John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was the 35th president of the United States. He was the
youngest man and the first Roman Catholic ever elected to the presidency. Rich, handsome,
elegant, and articulate, he aroused great admiration at home and abroad. His term of office as
president was too short, however, to say what his place in history might have been
Kennedy was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, on May 29, 1917. His father, Joseph
P. Kennedy was a businessman who became a multimillionaire, head of the Securities and
Exchange Commission, and ambassador to Great Britain. Kennedy graduated from Choate
School in Wallingford, Connecticut. He then briefly attended Princeton University, and then
entered Harvard University in 1936. At Harvard he wrote an honors thesis on British foreign
policies in the 1930s. It was published in 1940, the year he graduated, under the title Why
England Slept.
In 1941, shortly before the United States entered World War II, Kennedy
joined the U.S. Navy. He attended a school to learn about the Patrol Torpedo boat. Kennedy
was sent to the islands of the South Pacific Ocean where he was in charge of a Torpedo boat,
everybody called him Skipper John Kennedy, the boat was called PT 109. The boat had been
in battle and and it was dirty. The engines were in need of repair. J.F.K went to work, and soon
the PT 109 was ready for war. J.F.K said, "the torpedos would sink any ship on the sea".
Near an old pier the PT boats waited every day. When night came, they were ready for war.
They drifted out into the ocean and listened for the sound of engines of enemy ships, for three or
more nights they did that but they didn't find anything.
One night in early autumm four enemy ships had been spotted near an island. The PT
boats waited for dark so they wouldn't be seen. Slowly the PT 109 rode the black waves and
every man of the ...