cold War problem was how to stop USSR from communizing colonial people
who were seeking independence from their European masters. Communism was making
serious inroads in colonial countries whose leaders sought independence in
Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, especially Vietnam.
Frank: JFK’s most crucial Cold War problems
were: 1-the Russian-built Berlin Wall, August 13, 1961, to keep
Communist-controlled East Germans from escaping into the free West. And, 2-before mentioned October 1962
Russian-built missile sites in Cuba capable of wiping out the eastern USA.
Betty:
Interruption, Frank; a question: many will wonder how we amateurs have gathered
information about John F. Kennedy?
Frank: Our
last year’s book review titled “The Tumultuous 1960s…,” told of Pres. JFK’s
challenges: minority protests for equal rights at home plus abroad USA-USSR
Cold War crises in Berlin, Cuba,Vietnam.
Betty:
Earlier we explored JFK in our 2009 review titled: “The Kennedys of
Massachusetts,” We learned much about JFK, knew that JFK’s prime
shaper was his father, Joseph Patrick
Kennedy, Sr., knew that another negative key influence was JFK’s mother, Rose
Kennedy (1890-1995, died age 105), who,
having to live with open womanizer Joe, Sr., was often away from home, often
neglecting bedridden JFK and the other children.
Frank:
That sickly schoolboy JFK missed motherly care. At Choate school, Wallingford,
CT, JFK reportedly said to his roommate: my mother is a nothing, recalling when
from Choate school infirmary sick bed he had admonished his mother, about to
depart on a trip, with something like:
Fine mother you are, always leaving us when we need you.
Betty:
Another key factor shaping JFK was his lifelong poor health, hidden from the
public for political reasons. Ailments complicated his political career, led
him to seek quack treatments, and to ease excruciating pain with sexual
excesses.
Frank:
Still another powerful shaping factor was JFK’s guilt feeling that his older
brother Joe Jr. might have volunteered for his fatal secret mission to outdo
JFK’s earlier much over publicized PT Boat 109 heroism. Joe Jr. and younger JFK always tried to
best each other.
Betty:
JFK’s last shaping factor came from within, ennobled him for all time; it was
the heart and soul of the real JFK--what was it?
Frank:
Betty, John Kennedy grew in understanding. He changed from a moderate anti-communist member of the U.S.
House, then the U.S. Senate to a peace-seeking U.S. President. To save the
world from nuclear catastrophe during the Cuban missile crisis and other Soviet
encounters, JFK did the unexpected. He secretly went over the heads of his own
diplomats, CIA, and Pentagon advisors. He sent secret messages by trusted
intermediaries to and received replies from USSR’s Nikita Khrushchev.
Betty:
He did it after seeing aerial photographs of Russian nuclear missile sites
being built in Cuba, 90 miles from Florida.
Frank:
He did it when his military advisors urged, insisted that as Commander in Chief
he approve bombing the missile sites in Cuba. JFK, certain that the Russian
would retaliate, decided firmly, NO.
We must not destroy humanity and our planet with nuclear war.
Betty: JFK first thought of an embargo,
stopping all Soviet ships to Cuba. But an embargo is an act of war. He chose instead a less aggressive,
softer solution, a quarantine by USA warships to stop and search any USSR ship
headed toward Cuba believed to be carrying missiles.
Frank: Luckily, the quarantine gave Khrushchev
time to receive and ponder JFK’s sincerity about a solution fair to both sides:
JFK to pledge in a public speech not to invade Cuba. Khrushchev to remove the
Cuba missiles aimed at the USA. Later, quietly the U.S. would remove USA
missiles in Turkey aimed at the USSR.
Betty:
Tell me, Frank, did JFK’s resentful military, CIA, State Department hard-liners
actually scheme to eliminate JFK?
Frank:
Many historians believe so. JFK
knew that undercover CIA agents were involved in cover-up killing of believed
pro-Communist, independence-seeking leaders like Congo’s Pres. Patrice Lumumba
and others. Knowing that highly
placed U.S. agents had secretly killed before, JFK sensed that by opposing his
war hawks he might be targeted. Many historians believe that it was JFK’s
peacemaking efforts that led to his assassination.
Frank: Now,
before we shift to key JFK biographical events, we briefly mention the six best
books we used: by author, title, date, significance.
Betty:
1. Robert F. Dallek, An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963. NY: Little, Brown and Co., 2003, which
critics cite as the best one volume book on JFK.
Frank:
2. James W. Douglass, JFK and the Unthinkable: Why He Died and Why It
Matters. NY: Simon & Schuster, 2008, whose author is Catholic
peace disciple of peace-seeking monastic writer, Trappist Monk Thomas Merton
(1915-68), Gethsemani, Ky.
Betty: 3. Hersh, Seymour M. Hersh, The Dark Side of
Camelot. Boston: Little, Brown &
Co., 1997, respected journalist who uncovered JFK’s many sins.
Frank:
4. James W. Hilty, Robert Kennedy; Brother Protector. Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
1997, how Bobby as U.S. Attorney General and JFK worked so well reinforcing
each together.
Betty:
5. Gareth Jenkins, John F. Kennedy Handbook. NY: St.
Martin’s Press, March 1, 2006, rich in JFK photos
at practically every age.
Frank:
6. Larry J. Sabato, The Kennedy Half Century: The Presidency, Assassination,
and Lasting Legacy
of John F. Kennedy. NY:
Bloomsbury, 2013, especially good on how JFK’s 9 succeeding U.S. presidents of
both parties quoted JFK to support their various different political
approaches.
Frank:
NOW to JFK’s biographical highlights by Date and Event.
Betty:
(May 29, 1917): JFK born and lived
first 10 years in Brookline section of Boston, Mass. Kennedys then made upward moves to more exclusive
Bronxville, New York City, 3 years; moved again to Riverdale, N.Y. JFK attended the best nearby private schools.
Frank:
Growing up during the 1930s Great Depression, JFK knew little about it, read
about it later in college. With his father Joe, Sr. often away in Hollywood
making films and money, and his mother regularly in Europe or elsewhere,
servants cared for the children, with Joe, Jr., at meal time sitting at the
head of the table.
Betty: (Sept. 1931-35): JFK
attended 9th through 12th grades at Choate School, famous then and since for
educating many prominent Americans.
Older brother Joe Jr., already at Choate, was outstanding in academics
and sports.
Frank: JFK was a mediocre
student, but a rapid reader of history and political biographies. He was
mischievous, led rowdy friends who exploded a firecracker that broke a toilet
seat. The headmaster in chapel
held up the broken toilet seat and denounced the perpetrators.
Betty: To save JFK from
expulsion, Joe Sr. visited Headmaster George St. John (1859-1947), who told Joe
Sr.: Young JFK’s chief gift is making friends, adding: "When he
flashes his smile, he could charm a bird off a tree,” an early insight into
JFK’s winsome personality and later rare charisma.
Frank: JFK’s
later speeches contained striking insights from Choate Headmaster George St.
John’s powerful chapel messages.
Example: Headmaster St. John:
“Ask not what Choate can do for you, ask what you can do for Choate,”
used by JFK in his Presidential Inaugural as: “Ask not what your country can do
for you, ask what you can do for [your country.”
Betty:
(1934): JFK, often ill at Choate, was sent to Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.,
diagnosed with colitis, another lifelong problem.
Frank: (1935): JFK, a 1935 Choate graduate, age 18, ranked 64th in a
class of 112. Later that year JFK took his first trip abroad with his parents.
He intended studying at London School of Economics as Joe, Jr. had done. But
illness forced JFK’s return home.
Betty: (Fall 1936-1940): JFK attended Harvard
College, ages 19-23, from which his father and Joe Jr. had graduated. Joe Sr., then U.S. ambassador to
England (1938 to 40), during Harvard holidays and other breaks, sent Joe, Jr.
and JFK as investigating aides to U.S. Embassies in Europe, where they learned
much about Hitler’s Nazi Germany, Stalin’s USSR, Franco’s Spain.
Frank: Having gathered much
inside information about pre-World War 2 Europe, JFK wrote his Harvard senior
thesis on “Appeasement at Munich,” about why Britain was unprepared for World
War 2. Joe Sr. paid New York Times journalist
Arthur Krock to rewrite the thesis, published as Why England Slept. Through Krock’s
influence it became a New York Times best seller.
Betty: (1941-42): Joe Jr.
enlisted early as a Navy flyer.
The Army twice rejected JFK because of his health. Father Joe, Sr.
maneuvered JFK into U.S. Naval officer training through high Navy officials
bypassing a physical exam.
Frank: (1942-44): When
JFK’s PT Boat 109 was cut in half by a speeding Japanese destroyer on a dark
night in the Solomon Islands, South Pacific, JFK saved the lives of his 11 crew
members. He suffered a lower back injury, which plagued him the rest of his
life. Joe Sr. had major U.S. magazine publish articles about JFK’s heroim. Older brother Joe Jr.’s death, some
months later, Aug. 12, 1944, on a secret Navy mission piloting a dynamite-filled
plane haunted JFK, who feared that his own over publicized PT Boat 109 heroism
had prompted his brother to risk the hazardous mission on which he died.
Betty: (1945-46): JFK, discharged from the Navy (March 1, 1945), was hired as
a journalist by his father’s friend William Randolph Hearst to cover the United
Nations’ birth in San Francisco, and then to cover politics in Britain.
Frank:
(June 17, 1946): JFK, age 29, thin, gaunt, still suffering from his war wounds
and his bad back, won his first election (with father Joe, Sr.’s maneuvering)
to the U.S. House of Representatives, assembled a competent staff, met
constituents’ needs, and prepared for his upward political climb.
Betty:
(Fall 1947): JFK, age 30, ill in London, was for the first time accurately
diagnosed with Addison’s disease, a hormonal disorder that causes fatigue,
weakens the immune system, usually leads to early death. Joe Sr. arranged that
all JFK’s medical records in various physicians’ offices be kept under assumed
names. JFK’s Addison’s disease, kept from public notice, plagued JFK the rest
of his life.
Frank:
(1948-1952): JFK re-elected to the House of Representatives second term then
third term. In 1952 JFK, grandson
of low class “shanty Irish,” ran for the U.S. Senate against Boston’s highest
upper class Brahman Republican incumbent U.S. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge II
(1901-85). Lodge later laughingly
said: I was beaten by those damned Kennedy ladies (JFK’s mother, sisters,
Democratic women activists), by their ‘Vote for Kennedy’ teas and coffees held
all over Massachusetts.
Betty: (Sept.
12, 1953): U.S. Senator JFK, age 36, intent on becoming president, needing a
wife, married beautiful Jacqueline Bouvier (1929-94), at age 24 12 years
younger, the elder daughter of a Wall Street stockbroker. Jackie attended
Vassar, spent her junior year at French universities, and received her degree
from George Washington University, majoring in French Literature.
Frank: Jackie
became a Washington Times-Herald
photographer, met JFK at a 1952 dinner party. Like Rose Kennedy with Joe, Sr.,
Jackie (whose parents had divorced) was hurt by but quietly tolerated JFK’s
womanizing.
Betty: Jackie became a greatly admired First
Lady. After JFK’s assassination,
she modeled his unforgettable funeral after that of Pres. Lincoln. Later she
asked author Theodore White (1915-86) to write for Life
magazine an article emphasizing that JFK loved listening to recordings of the
musical “Camelot”, particularly its last line: “Don’t let it be forgot, that
once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as
Camelot,” creating the myth of JFK as a modern knight of Camelot
fighting off evil enemies.
Frank: (Dec 2, 1954): The U.S. Senate voted to censure Wisconsin Republican
Senator Joseph McCarthy (1908-57), whose false charges of government leaders
being communists ruined many careers, JFK was the only Democratic senator not
voting against McCarthy, ostensibly because he was ill in hospital on voting
day. He could have voted by note, phone, or proxy. JFK’s not voting against
McCarthy displeased leading Democrat Eleanor Roosevelt and other liberals to
oppose Kennedy’s 1960 Democratic presidential nomination.
Betty: (Dec 2, 1954, Cont’d.): Explanation: JFK probably deliberately missed
McCarthy censure vote because 1-Joe, Sr. was a strong McCarthy supporter,
2-McCarthy dated JFK’s sister Patricia, 3-JFK’s younger brother Bobby worked as
lawyer for McCarthy’s communist investigation sub-committee. Was JFK’s not
voting a moral lapse or family loyalty?
Frank: (1954-1956): U.S. Senator JFK, then ages 37-39, aided by
his speechwriter Theodore Sorensen (1928-2010), wrote his book, Profiles in
Courage, about earlier heroic U.S.
senators who stood steadfast for their principles against majority opinion. Joe Sr. got NewYork Times friend Arthur Krock, leading Pulitzer
prize board member, to persuade other board members to award the 1957 Pulitzer
prize to Profiles in Courage, making Kennedy the only president to receive the
Pulitzer prize.
Betty:
(Aug. 16, 1956): At the Democratic National Convention, JFK gained national
attention when he introduced its nominee, Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson
(1900-65), who then asked the convention to choose his vice presidential
running mate. JFK, in the running, lost to Tennessee’s Estes Kefauver, yet
JFK’s prominence at that 1956 Democratic convention boosted his candidacy for
the 1960 presidential run.
Frank:
(1957): JFK’s brother Bobby became chief prosecutor for the U.S. Senate Rackets
Committee investigating criminal use of labor union retirement funds. Bobby’s
relentless pursuit of 1-Jimmy Hoffa (1913-75), teamsters’ union head, and
2-mafia criminal heads, made mafia leaders hate the Kennedys enough to become
suspects in both JFK’s and Bobby’s assassinations.
Betty:
(Nov. 27, 1957): JFK’s daughter Caroline Bouvier
Kennedy born. She remains (2016) U.S.
Ambassador to Japan. On Nov 25, 1960, Jackie
gave birth to John F. Kennedy, Jr., who while piloting a private plane died in
a 1999 crash.
Frank:
(July 13, 1960): JFK won the hard-fought Democratic Convention battle to become
presidential nominee. On father Joe, Sr.’s advice, JFK chose Texan Lyndon
Johnson, JFK’s fiercest competitor as presidential nominee, as his vice
presidential running mate to help win Southern conservative votes.
Betty:
(Sept. 12, 1960): Fearing defeat from strong anti-Catholic bias, JFK faced the
religious issue boldly by saying to a Houston, Texas, Protestant ministerial
group (Sept. 12, 1960): I do not speak for my Catholic church. My Catholic
church does not speak for me. As U.S. president, my guide will be the U.S.
Constitution, not my church. JFK received a standing ovation, largely ending
anti-Catholic bias.
Frank:
(1960): First ever TV presidential debates. Republican Richard Nixon, better
known than JFK (Nixon was Pres. Eisenhower’s Vice President), with no makeup,
was bested by photogenic, handsome, articulate JFK, who convinced the TV
audience he was competent and ready to be president. Radio listeners preferred
Nixon’s content. JFK won the larger TV audience. Nixon did not challenge JFK’s extremely narrow
election win, despite talk that father Joe, Sr. bought JFK votes in Chicago and
West Virginia.
Betty: (Jan. 20, 1961): JFK Inauguration: freezing sunny
winter’s day, JFK sworn in, then as U.S. President
said famously: “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill,
that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any
friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
Frank:
Besides JFK’s soaring words: “Ask not what your country can do
for you. Ask what you can do for your country,” JFK also said these less
remembered lines: “My fellow citizens of the world…ask not what America can do
for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.” JFK, as he was
driven past the reviewing stand, stood, locked eyes with father Joe, Sr. in the
audience, tipped his top hat, tears welled, a moment to remember.
Betty: (March 1, 1961): JFK by Executive Order 10924 created the
Peace Corps.
Frank: (March
13, 1961): JFK announced a USA and Latin American "Alliance for
Progress."
Betty: (April
16-19, 1961): Joint Chiefs of Staff military and CIA advisors
urged JFK to approve the earlier planned, under Pres. Eisenhower, Bay of Pigs,
Cuba, invasion aimed at overthrowing Castro.
Frank: (Same,
April 16-19, 1961): JFK, though uneasy, accepted CIA advisers’
assurance that Florida-based U.S. Army-trained anti-Castro Cubans would invade
Cuba and install a government friendly to the US. JFK was shocked when an alerted superior Castro defense
force killed over 200 and imprisoned 1,197 invaders (later freed with large
U.S. ransom which JFK insisted be used only for needy Cuban children’s medicines).
Betty: (Same,
April 16-19, 1961): JFK took full responsibility for the failed
invasion but increasingly feared the military. This failed Cuban invasion plus
other later JFK peace-seeking moves, many believe, triggered angers leading to
the assassinations of both JFK and Bobby.
Frank: (May
25, 1961): JFK announced plans to land a man on the moon by the end of the
decade and return him to earth.
Betty: (May 31-June 3, 1961): JFK and
Jackie in Paris, talks with Pres. Charles DeGaulle who told JFK what to expect
in his planned talks with Khrushchev.
Jackie charmed the French with her beauty and mastery of the French
language.
Frank: (June
3-4, 1961): JFK-Nikita Khrushchev talks in Vienna, Austria, went badly for JFK.
Khrushchev was belligerent, as JFK later privately told brother Bobby: “Khrushchev
thought me young, inexperienced, naïve, weak; he wiped the floor with me.”
Betty:
(August 13, 1961): Khrushchev built the
Berlin Wall to stop East Germans from fleeing to the free West. The Wall was a
direct challenge to the three Allies (U.S., France, Britain) controlling the
other Berlin sectors.
Frank: (Dec. 19,
1961): Joe Sr. suffered a stroke, partially paralyzed, wheelchair bound, unable
to speak except for a guttural drawn-out “Nooo.”
Betty: (March
1962): JFK forced the steel industry to eliminate a price increase, which would
have hurt the economy.
Frank: (Oct. 16-28, 1962): U.S.A. photos of
Soviet nuclear missile sites in Cuba led to the Cuban Missile Crisis. JFK’s
naval quarantine of Cuba, and JFK’s secret contacts with Khrushchev avoided
nuclear war. Bobby Kennedy shared these secret negotiations with Soviet
Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin (1919-2010) in Washington, DC, to assure that the
secret messages reached Khrushchev.
Betty: (June
10, 1963): Five months before his assassination, Pres. JFK
gave his masterful peace speech at American University Commencement,
paraphrased: The peace we seek is not won by weapons of war but by making “life on earth worth living…[and enablng] men and nations
to grow…to hope, …to build a better life for their children--not merely peace
for Americans but peace for all [the world]--not merely peace in our time but
peace [for] all time.”
Frank:
June 26, 1963, Kennedy, after visiting the Berlin Wall, spoke in a nearby
square to 120,000, attacked the communist system, and famously shouted “Ich bin
ein Berliner.” Aug
5, 1963: JFK-led U.S.A.-Soviet
Union-Britain to a limited nuclear test-ban treaty agreement.
Betty: (Nov. 2, 1963): Plan to assassinate JFK
in Chicago was aborted. Told of the plan, JFK canceled his Chicago trip.
Frank:
(Nov. 22, 1963): JFK, with Jackie, went to Texas to heal a liberal-conservative
split among Texas Democrats whose votes JFK needed for his second term
election. Knowing that other Democratic leaders visiting Texas had been roughly
treated, JFK told Jackie: “We’re headed for nut country.”
Betty:
(Nov. 22, 1963, Cont’d.): Despite some heckling signs, JFK was well received in
San Antonio, Houston, Fort Worth, Dallas:
In Dallas, open limousine, cheering crowds, Democratic Gov. Connally’s wife
Nellie, sitting in the front seat looked back, said: “Mr. President, you can’t
say that Dallas doesn’t love you.”
Frank:
(Nov. 22, 1963, Cont’d.): Open Limousine slowed at Dealey Plaza, past Texas
Book Depository, Crack! Bullet into back of JFK’s neck, exited his Adam’s
apple. Crack! Crack! Third bullet, likely from front, tore off right side back
part of skull and brains. JFK, sped to Parkland Hospital, pronounced dead. Vice
Pres. Lyndon Johnson took the Oath of Office, Lady
Bird on one side, and widow Jackie in blood and brain stained pink suit on the
other. The world mourned.
Betty: Time now, Frank, for our conclusion.
Frank: The real JFK
did more in his under three years’ presidency than many presidents did in their
4 years or 8 years. We list 6 of his major achievements:
Betty: 1-He averted a
catastrophic nuclear conflict in the Oct. 1962, Cuba missile crisis.
Frank: 2-After calling civil rights a moral
crisis (June 11, 1963), JFK sent Congress the strongest ever Civil Rights Act
which, after JFK’s death Pres. Lyndon Johnson won Congressional passage of,
plus JFK’s drafted for his cut-off second term “Great Society” plans: Medicare
for the elderly, Medicade for the poor, clean air, water; wild life and
wilderness protection.
Betty: 3-JFK’s June 10,
1963, American University “Peace Speech” prepared the way for the limited USA,
USSR, Britain nuclear test ban, a milestone toward easing the Cold War.
Frank; 4-His Sept. 12,
1960, Houston Texas, address to Protestant ministers on separation of church
and state helped perpetuate the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution and
answered forever that a Catholic can be president.
Betty: 5-His January 20,
1961, Inaugural “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do
for your country,” ranks with Franklin Roosevelt’s 1933 “We have nothing to
fear but fear itself” speech in extending hope and courage in troubled times,
these two being the most remembered 20th century inaugural addresses.
Frank:
6, our last, omitting other accomplishments: JFK’s Peace Corps, March 1, 1961,
a lasting legacy, promising a happier future when adopted world wide to uplift
the world’s needy, poor, sick, troubled, marginal people everywhere.
Betty:
Frank, your 3 best short John Fitzgerald Kennedy quotes?
Frank:
1-“Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the
right answer.” 2-“Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to
mankind.” 3-“We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether
it is to sail or to watch - we are going back from whence we came.”
Betty:
Frank, end with what Kennedy’s closest advisor,
speechwriter Theodore Sorenson, said on hearing of JFK’s death.
Frank:
"How could you leave us, how could you die? We are sheep without a
shepherd
when the snow
shuts out the sky.” End.
Sources: Google.Com and Other Sources:
-Assassination articles in:
*JFK’s
May 25, 1961, proposal to send U.S. astronauts to the moon and return them: http://goo.gl/y1Z7l5 and: http://goo.gl/3LzIHp and: http://goo.gl/ieqBrl
And:
Katie Nodjimbadem, “Next Stop Mars,” Smithsonian, Vol. 47, No.
2 (May, 2016), pp. 72-73, plus, same issue, pp. 76-85.
*Parkers’ “Kennedys of
Massachusetts” paper:
http://goo.gl/ykBLeN and at: http://www.blogster.com/bfparker/kennedys-of-massachusetts
http://goo.gl/ykBLeN and at: http://www.blogster.com/bfparker/kennedys-of-massachusetts
*JFK’s father Joe, Sr.’s absolutism
shown in daughter Rosemary Kennedy’s failed lobotomy surgery: http://goo.gl/oJ2Hdn
*Joseph F. Kennedy, Jr. (1915-44),
JFK’s older brother; his life, World War 2 death and honors. (Joe, Sr. made
sure U.S. Naval authority awarded Joe, Jr. a posthumous Naval Cross and named a
destroyer USS Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Jr., on which
third-born son, Robert F. Kennedy (Bobby, 1925-68) in
1946 briefly served as seaman: http://goo.gl/GgxhYc
*Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Sr., U.S.
Ambassador to Great Britain, Pro-Hitler views: http://goo.gl/HV5VN1
And: http://goo.gl/Ztbvbw
JFK at Choate, exclusive private secondary school:
*JFK: General
information and at Choate School: http://www.sparknotes.com/biography/jfk/section1.rhtml
Choate and
Rosemary Hall (History, famous alumni, including JFK):
*JFK first campaign for U.S. Senate against Mass. Incumbent Boston
Brahmin Henry Cabot Lodge II: "Boston, dear Boston, the land of the bean
and the cod, Where the Cabots speak only to the Lodges, and the Lodges speak
only to God"
*JFK abstaining from U.S. Senate vote
censuring Republican Sen. Joseph McCarthy for false charges as communists in
U.S. government:
*JFK’s involvement in Bay of Pigs,
Cuba invasion to overthrow Castro (April 1961); http://goo.gl/7MrZer
*USSR nuclear missile sites in Cuba
capable of pulverizing Eastern USA including Washington, DC. (Oct. 16-28,
1962): http://goo.gl/hk6W9t
*JFK’s early years at Choate private
secondary school:
*JFK’s belief that CIA war hawks
involved in death of Congo Pres. Patrice Lumumba and others: http://goo.gl/cIrvhh
and: Reviews of David Talbot, The Devil’s
Chessboard…2015, confirm that CIA rogue elements in post WWII
USA-USSR Cold War years (then and likely since) secretly, illegally, tortured,
killed and deliberatly destabilized believed communist-oriented leaders and
countries: http://goo.gl/9D4sNW
*JFK illness treatment by quack physician: Dr. “Feel Good” Max Jacobson:
JFK illness and and use of quack Dr. Max Jacobson,
called “Dr. Feelgood,” later removed from medicine practise.
*JFK, how he illegally entered U.S.
Navy Officer Training bypassing physical exam:
JFK, shocking portrayal of questionable tactics
used to help JFK political climb to win the White House:
*Master of the U.S. House of
Representatives Tip O’Neill on how unpromising new young U.S. House member JFK
seemed to ever becoming U.S. President:
*Joe Kennedy, Sr.’s and JFK’s love
liaisons with movie star Marlene Dietrich and Marlene’s daughter Marie: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2009/03/dietrich-kennedy200903
*JFK with little son John F.
Kennedy, Jr. photo peering through the trap door of the Resolute desk.
This desk was made from wood taken from the ship HMS Resolute and was given
to President Rutherford Hayes by Queen Victoria of England in 1880, see: https://www.pinterest.com/brookesome/the-kennedys/
*JFK and wife Jackie: mutual
sadness on death of prematurely born son to be named Patrick brought them
closer together in last months before JfK’s assassination, each knowing of the other’s
infidelities: http://goo.gl/PdeYQi
*JFK, boyhood, seen in Choate
school sick bed by Kennedy family lady friend surrounded by books reading about
Winston Churchill (1874-1965) who also had a dictatorial father and whom Pres.
JFK later made an honorary U.S. Citizen. http://goo.gl/1Y05jB
*JFK, key articles about:
*JFK photo and article in Saturday Evening Post:
*For
Franklin and Betty J. Parker other writings, click on:
END. Comments and corrections to: bfparker@frontiernet.net
“Searching for
the Real John F. Kennedy (JFK, 1917-63),”
Dialogue Given June 20, 2016, 10-11AM, Adshead, Uplands Village,
Pleasant Hill, TN. 38578.
bfparker@frontiernet.net
Betty: Our book review title is “Searching for
the Real John F. Kennedy (JFK, 1917-63).”
Why? Because JFK as
U.S. President is wrapped in myth, legend, praised by admirers, put down by
critics. Assassinated Nov. 22,
1963, age 46, frozen in time, yet continually re-examined as a key figure in
history. What was the real JFK
like?
Frank:
To many people JFK was and is special: our youngest, most charismatic
president. He established the
Peace Corps (1961), proposed sending Americans to the moon and back, saved us
from nuclear destruction.
When? Oct. 16 to 28, 12
days in 1962. Why and how?
Betty:
When USSR’s Khrushchev secretly built nuclear missile sites in Cuba able to
pulverize the eastern United States.
President JFK cautiously negotiated a way to have those missiles removed
peacefully, saving the world from nuclear war. Ten months later he led a
USA-USSR-Great Britain partial nuclear test ban treaty agreement, Aug. 5, 1963,
a first step toward easing Cold War tensions.
Frank: When young U.S. President Kennedy was
pushed by war hawks in the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), Pentagon Joint
Chiefs of Staff, and State Dept. toward a nuclear war, he said NO. Those war hawks, knowing JFK’s
intention in his second term to “pulverize the CIA,” wipe them out—they had to
get rid of JFK--permanently.
Betty: Little-known even now was
a plan to assassinate JFK in Chicago, Nov. 2, 1963, but JFK, warned in time,
canceled his Chicago trip.
Frank: Twenty days later in Dallas, Texas,
Nov. 22, 1963, JFK was shockingly assassinated. And on each anniversary since he is
fondly remembered. Betty saw JFK
56 years ago during his 1960 presidential campaign trip through Austin, Texas,
where she worked for the American Friends Service Committee, and where Frank
taught at the University of Texas.
Betty: Assassinated JFK instantly became a
martyred legend, studied and re-studied to find what made him so
memorable. Admirers’ answer in one
word: HOPE. His soaring speeches, his charismatic personality, his uplifting
vision spread hope for peace worldwide.
Frank:
JFK’s assassination spread JFK myths and legends in thousands of JFK books,
articles, and films. He is revered at over 1,200 worldwide JFK-named schools,
institutes, streets, parks, squares, eternal flames, and other memorials.
Betty:
We searched for the real JFK from his childhood through his school and college
years to his last almost 21 years in U.S. government service: 4 years in the
U.S. Navy (1941-45), plus 14 years in Congress: 6 years in the House of
Representatives, 8 years in the Senate, 1953-60, plus U.S. President 1,037
days, just under 3 years.
Frank:
Then, in Dallas, Texas, JFK shot dead, universal grief, little John John
saluting his father’s casket.
Betty:
What were JFK’s successes, failures, motives, sins, dreams? How do we explain
this complex man?
Frank:
JFK was shaped by his dictatorial father, Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Sr., who
pushed his 9 children to be first and best. Joe Sr., growing up in East Boston,
Mass., fighting the then prevalent anti-Irish prejudice, skirted the law to
become increasingly rich, powerful, and influential. Why? To rise, to become
U.S. President himself. When that
failed, his drive was to see his first-born son, Joe Jr., become president.
When Joe Jr. died in World War 2, Joe Kennedy determined to win the presidency
for second son JFK.
Betty:
Sickly JFK, boy and man, five times given last Catholic rites for the dying,
hid his pain behind good looks and charm.
Little JFK admired, looked up to, yet competed with first-born Joe Jr.,
much favored, molded by Joe Sr. as future president.
Frank:
Joe Jr., died Aug. 12, 1944, piloting a dynamite-loaded plane, which exploded
targeting a Nazi buzz-bomb launch site in Nazi-occupied France. Then Joe, Sr.
thrust the presidential quest onto sickly, carefree JFK.
Betty: President Kennedy faced
big crises in his short presidency: First, the April 1961 failed Bay of Pigs,
Cuba, invasion. The invasion, led
by CIA-trained Cuban anti-Castro dissidents who had fled to Florida, was
planned under Pres. Eisenhower.
Military and CIA experts assured Kennedy the invasion would
succeed.
Frank:
When it failed, Pres. Kennedy, horrified, began to see his military-minded
advisors as determined war hawks.
He took full blame, privately realizing, too late, that his CIA and
Pentagon Joint Chiefs of Staff had set him up. They deliberately told new Pres. Kennedy that the invaders
would succeed; that Pres. Kennedy as Commander in Chief should order U.S.
bomber support so that Cuba could be retaken. What these war hawk advisors did not tell JFK was: 1-we set
the invasion up to fail; 2-so that Russia would retaliate; 3-so that the USA,
now more powerful can obliterate Russian communism forever. Pres. JFK knew he
faced a possible horrendous nuclear World War 3.
Betty: At home, the civil rights movement
burst upon the national scene with sit-ins, Freedom Riders, protest marches,
bloody clashes between black protesters and the police. JFK was slow to help
oppressed blacks. Why?
Frank:
Because JFK’s 1960 presidential win was the slimmest in U.S. history. He barely
won; even with father Joe, Sr.’s buying illegal votes for him in Chicago and
West Va. JFK needed conservative Southern votes to win his intended 1964
reelection. His other first term problems besides Civil Right protesters were:
1-a rising jobless rate which had to be solved, and 2-awesome USA-USSR Cold War
clashes. Those problems made him
cautious about alienating Southern white segregationists.
Betty:
Two events led President JFK to aid protesting African Americans and won him
black votes. First: Martin Luther King, Jr., jailed in a remote Georgia prison,
was likely to be beaten to death. JFK phoned King’s wife Coretta King to say
that Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, JFK’s brother, had influenced Georgia
authorities to free King.
Frank:
Second event that prompted JFK to aid Black American equal rights freedom
fighters was Martin Luther King, Jr.’s galvanizing
August 28, 1963, March on Washington “I have a Dream” speech which
impressed a near tearful Pres. JFK.
Betty:
JFK’s Civil Rights bill, introduced June 11, 1963, the strongest such bill in
U.S. history, was blocked in Congress, awaiting burial by die-hard Southern
conservatives. It was not passed
until JFK’s successor, President Lyndon Johnson (1908-73), a masterful
congressional manipulator, pushed it through with other JFK initiated “Great Society”
legislative proposals through Congress.
How did Pres. Johnson do it?
By appealing to Congress and the public’s great sorrow for the
assassinated JFK.
Frank:
USA-USSR Cold War competition, a clash of ideologies, involved the drive to be
first in space. Russia’s Sputnik went up first, but JFK proposed sending men to
the moon and returning them safely.
Betty
Another Cold War problem was how to stop USSR from communizing colonial people
who were seeking independence from their European masters. Communism was making
serious inroads in colonial countries whose leaders sought independence in
Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, especially Vietnam.
Frank: JFK’s most crucial Cold War problems
were: 1-the Russian-built Berlin Wall, August 13, 1961, to keep
Communist-controlled East Germans from escaping into the free West. And, 2-before mentioned October 1962
Russian-built missile sites in Cuba capable of wiping out the eastern USA.
Betty:
Interruption, Frank; a question: many will wonder how we amateurs have gathered
information about John F. Kennedy?
Frank: Our
last year’s book review titled “The Tumultuous 1960s…,” told of Pres. JFK’s
challenges: minority protests for equal rights at home plus abroad USA-USSR
Cold War crises in Berlin, Cuba,Vietnam.
Betty:
Earlier we explored JFK in our 2009 review titled: “The Kennedys of
Massachusetts,” We learned much about JFK, knew that JFK’s prime
shaper was his father, Joseph Patrick
Kennedy, Sr., knew that another negative key influence was JFK’s mother, Rose
Kennedy (1890-1995, died age 105), who,
having to live with open womanizer Joe, Sr., was often away from home, often
neglecting bedridden JFK and the other children.
Frank:
That sickly schoolboy JFK missed motherly care. At Choate school, Wallingford,
CT, JFK reportedly said to his roommate: my mother is a nothing, recalling when
from Choate school infirmary sick bed he had admonished his mother, about to
depart on a trip, with something like:
Fine mother you are, always leaving us when we need you.
Betty:
Another key factor shaping JFK was his lifelong poor health, hidden from the
public for political reasons. Ailments complicated his political career, led
him to seek quack treatments, and to ease excruciating pain with sexual
excesses.
Frank:
Still another powerful shaping factor was JFK’s guilt feeling that his older
brother Joe Jr. might have volunteered for his fatal secret mission to outdo
JFK’s earlier much over publicized PT Boat 109 heroism. Joe Jr. and younger JFK always tried to
best each other.
Betty:
JFK’s last shaping factor came from within, ennobled him for all time; it was
the heart and soul of the real JFK--what was it?
Frank:
Betty, John Kennedy grew in understanding. He changed from a moderate anti-communist member of the U.S.
House, then the U.S. Senate to a peace-seeking U.S. President. To save the
world from nuclear catastrophe during the Cuban missile crisis and other Soviet
encounters, JFK did the unexpected. He secretly went over the heads of his own
diplomats, CIA, and Pentagon advisors. He sent secret messages by trusted
intermediaries to and received replies from USSR’s Nikita Khrushchev.
Betty:
He did it after seeing aerial photographs of Russian nuclear missile sites
being built in Cuba, 90 miles from Florida.
Frank:
He did it when his military advisors urged, insisted that as Commander in Chief
he approve bombing the missile sites in Cuba. JFK, certain that the Russian
would retaliate, decided firmly, NO.
We must not destroy humanity and our planet with nuclear war.
Betty: JFK first thought of an embargo,
stopping all Soviet ships to Cuba. But an embargo is an act of war. He chose instead a less aggressive,
softer solution, a quarantine by USA warships to stop and search any USSR ship
headed toward Cuba believed to be carrying missiles.
Frank: Luckily, the quarantine gave Khrushchev
time to receive and ponder JFK’s sincerity about a solution fair to both sides:
JFK to pledge in a public speech not to invade Cuba. Khrushchev to remove the
Cuba missiles aimed at the USA. Later, quietly the U.S. would remove USA
missiles in Turkey aimed at the USSR.
Betty:
Tell me, Frank, did JFK’s resentful military, CIA, State Department hard-liners
actually scheme to eliminate JFK?
Frank:
Many historians believe so. JFK
knew that undercover CIA agents were involved in cover-up killing of believed
pro-Communist, independence-seeking leaders like Congo’s Pres. Patrice Lumumba
and others. Knowing that highly
placed U.S. agents had secretly killed before, JFK sensed that by opposing his
war hawks he might be targeted. Many historians believe that it was JFK’s
peacemaking efforts that led to his assassination.
Frank: Now,
before we shift to key JFK biographical events, we briefly mention the six best
books we used: by author, title, date, significance.
Betty:
1. Robert F. Dallek, An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963. NY: Little, Brown and Co., 2003, which
critics cite as the best one volume book on JFK.
Frank:
2. James W. Douglass, JFK and the Unthinkable: Why He Died and Why It
Matters. NY: Simon & Schuster, 2008, whose author is Catholic
peace disciple of peace-seeking monastic writer, Trappist Monk Thomas Merton
(1915-68), Gethsemani, Ky.
Betty: 3. Hersh, Seymour M. Hersh, The Dark Side of
Camelot. Boston: Little, Brown &
Co., 1997, respected journalist who uncovered JFK’s many sins.
Frank:
4. James W. Hilty, Robert Kennedy; Brother Protector. Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
1997, how Bobby as U.S. Attorney General and JFK worked so well reinforcing
each together.
Betty:
5. Gareth Jenkins, John F. Kennedy Handbook. NY: St.
Martin’s Press, March 1, 2006, rich in JFK photos
at practically every age.
Frank:
6. Larry J. Sabato, The Kennedy Half Century: The Presidency, Assassination,
and Lasting Legacy
of John F. Kennedy. NY:
Bloomsbury, 2013, especially good on how JFK’s 9 succeeding U.S. presidents of
both parties quoted JFK to support their various different political
approaches.
Frank:
NOW to JFK’s biographical highlights by Date and Event.
Betty:
(May 29, 1917): JFK born and lived
first 10 years in Brookline section of Boston, Mass. Kennedys then made upward moves to more exclusive
Bronxville, New York City, 3 years; moved again to Riverdale, N.Y. JFK attended the best nearby private schools.
Frank:
Growing up during the 1930s Great Depression, JFK knew little about it, read
about it later in college. With his father Joe, Sr. often away in Hollywood
making films and money, and his mother regularly in Europe or elsewhere,
servants cared for the children, with Joe, Jr., at meal time sitting at the
head of the table.
Betty: (Sept. 1931-35): JFK
attended 9th through 12th grades at Choate School, famous then and since for
educating many prominent Americans.
Older brother Joe Jr., already at Choate, was outstanding in academics
and sports.
Frank: JFK was a mediocre
student, but a rapid reader of history and political biographies. He was
mischievous, led rowdy friends who exploded a firecracker that broke a toilet
seat. The headmaster in chapel
held up the broken toilet seat and denounced the perpetrators.
Betty: To save JFK from
expulsion, Joe Sr. visited Headmaster George St. John (1859-1947), who told Joe
Sr.: Young JFK’s chief gift is making friends, adding: "When he
flashes his smile, he could charm a bird off a tree,” an early insight into
JFK’s winsome personality and later rare charisma.
Frank: JFK’s
later speeches contained striking insights from Choate Headmaster George St.
John’s powerful chapel messages.
Example: Headmaster St. John:
“Ask not what Choate can do for you, ask what you can do for Choate,”
used by JFK in his Presidential Inaugural as: “Ask not what your country can do
for you, ask what you can do for [your country.”
Betty:
(1934): JFK, often ill at Choate, was sent to Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.,
diagnosed with colitis, another lifelong problem.
Frank: (1935): JFK, a 1935 Choate graduate, age 18, ranked 64th in a
class of 112. Later that year JFK took his first trip abroad with his parents.
He intended studying at London School of Economics as Joe, Jr. had done. But
illness forced JFK’s return home.
Betty: (Fall 1936-1940): JFK attended Harvard
College, ages 19-23, from which his father and Joe Jr. had graduated. Joe Sr., then U.S. ambassador to
England (1938 to 40), during Harvard holidays and other breaks, sent Joe, Jr.
and JFK as investigating aides to U.S. Embassies in Europe, where they learned
much about Hitler’s Nazi Germany, Stalin’s USSR, Franco’s Spain.
Frank: Having gathered much
inside information about pre-World War 2 Europe, JFK wrote his Harvard senior
thesis on “Appeasement at Munich,” about why Britain was unprepared for World
War 2. Joe Sr. paid New York Times journalist
Arthur Krock to rewrite the thesis, published as Why England Slept. Through Krock’s
influence it became a New York Times best seller.
Betty: (1941-42): Joe Jr.
enlisted early as a Navy flyer.
The Army twice rejected JFK because of his health. Father Joe, Sr.
maneuvered JFK into U.S. Naval officer training through high Navy officials
bypassing a physical exam.
Frank: (1942-44): When
JFK’s PT Boat 109 was cut in half by a speeding Japanese destroyer on a dark
night in the Solomon Islands, South Pacific, JFK saved the lives of his 11 crew
members. He suffered a lower back injury, which plagued him the rest of his
life. Joe Sr. had major U.S. magazine publish articles about JFK’s heroim. Older brother Joe Jr.’s death, some
months later, Aug. 12, 1944, on a secret Navy mission piloting a dynamite-filled
plane haunted JFK, who feared that his own over publicized PT Boat 109 heroism
had prompted his brother to risk the hazardous mission on which he died.
Betty: (1945-46): JFK, discharged from the Navy (March 1, 1945), was hired as
a journalist by his father’s friend William Randolph Hearst to cover the United
Nations’ birth in San Francisco, and then to cover politics in Britain.
Frank:
(June 17, 1946): JFK, age 29, thin, gaunt, still suffering from his war wounds
and his bad back, won his first election (with father Joe, Sr.’s maneuvering)
to the U.S. House of Representatives, assembled a competent staff, met
constituents’ needs, and prepared for his upward political climb.
Betty:
(Fall 1947): JFK, age 30, ill in London, was for the first time accurately
diagnosed with Addison’s disease, a hormonal disorder that causes fatigue,
weakens the immune system, usually leads to early death. Joe Sr. arranged that
all JFK’s medical records in various physicians’ offices be kept under assumed
names. JFK’s Addison’s disease, kept from public notice, plagued JFK the rest
of his life.
Frank:
(1948-1952): JFK re-elected to the House of Representatives second term then
third term. In 1952 JFK, grandson
of low class “shanty Irish,” ran for the U.S. Senate against Boston’s highest
upper class Brahman Republican incumbent U.S. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge II
(1901-85). Lodge later laughingly
said: I was beaten by those damned Kennedy ladies (JFK’s mother, sisters,
Democratic women activists), by their ‘Vote for Kennedy’ teas and coffees held
all over Massachusetts.
Betty: (Sept.
12, 1953): U.S. Senator JFK, age 36, intent on becoming president, needing a
wife, married beautiful Jacqueline Bouvier (1929-94), at age 24 12 years
younger, the elder daughter of a Wall Street stockbroker. Jackie attended
Vassar, spent her junior year at French universities, and received her degree
from George Washington University, majoring in French Literature.
Frank: Jackie
became a Washington Times-Herald
photographer, met JFK at a 1952 dinner party. Like Rose Kennedy with Joe, Sr.,
Jackie (whose parents had divorced) was hurt by but quietly tolerated JFK’s
womanizing.
Betty: Jackie became a greatly admired First
Lady. After JFK’s assassination,
she modeled his unforgettable funeral after that of Pres. Lincoln. Later she
asked author Theodore White (1915-86) to write for Life
magazine an article emphasizing that JFK loved listening to recordings of the
musical “Camelot”, particularly its last line: “Don’t let it be forgot, that
once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as
Camelot,” creating the myth of JFK as a modern knight of Camelot
fighting off evil enemies.
Frank: (Dec 2, 1954): The U.S. Senate voted to censure Wisconsin Republican
Senator Joseph McCarthy (1908-57), whose false charges of government leaders
being communists ruined many careers, JFK was the only Democratic senator not
voting against McCarthy, ostensibly because he was ill in hospital on voting
day. He could have voted by note, phone, or proxy. JFK’s not voting against
McCarthy displeased leading Democrat Eleanor Roosevelt and other liberals to
oppose Kennedy’s 1960 Democratic presidential nomination.
Betty: (Dec 2, 1954, Cont’d.): Explanation: JFK probably deliberately missed
McCarthy censure vote because 1-Joe, Sr. was a strong McCarthy supporter,
2-McCarthy dated JFK’s sister Patricia, 3-JFK’s younger brother Bobby worked as
lawyer for McCarthy’s communist investigation sub-committee. Was JFK’s not
voting a moral lapse or family loyalty?
Frank: (1954-1956): U.S. Senator JFK, then ages 37-39, aided by
his speechwriter Theodore Sorensen (1928-2010), wrote his book, Profiles in
Courage, about earlier heroic U.S.
senators who stood steadfast for their principles against majority opinion. Joe Sr. got NewYork Times friend Arthur Krock, leading Pulitzer
prize board member, to persuade other board members to award the 1957 Pulitzer
prize to Profiles in Courage, making Kennedy the only president to receive the
Pulitzer prize.
Betty:
(Aug. 16, 1956): At the Democratic National Convention, JFK gained national
attention when he introduced its nominee, Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson
(1900-65), who then asked the convention to choose his vice presidential
running mate. JFK, in the running, lost to Tennessee’s Estes Kefauver, yet
JFK’s prominence at that 1956 Democratic convention boosted his candidacy for
the 1960 presidential run.
Frank:
(1957): JFK’s brother Bobby became chief prosecutor for the U.S. Senate Rackets
Committee investigating criminal use of labor union retirement funds. Bobby’s
relentless pursuit of 1-Jimmy Hoffa (1913-75), teamsters’ union head, and
2-mafia criminal heads, made mafia leaders hate the Kennedys enough to become
suspects in both JFK’s and Bobby’s assassinations.
Betty:
(Nov. 27, 1957): JFK’s daughter Caroline Bouvier
Kennedy born. She remains (2016) U.S.
Ambassador to Japan. On Nov 25, 1960, Jackie
gave birth to John F. Kennedy, Jr., who while piloting a private plane died in
a 1999 crash.
Frank:
(July 13, 1960): JFK won the hard-fought Democratic Convention battle to become
presidential nominee. On father Joe, Sr.’s advice, JFK chose Texan Lyndon
Johnson, JFK’s fiercest competitor as presidential nominee, as his vice
presidential running mate to help win Southern conservative votes.
Betty:
(Sept. 12, 1960): Fearing defeat from strong anti-Catholic bias, JFK faced the
religious issue boldly by saying to a Houston, Texas, Protestant ministerial
group (Sept. 12, 1960): I do not speak for my Catholic church. My Catholic
church does not speak for me. As U.S. president, my guide will be the U.S.
Constitution, not my church. JFK received a standing ovation, largely ending
anti-Catholic bias.
Frank:
(1960): First ever TV presidential debates. Republican Richard Nixon, better
known than JFK (Nixon was Pres. Eisenhower’s Vice President), with no makeup,
was bested by photogenic, handsome, articulate JFK, who convinced the TV
audience he was competent and ready to be president. Radio listeners preferred
Nixon’s content. JFK won the larger TV audience. Nixon did not challenge JFK’s extremely narrow
election win, despite talk that father Joe, Sr. bought JFK votes in Chicago and
West Virginia.
Betty: (Jan. 20, 1961): JFK Inauguration: freezing sunny
winter’s day, JFK sworn in, then as U.S. President
said famously: “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill,
that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any
friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
Frank:
Besides JFK’s soaring words: “Ask not what your country can do
for you. Ask what you can do for your country,” JFK also said these less
remembered lines: “My fellow citizens of the world…ask not what America can do
for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.” JFK, as he was
driven past the reviewing stand, stood, locked eyes with father Joe, Sr. in the
audience, tipped his top hat, tears welled, a moment to remember.
Betty: (March 1, 1961): JFK by Executive Order 10924 created the
Peace Corps.
Frank: (March
13, 1961): JFK announced a USA and Latin American "Alliance for
Progress."
Betty: (April
16-19, 1961): Joint Chiefs of Staff military and CIA advisors
urged JFK to approve the earlier planned, under Pres. Eisenhower, Bay of Pigs,
Cuba, invasion aimed at overthrowing Castro.
Frank: (Same,
April 16-19, 1961): JFK, though uneasy, accepted CIA advisers’
assurance that Florida-based U.S. Army-trained anti-Castro Cubans would invade
Cuba and install a government friendly to the US. JFK was shocked when an alerted superior Castro defense
force killed over 200 and imprisoned 1,197 invaders (later freed with large
U.S. ransom which JFK insisted be used only for needy Cuban children’s medicines).
Betty: (Same,
April 16-19, 1961): JFK took full responsibility for the failed
invasion but increasingly feared the military. This failed Cuban invasion plus
other later JFK peace-seeking moves, many believe, triggered angers leading to
the assassinations of both JFK and Bobby.
Frank: (May
25, 1961): JFK announced plans to land a man on the moon by the end of the
decade and return him to earth.
Betty: (May 31-June 3, 1961): JFK and
Jackie in Paris, talks with Pres. Charles DeGaulle who told JFK what to expect
in his planned talks with Khrushchev.
Jackie charmed the French with her beauty and mastery of the French
language.
Frank: (June
3-4, 1961): JFK-Nikita Khrushchev talks in Vienna, Austria, went badly for JFK.
Khrushchev was belligerent, as JFK later privately told brother Bobby: “Khrushchev
thought me young, inexperienced, naïve, weak; he wiped the floor with me.”
Betty:
(August 13, 1961): Khrushchev built the
Berlin Wall to stop East Germans from fleeing to the free West. The Wall was a
direct challenge to the three Allies (U.S., France, Britain) controlling the
other Berlin sectors.
Frank: (Dec. 19,
1961): Joe Sr. suffered a stroke, partially paralyzed, wheelchair bound, unable
to speak except for a guttural drawn-out “Nooo.”
Betty: (March
1962): JFK forced the steel industry to eliminate a price increase, which would
have hurt the economy.
Frank: (Oct. 16-28, 1962): U.S.A. photos of
Soviet nuclear missile sites in Cuba led to the Cuban Missile Crisis. JFK’s
naval quarantine of Cuba, and JFK’s secret contacts with Khrushchev avoided
nuclear war. Bobby Kennedy shared these secret negotiations with Soviet
Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin (1919-2010) in Washington, DC, to assure that the
secret messages reached Khrushchev.
Betty: (June
10, 1963): Five months before his assassination, Pres. JFK
gave his masterful peace speech at American University Commencement,
paraphrased: The peace we seek is not won by weapons of war but by making “life on earth worth living…[and enablng] men and nations
to grow…to hope, …to build a better life for their children--not merely peace
for Americans but peace for all [the world]--not merely peace in our time but
peace [for] all time.”
Frank:
June 26, 1963, Kennedy, after visiting the Berlin Wall, spoke in a nearby
square to 120,000, attacked the communist system, and famously shouted “Ich bin
ein Berliner.” Aug
5, 1963: JFK-led U.S.A.-Soviet
Union-Britain to a limited nuclear test-ban treaty agreement.
Betty: (Nov. 2, 1963): Plan to assassinate JFK
in Chicago was aborted. Told of the plan, JFK canceled his Chicago trip.
Frank:
(Nov. 22, 1963): JFK, with Jackie, went to Texas to heal a liberal-conservative
split among Texas Democrats whose votes JFK needed for his second term
election. Knowing that other Democratic leaders visiting Texas had been roughly
treated, JFK told Jackie: “We’re headed for nut country.”
Betty:
(Nov. 22, 1963, Cont’d.): Despite some heckling signs, JFK was well received in
San Antonio, Houston, Fort Worth, Dallas:
In Dallas, open limousine, cheering crowds, Democratic Gov. Connally’s wife
Nellie, sitting in the front seat looked back, said: “Mr. President, you can’t
say that Dallas doesn’t love you.”
Frank:
(Nov. 22, 1963, Cont’d.): Open Limousine slowed at Dealey Plaza, past Texas
Book Depository, Crack! Bullet into back of JFK’s neck, exited his Adam’s
apple. Crack! Crack! Third bullet, likely from front, tore off right side back
part of skull and brains. JFK, sped to Parkland Hospital, pronounced dead. Vice
Pres. Lyndon Johnson took the Oath of Office, Lady
Bird on one side, and widow Jackie in blood and brain stained pink suit on the
other. The world mourned.
Betty: Time now, Frank, for our conclusion.
Frank: The real JFK
did more in his under three years’ presidency than many presidents did in their
4 years or 8 years. We list 6 of his major achievements:
Betty: 1-He averted a
catastrophic nuclear conflict in the Oct. 1962, Cuba missile crisis.
Frank: 2-After calling civil rights a moral
crisis (June 11, 1963), JFK sent Congress the strongest ever Civil Rights Act
which, after JFK’s death Pres. Lyndon Johnson won Congressional passage of,
plus JFK’s drafted for his cut-off second term “Great Society” plans: Medicare
for the elderly, Medicade for the poor, clean air, water; wild life and
wilderness protection.
Betty: 3-JFK’s June 10,
1963, American University “Peace Speech” prepared the way for the limited USA,
USSR, Britain nuclear test ban, a milestone toward easing the Cold War.
Frank; 4-His Sept. 12,
1960, Houston Texas, address to Protestant ministers on separation of church
and state helped perpetuate the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution and
answered forever that a Catholic can be president.
Betty: 5-His January 20,
1961, Inaugural “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do
for your country,” ranks with Franklin Roosevelt’s 1933 “We have nothing to
fear but fear itself” speech in extending hope and courage in troubled times,
these two being the most remembered 20th century inaugural addresses.
Frank:
6, our last, omitting other accomplishments: JFK’s Peace Corps, March 1, 1961,
a lasting legacy, promising a happier future when adopted world wide to uplift
the world’s needy, poor, sick, troubled, marginal people everywhere.
Betty:
Frank, your 3 best short John Fitzgerald Kennedy quotes?
Frank:
1-“Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the
right answer.” 2-“Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to
mankind.” 3-“We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether
it is to sail or to watch - we are going back from whence we came.”
Betty:
Frank, end with what Kennedy’s closest advisor,
speechwriter Theodore Sorenson, said on hearing of JFK’s death.
Frank:
"How could you leave us, how could you die? We are sheep without a
shepherd
when the snow
shuts out the sky.” End.
Sources: Google.Com and Other Sources:
-Assassination articles in:
*JFK’s
May 25, 1961, proposal to send U.S. astronauts to the moon and return them: http://goo.gl/y1Z7l5 and: http://goo.gl/3LzIHp and: http://goo.gl/ieqBrl
And:
Katie Nodjimbadem, “Next Stop Mars,” Smithsonian, Vol. 47, No.
2 (May, 2016), pp. 72-73, plus, same issue, pp. 76-85.
*Parkers’ “Kennedys of
Massachusetts” paper:
http://goo.gl/ykBLeN and at: http://www.blogster.com/bfparker/kennedys-of-massachusetts
http://goo.gl/ykBLeN and at: http://www.blogster.com/bfparker/kennedys-of-massachusetts
*JFK’s father Joe, Sr.’s absolutism
shown in daughter Rosemary Kennedy’s failed lobotomy surgery: http://goo.gl/oJ2Hdn
*Joseph F. Kennedy, Jr. (1915-44),
JFK’s older brother; his life, World War 2 death and honors. (Joe, Sr. made
sure U.S. Naval authority awarded Joe, Jr. a posthumous Naval Cross and named a
destroyer USS Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Jr., on which
third-born son, Robert F. Kennedy (Bobby, 1925-68) in
1946 briefly served as seaman: http://goo.gl/GgxhYc
*Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Sr., U.S.
Ambassador to Great Britain, Pro-Hitler views: http://goo.gl/HV5VN1
And: http://goo.gl/Ztbvbw
JFK at Choate, exclusive private secondary school:
*JFK: General
information and at Choate School: http://www.sparknotes.com/biography/jfk/section1.rhtml
Choate and
Rosemary Hall (History, famous alumni, including JFK):
*JFK first campaign for U.S. Senate against Mass. Incumbent Boston
Brahmin Henry Cabot Lodge II: "Boston, dear Boston, the land of the bean
and the cod, Where the Cabots speak only to the Lodges, and the Lodges speak
only to God"
*JFK abstaining from U.S. Senate vote
censuring Republican Sen. Joseph McCarthy for false charges as communists in
U.S. government:
*JFK’s involvement in Bay of Pigs,
Cuba invasion to overthrow Castro (April 1961); http://goo.gl/7MrZer
*USSR nuclear missile sites in Cuba
capable of pulverizing Eastern USA including Washington, DC. (Oct. 16-28,
1962): http://goo.gl/hk6W9t
*JFK’s early years at Choate private
secondary school:
*JFK’s belief that CIA war hawks
involved in death of Congo Pres. Patrice Lumumba and others: http://goo.gl/cIrvhh
and: Reviews of David Talbot, The Devil’s
Chessboard…2015, confirm that CIA rogue elements in post WWII
USA-USSR Cold War years (then and likely since) secretly, illegally, tortured,
killed and deliberatly destabilized believed communist-oriented leaders and
countries: http://goo.gl/9D4sNW
*JFK illness treatment by quack physician: Dr. “Feel Good” Max Jacobson:
JFK illness and and use of quack Dr. Max Jacobson,
called “Dr. Feelgood,” later removed from medicine practise.
*JFK, how he illegally entered U.S.
Navy Officer Training bypassing physical exam:
JFK, shocking portrayal of questionable tactics
used to help JFK political climb to win the White House:
*Master of the U.S. House of
Representatives Tip O’Neill on how unpromising new young U.S. House member JFK
seemed to ever becoming U.S. President:
*Joe Kennedy, Sr.’s and JFK’s love
liaisons with movie star Marlene Dietrich and Marlene’s daughter Marie: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2009/03/dietrich-kennedy200903
*JFK with little son John F.
Kennedy, Jr. photo peering through the trap door of the Resolute desk.
This desk was made from wood taken from the ship HMS Resolute and was given
to President Rutherford Hayes by Queen Victoria of England in 1880, see: https://www.pinterest.com/brookesome/the-kennedys/
*JFK and wife Jackie: mutual
sadness on death of prematurely born son to be named Patrick brought them
closer together in last months before JfK’s assassination, each knowing of the other’s
infidelities: http://goo.gl/PdeYQi
*JFK, boyhood, seen in Choate
school sick bed by Kennedy family lady friend surrounded by books reading about
Winston Churchill (1874-1965) who also had a dictatorial father and whom Pres.
JFK later made an honorary U.S. Citizen. http://goo.gl/1Y05jB
*JFK, key articles about:
*JFK photo and article in Saturday Evening Post:
*For
Franklin and Betty J. Parker other writings, click on:
END. Comments and corrections to: bfparker@frontiernet.net
