John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy (1917 -1963), often referred to by his initials JFK, or simply Jack, was the thirty-fifth President of the United States.

JFK was born and raised in Brookline Massachusetts; to a Cathodic family of Irish background . During his youth years, JFK had various health problems. Nonetheless, he participated actively in various sports; tennis, basketball, football, and golf.etc.

JFK attended Harvard. There he was active in student groups and sports, and worked hard in history and gevernment classes. One day while playing football he ruptured his spine, and never recovered from this accident; his backpain bothered him for the rest of his life. When Kennedy was a Harvard student, his father was appointed United States Ambassador to England. Because of his father’s job, Jack became very interested in European politics and world affairs. Later, based on his thesis, Jack published a bestseller book entitled: Why England Slept.

Soon after graduation from Harvard, Jack joined US Navy, made Lieutenant and assigned to the South Pacific as commander of a patrol torpedo boat, the PT-109. On the night of August 2, 1943, during his mission to stop Japanese ships from delivering supplies to their solders, his ship was rammed and split in half by a much larger Japanese warship. Despite his own injury, JFK mamanged to rescue his crew (except two who were killed during the collision) to a small island several miles away and subsequently rescued. For his heroic actions, JFK received the Navy and Marine Corps Medal.

After retire from the Navy service, JFK’s military aspirations turned to political service. He run and elected to represent the state of Massachusetts in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1947 to 1953 as a Democrat, and in the U.S. Senate from 1953 until 1960.

Soon after being elected senator, JFK, at thirty-six years of age, married twenty-four year-old Jacqueline Bouvier, a writer with the Washington Times-Herald.. During their early marriage, JFK’s back started to hurt again, and had two serious operations. During the time of recovering after surgery, JFK wrote a book entitled Profiles in Courage about several U.S. senators who had risked their careers to fight for issues in which they believed. His writing was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1957.

In 1960 Kennedy defeated then Vice President and Republican candidate Richard Nixon in the 1960 U.S. presidential election, one of the closest in American history. He is the only practicing Roman Catholic to be president, as well as the youngest elected to the office, at the age of 43. During his inaugural address, JFK delivered the famous quoto:

       Ask not what your country can do for you---ask what you can do for your country.

During his presidency, JFK administration set out many important domestic and international policies.

Domestic agenda:    Kennedy called his domestic program the "New Frontier" which covers following urging issues and more:

      Civil Right

      Immigration Policy

      Space Program--Set goal to land man on the moon by the end of the decade.

Foreign policy agenda include but not limed to:

      Containment of Communism in Latin America

      Nuclea Test Ban Treaty

      Peace Corps. for Americans volunteered to help underdeveloped nations in areas such as education, farming, health care and construction.

JFK had several nervous moments as the President of the United States. The most famous one was the Cuban Missile Crises: On October 14, 1962, when American U-2 spy planes took photographs of a Soviet intermediate-range ballistic missile site under construction in Cuba. The photos were shown to JFK on October 16, 1962. He quickly imposed a quarantine on all offensive weapons bound for cuba. While the world trembled on the brink of nuclear war, the Russians backed down and agreed to take the missiles away. The American response to the Cuban crisis evidently persuaded Moscow of the futility nuclear blackmail.

In the domestic problems, JFK had to deal with the campus racial confrontations:

    In 1962, James Meredith tried to enroll at the University of Mississippi, but he was prevented from doing so by white students. JFK responded by sending some 400 federal marshals and 3,000 troops to ensure that Meredith could enroll in his first class. JFK also assigned federal marshals to protect Freedom Riders.

  On June 11, 1963, President Kennedy intervened when Alabama Governor George Wallace blocked the doorway to the University of Alabama to stop two African American students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, from enrolling. George Wallace moved aside after being confronted by federal marshals, Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach and the Alabama National Guard. That evening JFK gave his famous civil rights address on national television and radio.

On November 22, 1963, when he was hardly past his first thousand days in office, JFK was killed by an assassin's bullet as his motorcade wound through Dallas, Texas.   He was the youngest man elected President; he was the youngest to die.

It is so hard to conprehend that a life full of energy and power at its prime can be terminated in a split second; Life and Death separated only by a thin line of bullet path.

On November 25, 1963, representatives from over 90 countries, including the Soviet Union, attended the funeral to pay final tribute to JFK. Eyes of millions viewers were glued to the TV screens. Many wept when seeing the three-years old John-John saluting his dad.