MARILYN MONROE & JOHN

FITZGERALD KENNEDY
Love Affair
THE HISTORY HOUR
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 CONTENTS

MARILYN MONROE
I. Introduction
II. Norma Jeane Mortenson is Born
III. Norma Jeane Marries for the First Time
IV. Marilyn Hits the Movies & Marries DiMaggio
V. Marilyn and Arthur Miller’s Marriage
VI. The Kennedy Rumors
VII. Acting Classes – Did She Need Them?
VIII. Psychiatrist Visits and Notes by Marilyn
IX. The Kennedys Wouldn’t Go Away
X. DiMaggio Family States Monroe Was Not Alone When She Died
XI. Her Funeral – May She Finally Rest in Peace
XII. Marilyn’s Last Will & Testament
XIII. Final Words
XIV. More Reads on Marilyn Monroe
JOHN F. KENNEDY
I. In the Beginning
II. War Hero
III. Beginnings as a Politician
IV. Kennedy in the Senate
V. The Presidential Campaign
VI. the Presidency
VII. Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy
VIII. How Can We Use Kennedy in Our Lives?
IX. Selected Bibliography
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MARILYN MONROE
The Heartbreaker
I
 INTRODUCTION

In this book, you will learn a lot about Norma Jeane (aka Marilyn Monroe)
and what a horrible childhood she had, in and out of foster homes. Why she
married at such a young age.

You will find how she was ‘discovered’ as a movie star and how hard she
worked to climb her way up a glass wall in the Hollywood scene to become
one of the most famous legends in stardom.

You will also find what an insecure person she was and how she turned to
alcohol and drugs to bolster her insecurities.

She had never felt like she could trust anyone and had good reason to feel
that way.

How she came to be smack in the middle of the Kennedys' lives and why
she should have never become involved with anything they touched. She
could not stand the temptation; she had to dip her toes in the water of their
fame too. Unfortunately, it seemed to pull her to the dark side.

It will be evident when you read who loved her most for all his life until he
died. He never used her, but genuinely loved her. She realized it too little
too late.

You will realize that fame and all the money in the world do not buy you
the happiness that you think that it will. You must find happiness in yourself
and Marilyn was not able to succeed in that task.
II
 NORMA JEANE MORTENSON IS BORN

“I am good, but not an angel. I do sin, but I am not the devil. I am

just a small girl in a big world trying to find someone to love.”
— MARILYN MONROE

Norma Jeane Mortensen, born June 1 st, 1926, in General Hospital, Los
Angeles. Her mother's grandfather passed away when Norma Jeane’s
mother was only seven years old. Then, her grandmother died when Norma
Jean was one year old.

Who were her mother’s family? The Monroes? Did anyone know their
story? When the family ancestry is traced, it goes back to Mexico, then to
the Civil War and on to some early Indiana pioneers.

Marilyn’s mother, Gladys Pearl Monroe in 1902 had been born in Coahuila,
Mexico in a place called Piedras Negra to Della and Otis Monroe. Otis was
a railroad worker in the town, that was located across the border in the city
of Eagle Pass, Texas. In 1903 they began showing up in Los Angeles,
California.
Civil birth registry informs us that Grandpa Otis served as a painter for the
Pacific Electric Railway until his death in 1909 had initially been from
Indianapolis, Indiana and Grandma Della from Bentonville, Arkansas. The
records go back even further and tell us that Otis’ parents were Mary and
Jacob Monroe and Della’s parents were Jene and Filford Hogan.

If you happen to read a Wikipedia entry about Marilyn Monroe, you will
notice that it says the identity of Marilyn Monroe’s biological father is
unknown. It seems there is a likely candidate that Marilyn came up with
herself. Her mother legally used the name of Mortenson on her birth
certificate, but he can be ruled out as her biological father. You ask, how
can that possibly be?
So, here goes Marilyn’s theory, which, when calculated by the medical
eye, makes total sense. Martin Edward Mortensen did marry Gladys Pearl
Monroe October 11 th, 1924. They separated after eight months on May 26 th,
1925 and divorced August 15 th, 1928.

Norma Jeane (Marilyn) was born June 1, 1926, and that means she had to
be conceived 40 weeks before that date which would be about August 25 th,
1925. This specific time of conception would have had to have happened
ten days after the official divorce of Gladys Pearl Monroe from one Mr.
Mortensen. Most significant was that the conception occurred 3 ½ months
after Edward and Gladys separated.
Think about this, couples get a divorce because they do not want anything
to do with each other, and especially, they no longer want intimate contact
that would conceive a child.

Even though Edward Mortensen’s name is on Norma Jean’s Birth

Certificate, it seems it was there to help Gladys avoid the stigma in that
time of “illegitimacy.” It is probably why Gladys Monroe put down Norma
Jeane’s last name as “Mortenson,” but seemed to misspell intentionally
with an “o” instead of using an “e.”

To further muddy the waters, years later when Norma Jeane married her
first husband, James Dougherty, she identified her father as “E.
Mortensen.” Her true biological father was most probably Charles Stanley
Gifford. He was in the physical proximity and the chance to be intimate
with Norma Jeane’s mother.

At the time, Charles Gifford was Glady’s shift foreman at the Consolidated
Film Industries where she worked cutting film. During an interview on
Lifetime TV, Marilyn’s first husband said that Marilyn had always believed
that Charles Gifford was her birth father. It makes sense that Gladys Pearl’s
boss Charles Gifford was the suspect father because she had daily contact
with him.
Compare some photos of Mr. Gifford, Mr. Mortensen, and Marilyn. When
you view them, you will see that they strongly suggest that Marilyn looks
far more like Charles Stanley Gifford than she does Edward E. Mortensen.

Born as Norma Jeane Baker, she tolerated a tragic childhood and was raised
by twelve consecutive sets of foster homes and then for a time her mother
was found to be mentally ill and left her abandoned in the care of an
orphanage. Because of being raised in foster homes and the orphanage it is
doubtful that Norma Jeane ever knew much about her family history.
III
 NORMA JEANE MARRIES FOR THE
FIRST TIME

“Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be

absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.”
— MARILYN MONROE

In 1941, Norma Jeane lived with legal guardians Grace and “Doc”
Goddard. Doc’s company transferred him to a job on the East Coast at
Adele Precision, and they decided to make a move out to Virginia. There
were rumors, and let it be reiterated ‘rumors’ that doc was said to have
been molesting Norma Jeane. A California law prevented them from taking
Norma Jeane with them.

In the fall of 1941, Norma Jeane enrolled at the Van Nuys High School.
There was a problem getting Norma to school and back, as she did not have
the money to pay the bus driver.

Along came James Dougherty who was so virile and young, tanned, blonde
haired and deep blue eyes. What girl would not swoon when he came
around. James said he would start giving Norma Jeane and her girlfriend a
ride to and from to school every day. It was not long before James and
Norma began dating.

James was five years older than Norma and was considered a “catch.” He
had served as captain of the football team and president of the Senior Class.
Jimmie and Norma Jeane would go to their spot up in the hills at Pop’s
Willow Lake, rent a canoe, paddle out under the trees, and make out when
they got to the water’s edge.

When it was realized that Norma’s guardians were moving to Virginia and
Norma could not go with them a “deal” was made that Norma Jeane and
James would get married. They liked each other, but it seemed like it was
mostly a marriage of convenience for Norma who was so lonely and did not
want to go back into the foster care system.

June 19 th, 1942 the two were married by a minister. Norma Jeane was
dressed in a wedding gown designed with embroidered lace, long sleeves,
and she wore a veil. The sixteen-year-old was so overcome during the
ceremony she cried.

The two of them settled down into a four-room home in Van Nuys. Norma
Jeane got to choose every piece of furniture, all the way from the kitchen
utensils to the doormats.

Norma Jeane seemed to be a naive and loveable young bride, even though
somewhat ditzy. A story goes that during a rainstorm, she was found trying
to get a cow in from the rain, so it wouldn’t get wet. She couldn’t cook, but
she liked to serve carrots and peas at the same time because the colors
looked good together.

The couple seemed to live a blissful life. On afternoons when it was sunny,
they would go to Santa Monica Beach and eat potato salad and cold hot
dogs together.

Jimmie was good at ignoring stares from leering sailors as they would look
at his wife in her skimpy bathing suit. Jimmie would think,

“She is just a housewife.”

Their favorite song was “Moonlight Serenade” by Glen Miller. They

would listen to music together in their parked car and hold on to each other
wrapped arm in arm.
If one talked to Jimmie, he would tell you he was the “first” for Norma
Jeane. He said after her experiencing the initial pain of their first encounter
of sex, she loved having sex and enjoyed every encounter. You will find
others who tell different stories. You will find that one of Jimmie’s friends
said that they hardly ever had sex. You will also see that Marilyn later in
life would state in an interview that she did not think she had ever had an
orgasm with any man in her life.

Their first couple of years of marriage seemed like a dream come true, and
it looked like they would spend their entire lives together. The way Jimmie
tells it, they were madly in love, and he felt like he was the luckiest man in
the world. He said he felt like he was always on a honeymoon.

In 1943 Jimmie joined the Merchant Marines, and things started changing.
It wasn’t long, and he was sent overseas. Norma Jeane wrote to him quite a
few times a week, but it was not long that she got bored without Jimmie
around. She got hired on at the Radioplane factory. Her job was to inspect
parachutes and prep planes for flying.

In 1944, Marilyn met up with photographer David Conover. He had come

to the factory where she worked to take some pictures of pretty girls as
morale-building for the Armed Forces motion picture unit. The photos of
Norma Jeane never were used, but she was addicted.
In 1945, Norma defied Jimmie’s warnings and became a model for Miss
Emmaline Snively's modeling agency. Norma realized she was a “natural”
when she was in front of the camera. Before the early part of 1946, she was
already a successful model and was appearing on thirty-three magazine
covers.

With the help of Ms. Snively, Norma got some acting contacts and a screen
test with 20 th Century Fox. When mid-1946 came, Norma Jeane had to
decide between her stable marriage to Jimmie or a possible career as a full-
time actress.

Jimmie was about to ship out to Shanghai and on duty when he got divorce
papers from Norma Jeane. After only four years of marriage, it was over,
just like that.

Norma Jeane bleached her hair, changed her name to Marilyn Monroe and
became known as the “blonde bombshell.” The name Marilyn was picked
by Ben Lyon, a 20th Century-Fox executive who said the name Marilyn
reminded him of the Broadway star Marilyn Miller. She used her mother’s
maiden name for her last name.
Marilyn wanted to be the best actress she could be and took her job
seriously while working hard. She was seductive, bubbly, and desirable in
the movies and it seemed like she had all she ever had dreamed.

Marilyn had an art course at the University of California in 1951, and letters
found in the 1950s show that she was taking a correspondence course in art.
The paintings show a part of Marilyn that was often not heard about: the
woman behind the canvas, that was instead of painting on the canvas. Her
sketches were sold separately, with the sketch “Jumping from Frying Pan
into The Fire” selling for the most at $25,000.
IV
 MARILYN HITS THE MOVIES & MARRIES
DIMAGGIO

“Give a girl the right shoes, and she can conquer the world.”
— MARILYN MONROE

In June of 1946, after Marilyn had divorced Jimmie, she quickly signed a
movie contract with 20 th Century Fox.

Marilyn had a tiny part in 1947 in “The Shocking Miss Pilgrim,” and
Johnny Hyde, from the William Morris Agency, come to be her mentor and
lover in 1949.

It was that same year she agreed to a nude photo shoot for a calendar. But it
did not happen quite like that; Marilyn had never signed an agreement to
have her picture in Playboy. During this time, still not having hit it ‘BIG’
she needed cash and needed it bad because she was hungry, so she agreed to
pose naked for the photographer Tom Kelly for $50. Little did Marilyn
know that Kelly then sold the pictures to the company Western Lithograph,
who made calendars.
1949 also saw a string of easily forgettable roles before she could start in a
John Huston’s movie thriller “The Asphalt Jungle” in 1950. Then in the
same year, she was noticed for the movie “All About Eve,” that also starred
Bette Davis.

At about this time Hugh Hefner started producing Playboy. The first issue
came out with the most fascinating and recognizable starlet of the film at
the time on the cover – Marilyn Monroe.

She was more than just on the cover, but her nude photos were throughout
the magazine.

Hugh Hefner’s magazine was an instant success and sold 50,000 copies
immediately. Hefner stated the success of Playboy was putting Monroe’s
photos in the initial issue.

It would be four years later, and Monroe’s image showed up again when
Hugh Hefner bought more of Kelley’s pictures of Marilyn Monroe that
showed her with nothing but the radio on and paid $500. Monroe became
Hugh Hefner’s first centerfold, or what was called at that time, “Sweetheart
of the Month.” Hefner didn’t change the name to “Playmate of the
Month,” until a year later.
After the magazine was published, Marilyn decided to interview so she
could explain how the “Playmate” pictures had all come about and that at
the time she had been so desperate for money, and that is why she had
posed naked for the pictures. Even though all this had happened, she stayed
close with Hugh Hefner.

More strange, Hefner’s final resting place was in a crypt next to Marilyn
Monroe’s in Westwood Village Memorial Park in Los Angeles, California
even though he had never met her in life. It is reported that he paid $72,000
for the crypt. He said he believed in things that were symbolic and he could
not pass up spending eternity next to Monroe.

In 1952 she appeared in “Clash by Night,” and it showed her to be a gifted

new star, a forceful actress, and worthy of the fantastic press she had
received. Her role had not been very big, but she made it dominant. That
same year she starred in a serious movie “Don’t Bother to Knock.”

Marilyn chanced to meet Joe DiMaggio in early 1952; she was 25, and he
37. DiMaggio had recently retired from baseball and expressed a desire to
meet this famous blonde bombshell. By February their romance was in full
bloom.
After her film, “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” in 1952, Marilyn and Jane
Russell placed their hands, feet, and names in the cement in front of the
famous Chinese Theatre on the famous Hollywood Boulevard.

It seemed her real breakout movie was her performance in “Niagra” in

1953, where she played the part of a young wife who had an adulterous
affair and plotted with her lover in killing her husband. That same year she
starred in “How to Marry a Millionaire” and “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,”
and she went straight to the top of the A-list in Hollywood.

Marilyn said she was surprised that she was so crazy about DiMaggio. She
had expected some flashy sports type from New York, but instead, he was a
reserved type guy who did not make a pass at her the first thing. He treated
her special and was a decent man and made her feel decent.

Marilyn had written that she was hesitant in meeting DiMaggio as her
perception was that he was an egomaniac and had been spoiled by public
praise and fame. During their first dinner date, Joe hardly said a word, and
Marilyn was intrigued. Men had never ignored her.
January 14 th, 1954 came, and Marilyn wed Joe DiMaggio, the baseball
great at City Hall in San Francisco after they had dated two years. The press
affirmed their marriage as the All-American love affair, and trouble started
brewing for them immediately. The wedding hit the news headlines around
the world.

In 1954 Fox suspended Marilyn because she failed to show up on the set of
“Pink Tights.” She was angry because Fox had not let her review the script
before she accepted the part. Marilyn thought that since she was so loved by
the public and had status, she should get to approve her script.

May 29 th saw Marilyn starting to film in “There’s no business like show

business.” That entire summer she was sick with anemia and bronchitis. It
was the first time that Marilyn was showing the ugly side-effects of all the
sleeping pills she had been swallowing and wallowing in for the past few
years. Most of the time on the set she was lethargic, groggy, and crying.

Marilyn was always late for appointments, sometimes up to two hours. She
admitted she had to try to change her ways, but the things that were making
her late were too strong and too pleasing for her to fight off.
In 1954 the famous “skirt blowing” scene from the movie “Seven Year
Itch.” was to become a hit with the professional and amateur
photographers. There were several hundred photographers along with about
2,000 spectators that gathered outside the Theater in New York City that
September 15 th morning in the early hours to watch and photograph her as
she kept posing for two hours for the fans that adored her.

Joe DiMaggio was uncomfortable with Marilyn’s sexy public image, and he
did not care who knew it. Joe was just a jealous guy, and he resented her
being so popular with other men. He wanted a housewife, not some star that
every man desired the marriage started getting in trouble. Marilyn didn’t
want to give up her stardom, and she knew that was what Joe wanted her to
do.

It was easily evidenced by the near riot of the U.S. servicemen that were
stationed in Korea at a performance she gave to entertain the troops during
the couple’s honeymoon. Marilyn said that while she was standing in the
snow as it was falling and facing the soldiers as they yelled, she felt for the
first time in her life that she did not fear anything and the only feeling she
had was that of being happy.

As soon as DiMaggio had seen Marilyn, he wanted her and wanted to marry
her. He was obsessed with all of her, but he seemed to be looking at her
through his narcissistic glasses. He did love her and was thrilled that he had
been chosen by the most desirable woman in the world, but he wanted to
keep her to himself and not share her with the world. He wanted her to be a
movie star no longer.

Joe did not seem to understand Monroe. It was like he felt that this
beautiful, young woman who was on the verge of becoming a successful
actress, and he thought she should give it up to make Joe lasagna and stay
home and change diapers.

While they were dating, Joe worked hard not to be so possessive of

Monroe, who had spent her whole life looking for someone for a father
figure, someone who would never, ever abandon her, and she felt she found
that in Joe DiMaggio.

She had become comfortable with his fatherly guidance and how protective
he was with her. With Joe, she had a father figure and someone with which
she could have sex. She said the sex was damn good if she had to admit it
herself.

Joe set up ground rules for the marriage: he was to approve all the films she
was offered. Marilyn was never to be partially dressed in public. She would
break out of that “dumb blonde” image in typecasting, and Marilyn agreed.
She was never to outshine Joe. If and when she did outshine him, Joe would
sleep in a different bedroom and then go for days without talking to her.

In weeks after their wedding, DiMaggio felt already like he was losing
control over Marilyn and he started beating her, more than one time. Joe Jr.
remembers waking up one night to the sounds of fighting.

Joe Jr. says he was sleeping downstairs and when he woke up he could hear
Marilyn screaming, then heard her running down the stairs and through the
front door and Dad running after her. When he caught up with her, he
grabbed her by a fistful of hair and kind of dragged her back into the house
even though she was trying to get away.

When Joe Jr. asked Marilyn the next morning what happened the night
before, Marilyn told him nothing happened and that everything was fine.

Marilyn was beginning to feel suffocated. They knew that the marriage was
going to be difficult, but she had no inkling there would be abuse.
Marilyn seemed always to be working to improve herself: college courses,
psychotherapy, reading books, and attending art exhibits. And, there you
have DiMaggio who preferred to be spending his time drinking, sitting
indoors, smoking, watching TV, and waiting for her to come home so he
could ply her with questions. When she walked in the door, he would begin
his barrage: What scene did she shoot today? Did you stop on your way
home and if you did who you were with? Who did you talk to today?

If Marilyn didn’t answer like Joe wanted her to, he got physical. There was
one time when Joe tore one of her earrings from her earlobe and scratched
her face. All of this made Marilyn super anxious, and she started taking
more sedatives and increasing her drinking. Marilyn began an affair with
her voice coach Schaefer. When DiMaggio identified her latest lover, he
called Schaefer up and told him to come to their house.

Schaefer could hear Marilyn in the background screaming not to come over
because if he did Joe would kill him. Schaefer did not doubt it, and he
stayed home.

After being married for only nine months, they divorced in October but
remained good friends.
In the fall during 1954 Joe and Marilyn decided to separate. On October 6 th,
Jerry Giesler released a press announcement in which he said that as her
attorney, due to the conflict of careers a divorce had brought this regrettable
necessity.

The press hounded her to death until Marilyn finally told them in a choked-
up voice that she couldn’t say anything that day but that she was sorry.
During an interview later, she said when she married Joe, she wasn’t sure
why she did marry him, because she had too many fantasies to be a
housewife. In another interview, she revealed that

“Hollywood was a place she had found that they will pay you a
thousand dollars to give a kiss and only offer you fifty cents for
your soul.”

It did not matter that they were divorced. For Joe, Marilyn was his
obsession. Oh, he dated other girls, but they all looked like Marilyn. One
‘rumor’ said that he had bought a life-size sex doll for $10,000 that looked
like Monroe. Remember, this is a rumor, which could or could not be true.
It sounds like an outrageous claim, but he was crazy about Marilyn.
Supposedly a year after Marilyn had filed for the divorce, Joe showed his
“life-size doll” to an airline stewardess he had been dating. Joe was to have
said that this doll is “Marilyn the Magnificent,” and she can do everything
Marilyn can, but talk.
It seems Marilyn never knew about the doll because she was still seeing
DiMaggio. Not long after the divorce had been filed, she had surgery for
endometriosis, and Joe took her to the hospital where he never left her side
for five days and then still while she recuperated at home. When she was
better, she took him out to dinner to celebrate his 40 th birthday.

So many forget to make the equation add up and do not look into the
backgrounds of both sides of the couples involved in the marriage and why
it did not work. Marilyn came with such a heavy burden from her childhood
that she never was able to overcome, even with all the mental health care
professionals that money could buy.

DiMaggio, on the other hand, was a child born of the Great Depression. He
was eight of nine kids born to immigrants from Italy and had been raised in
San Francisco. He had been married before too, to a Dorothy Arnold, who
had also acted some in film, but her acting career fell through quickly. She
thought that when she married Joe that he was an icon of America. She
found out that her new husband was a chain-smoking, drinking, cheater that
was not going to stop.

Together they had a baby boy, Joe Jr., but Big Joe hardly paid attention to
the little guy, and little Joe Jr. was just an irritant to him. When little Joe Jr.
would get sick, Joe would check into a hotel. Dorothy Arnold DiMaggio
filed for divorce in 1943 on the grounds of “cruel indifference.”
Joe Jr. as he grew up realized that his Dad was only concerned about image
and how things looked from the outside. He felt his dad never cared about
him as a person.

Even though Marilyn was still sleeping with Joe, she had moved on with
her life. Besides Schaefer, Marilyn was dating Marlon Brando along with
starting an affair with Arthur Miller, her married playwright.

"Bus Stop," her movie opened in London in October 1956. There was a
‘Times’ review that said

“Marilyn Monroe was a talented comedienne, and it seemed her

sense of timing never abandoned her. She was the complete
package, sensitive and sometimes even amazingly perceived.
There seems to be an orphan like quality, an underlying note of
tragedy which can be strangely moving."

Joe DiMaggio did not stop trying in his efforts to win her back. Joe loaned
Marilyn money and went to anger management therapy.
February 1961, Monroe was diagnosed by two psychiatrists as a paranoid
schizophrenic and was forced to go into an institution in New York City.
Joe DiMaggio was the only person who answered her when she called for
help.

As soon as she called him he went to the institution; it was her third day
locked up. He was demanding when it came to seeing Monroe. The head
nurse tried to stand up to him by telling him only Marilyn’s doctor could do
anything about the situation.

Joe told the nurse they had five minutes to get her out of this place, or he
was going to tear the f**king place down one brick at a time.

Odd, after the threat, Marilyn was released promptly to DiMaggio. He left
there with Marilyn and took her to Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital. When
they arrived, she told everyone that Joe was her “hero.”

Joe never quit loving Marilyn and never quit thinking that he and Marilyn
would get married one day again even while she was spiraling downward
with liquor, drugs, and mental illness. Even when she got tied up with
President Kennedy and his brother Robert she was still seeing Joe. It was
then that she convinced herself that she was going to marry JFK or Bobby
and the reason why? No one will ever know.

Through all of this, DiMaggio was not delusional. He and Marilyn saw each
other all the time, and she felt they could build a future together without
being married. Marilyn had told a friend that if it hadn’t been for Joe, she
would have probably killed herself years ago.
V
 MARILYN AND ARTHUR MILLER’S
MARRIAGE

“Designers want me to dress like Spring, in billowing things. I don't

feel like Spring. I feel like a warm red Autumn.”
— MARILYN MONROE

She renewed her relationship with Arthur Miller and became involved with
him before they married over a year later. To Marilyn, Miller represented
the serious theater intellect that she found attractive.

To Miller, looking back years later he said it was beautiful being around her,
and she was so irresistible and seemed to hold so much promise. It seemed
she was a phenomenon, a terrific artist. She was fascinating, full of all kinds
of original observations, and yet; there was not a rational bone in her body.

Miller went back to New York after getting a divorce in Reno, Nevada.
Monroe and Miller were married June 29 th in White Plains, NY.
Marilyn and Albert were probably the happiest during the summer of 1957
when they lived in a rented house on Long Island. They would swim and
take long walks out on the beach. In the pictures of this era, Marilyn looks
radiant when she was entering Miller’s world. She was attending luncheons
given by Carson McCullers the novelist for the author Isak Dinesen.
Marilyn was witty and gay in this group and could easily hold her own with
her innocence and vitality that reminded some of them of a lion cub in the
wild.

She got to be friends with Truman Capote, the writer and even met some
more of her literary heroes like the poet, Carl Sandburg and the novelist,
Saul Bellow, that she dined with at the Ambassador Hotel for the Chicago
premiere of “Some Like It Hot.” Bellow was knocked over by her.

When Marilyn married Arthur, she converted to Judaism. It was from there
on out she was on the radar of the FBI and CIA for surveillance as a Jew
that was married to Arthur who was a Communist sympathizer. She was
wiretapped by the Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa that was busy digging up
filth on Bobby Kennedy that had dragged him in front of the U.S. Senate
Crime Committee.

The Millers left for London soon after their marriage, so Marilyn could start
filming on "The Prince and the Showgirl" working with Lawrence Olivier.
As early as July, Arthur began to have doubts about their marriage, and
things started to sour.

The two of them moved into a grand manor called Parkside House, in the
town of Surrey just outside of London. Marilyn was so happy, and they
were living in a beautiful country home with the man of her dreams that she
loved so much.

Marilyn felt so vindicated and fulfilled as an artist, at least until she ran
across a diary entry of Miller’s. It was a chance discovery that blew her
fragile confidence and the trust she had in her husband to pieces. In the
note, he was complaining that he was disappointed in Marilyn, and at times
he was even embarrassed having her with him around his friends.

Men are never able to see the things that they do around others that are
embarrassing to their wives, but the wives are supposed to stand by their
sides and act as if their husbands are extremely brilliant all the time. One
must wonder if this note was left in an area where Marilyn could easily find
it.

She was broken and devastated. Marilyn was facing one of her biggest
fears, that of disappointing someone she loved. Albert betraying her was
confirmed. She felt after finding this betrayal that she could never be
someone’s wife again because you can never really trust anyone ever.

Because of finding this out, Marilyn was so wounded she could not work so
she flew her psychiatrist, Dr. Hohenberg from New York to Parkside House
in Surrey. She had been having so much trouble sleeping, and she was so
worn out and needing barbiturates because she was so addicted that she
required her psychiatrist badly.

During the summer of 1957, Arthur and Marilyn bought a home in

Roxbury, Connecticut. It happened to be close to where Arthur’s first wife
lived. That was it, whatever love was left, was gone now.

It didn’t matter, she still went to Washington, D.C., with Arthur in the
spring and stood with him as he had to face the House Un-American
Activities Committee. He refused to name any former Communist Party
members. Many believed Marilyn Monroe’s popularity as an actress saved
Miller from being destroyed in the witch hunt that had already blacklisted
many of those in show-business and entirely ruined them.

That winter Miller began working on adapting one of his short stories for
the screen, “The Misfits,” while Marilyn dealt with her feelings of
disappointment and loss, she wrote:

“Starting tomorrow I will take care of myself for that’s all I really
have and as I see it now have ever had. When one wishes to stay
alone as my Arthur indicates, the other must stay apart.”

In 1958, Marilyn returned to Los Angeles to start work on “Some Like It

Hot,” which, despite her chronic lateness and other difficulties on the set -
would turn out to be her most significant and most successful comedy.

Sidney Skolsky felt that Miller looked at Marilyn only as a model and when
he got her in his hand he was shocked to find out that she was a person, a
human being, like everyone else.

Since it was 1958 before Marilyn came back to Hollywood to start filming
"Some Like It Hot" with Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon; her health was
worsening and continuing to deteriorate because she was increasing her
dependency on drugs plus being involved in a sad marriage.

She came to the set late many times and couldn’t remember her lines.
Director, Billy Wilder said that anybody could memorize lines, but it takes a
real artist to come to the set, not knowing any of her lines and still give a
performance like Marilyn.

Marilyn’s next film "Let's Make Love" was an unremarkable film that
received a lot of publicity because of her short affair with her co-star Yves
Montand.

Early 1960, found Marilyn getting professional help from Dr. Ralph
Greenson, a famous psychoanalyst to all the Hollywood stars. It was
common during this period, and he relied heavily on handing out drug
therapy. He routinely prescribed everyone barbiturates and tranquilizers
along with his treatment.

July 1960 marked the beginning of filming "The Misfits," a story by Arthur
Miller that had been adapted for the movies. While they were on location
Marilyn and her husband lived in separate quarters and barely spoke to each
other.

While on this location, pills kept flowing in for Marilyn as they were
regularly flown in from the Los Angeles doctors. Allan Snyder could
remember that it took so long to wake her up in the mornings that usually
they had to put makeup on her while she was laying in bed. But, here you
go, once again, she pulled it off and managed to give an exceptional
performance.

It was November 5 th, the next day after “The Misfits” was just done filming
when Marilyn’s co-star Clark Gable suffered from a massive heart attack.
He did not die until November 16 th, 1960.

Marilyn felt a massive burden of guilt because she kept him waiting all the
time for hours and hours on the set for her to get there to start work each
day.

It seemed everyone was blaming Marilyn for everything. They were

exaggerating all her problems in a way to cover up for the Director of the
film, Huston’s big waste of money on the production and his gambling
habit. It made it easy to use her as the scapegoat.

January 1961, Marilyn divorced Miller. One more unhappy marriage was
finished. It was the same month that the debut for “The Misfits” hit the
theaters. Marilyn said he was an excellent writer and a great man, but it just
didn’t work for them to be husband and wife.
Later in 1961, Marilyn bought a home in Brentwood, Los Angeles. Dr.
Greenson urged her to hire a housekeeper and Marilyn followed his advice
by hiring Eunice Murray. Eunice called herself a nurse but did not have any
formal training or professional certificates.

It is now suspected that Dr. Greenson had planted Eunice there as a “spy”,
so he could have more and more control over Marilyn. He was seeing her
almost every day when she stayed in Los Angeles.
VI
 THE KENNEDY RUMORS

“We are all of us stars, and we deserve to twinkle.”

— MARILYN MONROE

An affair with John F. Kennedy reportedly began in late 1961. At the

President's birthday party in Madison Square Garden on May 19, 1962,
Marilyn sang her now famous "Happy Birthday" tribute to JFK.

As hindsight is always more telling than foresight, the most plausible night
for an affair with JFK historians say would have been March 24, 1962, as
agreed upon by multiple historians. That is when both Monroe and
Kennedy were at Bing Crosby’s house in Palm Springs for a party.

Marilyn had a close friend and masseur by the name of Ralph Roberts, who
claimed that he was on the phone with Marilyn that same weekend when he
heard a voice that sounded like JFK’s voice.

Marilyn had called Ralph asking for professional massage advice, and if
you remember correctly, JFK had the famous bad back, and Kennedy took
the phone from Marilyn to talk to Ralph Roberts himself.

It was said that this night in March was the only time she had an “affair”
with JFK, per Ralph Roberts. There were a lot of tongues wagging after that
weekend, and all of them believed something was going on besides what
was being said about it. Marilyn gave Roberts the impression that it was
indeed not a significant event for neither one of them; it happened one time,
that weekend, and that was it.

The actress Susan Strasberg who was the daughter of Lee Strasberg and
happened to be a close friend to Monroe said that Monroe felt it was okay
to sleep with a captivating president. What Marilyn enjoyed most of all was
the drama and secrecy, but JFK was not the man she wanted to be spending
her life with, and she made that clear to everyone.

If they were in fact with each other at Bing Crosby’s house on the date
everyone thinks they were; it is possible that Kennedy did ask Marilyn to
sing for him at his birthday party that night. During this time, Marilyn was
filming the movies, “Something’s Got to Give” and had been wrestling with
sinusitis, and with her dependence on barbiturates, both of them delayed her
movie schedule.
It seems she was well enough to fly to New York and fulfill her singing
obligation to John F. Kennedy, but the studio used this absence for an
excuse to cancel her film and blamed Marilyn, so they could sue her for
breach of contract. It was not Marilyn’s fault at all as she had requested
time off, so she could go to the gala in advance. The movie was already
falling apart, and the script had kept being rewritten.

In February she had bought her first house in Brentwood. She started
working on her last movie; “Something’s Got to Give,” in April 1962. It
seems funny now that the great clips from the film that was never finished
that show Marilyn coming out of the swimming pool not the least bit shy
and entirely naked, showing her radiant and fit.

The theory on all of it was that if Fox would scrap Marilyn Monroe’s film
that had a lot less expensive sets and actors, they might be able to get
reimbursed by their insurance company for the losses due to Marilyn being
sick and recoup some money that had been spent. Since Fox fired Marilyn,
they then decided to file suit against Marilyn Monroe Productions June 7 th,
but then later dropped the same lawsuit.

It seems the fundraiser birthday party was probably the last night when the
two of them could have crossed paths. After Marilyn sang her infamous
version of “Happy Birthday,” Monroe went into a version of “Thanks for
the Memory” with lyrics she made up for the president.
 “Thanks, Mr. President. For all the things you’ve done. The battles
that you’ve won. The way you deal with U.S. Steel. And our
problems by the ton. We thank you so much.”

Bobby Kennedy had his fun with Marilyn during the summer of 1962 as
well. JFK told Robert to go to Los Angeles and ‘order’ Marilyn to stop
calling the White House and explain to her that he (JFK) was not going to
leave his wife and marry Marilyn. Peter Lawford always said that the two
Kennedy brothers were passing Marilyn back and forth like she was a
soccer ball.

Marilyn had been seeing Joe DiMaggio through this time and finally agreed
to marry him once again. The wedding date had been set for August 8,
1962. Fox rehired her on August 1 st to finish "Somethings Got to Give"
with a salary of $250,000. This time around they were paying her two and a
half times the original amount. It is hard to understand how Monroe could
bounce between so many men and still think that she loved one enough to
marry him.

When Bobby Kennedy tried to break it off with her, Marilyn threatened him
with a press conference in which she would reveal her sexual escapades
with the Kennedy brothers and all the dirty secrets she knew about them
and the government from her little red diary.

Supposedly she was going to reveal some top-secret information about the
Bay of Pigs, planned murder of Fidel Castro, money laundering and so forth
that both JFK and Bobby Kennedy had told her when they got loose lips
when they would be with her in bed.

During some point in the conversation, Bobby Kennedy did ask her to tell
him where she kept the little red diary, but Monroe gave him a flat-out no.
Bobby threatened her. He decided to have two of his bodyguards to help
persuade her to hand over the little red diary.

One of the bodyguards injected her with pentobarbital all the while Bobby
Kennedy and Peter Lawford were trying to find the red diary. Since the
injection effects were short-lived, it is said that the bodyguards ‘made’
Marilyn swallow 30 pills.

Kennedy and Lawford exited Marilyn’s premises and her maid Eunice
called the ambulance thinking she had overdosed.
Almost immediately, doctors Murray Liebowitz and James Edwin Hall
arrived and tried to revive her. Dr. Hall said that Marilyn did not have any
clothes on. There was not a glass of water and no glass of alcohol. He had
noticed her rattled breathing, and a fast but weak pulse, but she remained
unconscious.

Dr. Hall also noted that when he leaned over her, he had noticed that she
had not vomited and that was unusual for an overdose. Her breath did not
smell of drugs, and usually, in an overdose, you can detect the drugs.

The doctors present did finally get her breathing again, but then Dr.
Greenson, who was not a medical doctor showed up, and ‘claimed’ to be
her doctor and asked to take a look at her and treat her. It was when he was
treating her that he took a moment to administer the fatal injection. That
was when Dr. Greenson injected straight into her heart the pentobarbital.

That would mean there were five who witnessed Marilyn’s assassination.
Three of five, Lawford and the doctors Hall and Liebowitz all say that
Ralph Greenson killed her.

There have been some FBI files that just came to light in October of 2017
under the title of Robert Kennedy.
The report refers to some findings on wiretaps and that Marilyn had indeed
threatened to tell about her affair with Robert Kennedy. In the file, it speaks
about the evidence of Bobbie Kennedy where he is asking Peter Lawford
“Is Marilyn dead yet?” This all coming from the FBI files concealed from
the public since the time of Marilyn’s death in 1962.

It is wondered if the FBI boss, J. Edgar Hoover was using this as a means of
blackmail against Bobbie Kennedy, who had just asked for him to be fired.
It is also unknown why Bobbie Kennedy had praised Hoover so publicly
right after Marilyn’s death when it was well known that the two Kennedy
brothers did not like Hoover and wanted him gone.
VII
 ACTING CLASSES – DID SHE NEED
THEM?

“Success makes so many people hate you. I wish it wasn't that way.
It would be wonderful to enjoy success without seeing envy in the
eyes of those around you.”
— MARILYN MONROE

In the first few months of 1955, Marilyn again returned to New York and
joined the Actors Studio, to pursue her idea to become a serious actress. It
was at the Actors Studio where she ran into Lee Strasberg, head at the
Studio and Marilyn’s drama coach. Mr. Lee Strasberg and along with his
family would be playing an important role in her future.

Marilyn, never feeling confident about anything decided to take an acting

course. But, she was never on time for class, she was always getting to class
late, right before they would be closing the doors. Her teacher being strict
about not coming in late during the middle of one of their exercises or
scenes.

She would try to slip in without wearing any makeup, with her voluminous
hair tucked under a scarf, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. She
tried to take a seat at the back of what would be one of the dingy rooms in
the Malin Studios, right in the center of the theater district.

When she would raise her hand wanting to add something to the discussion,
she would only speak in a tiny whisper. She worked hard at not drawing any
attention to herself. It was impossible for other students not to realize the
most famous movie star was sitting in their acting class.

The Actor’s Studio had been founded in 1947 by directors Robert Lewis
and Cheryl Crawford and Kazan. They taught by the Holy Temple of the
Method by using acting scenes and exercises which focused “private
moments” and memories that were brought up from the actor’s life.
Through the late part of the 1940s and much of the 50s and 60s, the Actors
Studio was considered the best school for actors in the United States. If you
attended you were not a student, but a member.

Some of those on the member roster were: James Dean, Marlon Brando,
Julie Harris, Montgomery Clift, Dennis Hopper, Martin Landau, Paul
Newman, Patricia Neal, Ben Gazzara, Eli Wallach, Rip Tom, Anne
Bancroft, Kim Stanley, Sidney Poitier, Shelley Winters, Joanne Woodward
and all those who brought technique to film.
Strasberg was born in 1901 in what was then called Austria-Hungary but
was raised in the United States in Manhattan. He seemed to be a genius
when it came to analyzing the performance of an actor. He was stern and
many times a cold taskmaster. He was a short person who was bespectacled
and intense but not someone for small talk.

With Marilyn and her background of being thrown from one foster family
to another, Strausberg started to become a paternal figure that she loved
dearly. He was autocratic but still nurturing, and he accepted her as his
private student, and that bolstered her confidence and yet trained her to
improve upon her acting. He turned her from just a movie star into a true
artist.

It would be years later when Kazan observed that the more self-doubting
and naive the actor would be, the more control Strasberg had over them.
The more successful and famous the actor became, the more powerful Lee
Strasberg. In Marilyn Monroe, he found his perfect devoted victim.

Living above Loew’s State Theater, a few blocks from the acting class,
there lived another Marilyn – the Marilyn everyone else knew. She was 52
feet tall, on that famous billboard sign that advertised “The Seven Year
Itch.” She was a blast from the exposure she received from those pictures
standing above the subway grating with her dress blowing up and her face
showing nothing but pure joy.
VIII
 PSYCHIATRIST VISITS AND NOTES BY
MARILYN

“I'm selfish, impatient, and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I'm out
of control, and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at
my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.”
— MARILYN MONROE

There has been found many archives of letters, recipes, poems, notes, and
diaries by Marilyn and notes of some of her psychiatrists that lets us see
inside her private life and psyche.

The items have shown how her journey, as devastating as it was through
psychoanalysis; by being married three times; James Dougherty the
merchant marine; Joe DiMaggio the Yankee slugger; and Arthur Miller the
playwright; with all the mystery that surrounds her strange but tragic death.

Marilyn left all this great documentation, as well as her personal

belongings, to her acting coach, Lee Strasberg. It took a decade to settle her
entire estate. Strasberg himself died in 1982 and outlived his most student,
Marilyn by twenty years. In October 1999 his widow and third wife, Anna
Mizrahi Strasberg, auctioned off several of Monroe’s possessions at
Christie’s, making over $13.4 million. The Strasbergs carry on by licensing
her image that brings millions every year. The primary beneficiary
happened to be Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute. One could say it is
the house Marilyn built.

It would be several years after Anna Strasberg inherited the collection that
she found two more boxes that contained some of the more current
archives, and she decided to organize for all the contents to be published for
the world to see. The title of the book is Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes,
Letters by Farrar, Straus, Giroux.

This archive will be for Marilyn’s fans who still want her to be rescued
from the taint of suicide, make her not to look so tawdry, pick her up from
all the layers of distortions and the misconceptions that have been written
about her over the years. It can give the reader a bit of a look inside her
mind.

The book reveals a woman searching for herself, someone undergoing

psychoanalysis for her first time. The three psychiatrists were Dr. Marianne
Kris, Dr. Margaret Hohenberg, and Dr. Ralph Greenson. There is her 3 rd
husband, Arthur Miller, that she did love more than she had ever loved
anyone, but who had crushed her heart and because of what he did made her
feel betrayed.
The one thing she had always feared. The book reveals her changing as an
artist of an actress and a woman in full bloom as she tries to cope and
manage with all her disappointments and memories that tried to overwhelm
her.

As she writes about her first husband, James Dougherty in which she says
that her relationship with him felt insecure from the beginning starting with
the first night they were alone together.

She writes in her journal that she was very attracted to Jimmie as one of the
very few men that did not repulse her and had been endowed with some
overwhelming qualities that apparently, she had enjoyed. He also had given
her a false sense of security, however, and that had soured it for her.

It seemed while she was married to Jimmie that she had a constant fear that
he had rather have one of his prior girlfriends, and she thought it was Doris
Ingram, a beauty queen from Santa Barbara. It was this alone that triggered
Marilyn’s feelings of vulnerability and unworthiness toward men.

It seems that Marilyn started keeping a diary around 1951.

It was Strasberg who encouraged Marilyn to start seeing Dr. Margaret
Hohenberg five times a week. The psychiatrist who was an acquaintance of
Strasberg’s was 57 years old, and a Hungarian immigrant who wore her hair
in tight braids wound on her head.

It was Strasberg that felt Marilyn should open up her unconscious and delve
into her troubled childhood. Between sessions with Hohenberg and
Strasberg, Marilyn started recording some of those horrible memories
which included a terrible memory of sexual abuse.

The memory is detailed, but in the aftermath, she is punished for it by her
great aunt Ida who was a strict Christian to be looking after Norma Jeane.
She was to stay with her for several months. It seems from her writing that
her aunt had made her think that she would go to hell for being sexually
abused and that she should be ashamed of her genitals.

Marilyn fired Dr. Hohenberg in 1957 after she had also fired Milton Greene
from her motion picture company. She started with a new psychiatrist. A
Dr. Marianne Kris from Vienna who Strasberg approved. Marilyn would
stay with Dr. Kris until 1961. She kept her journaling in her diary though
hoping it would help with her new doctor.
Marilyn stayed in Hollywood in 1960 to star in “Let’s Make Love,” with the
French movie heartthrob Yves Montand. She was feeling cast out from her
husband’s life and love, so she had an affair with Yves. It caused a frenzy
with the press. At this point, Dr. Kris pointed her in the direction of Dr.
Greenson who was a strict Freudian and prominent psychiatrist that was
treating many celebrities. Some of which included: Frank Sinatra, Judy
Garland, and the pianist Oscar Levant.

Just as Marilyn was a daughter type to the Strasbergs, she became a

surrogate daughter type for the Greensons. She found herself going home
with Dr. Greenson a lot as part of what was then considered a part of
therapy but today is deemed to be unorthodox.

Maybe it was because he was starting to become too obsessed with Marilyn.
Greenson saw her every day, and at times her sessions were lasting five
hours. This form of treatment was called Adoption Therapy, which is not
used today.

Miller who had been working on a screenplay called “The Misfits,” about a
wounded young woman that was in love with a man much older than she or
that it was based on Marilyn and Miller. They started filming in the hot
desert in July of 1960 with John Huston as director.
The main characters were Clark Gable, Marilyn, Thelma Ritter, Eli
Wallach, and Montgomery Clift. Albert Miller, of course, was on site and
watching Marilyn starting to unravel before his eyes in the heat of the
desert. While on the set, Albert fell in love with an Inge Morath who was
working on the film and she would be his third wife.

It would be three months later when Marilyn would get back to New York
and find herself emotionally worn out while under Dr. Kris’s care. They
admitted Marilyn to Payne Whitney’s psychiatric ward. It was supposed to
be a rest cure for the insomniac and overwrought actress, but it turned out to
be three of the scariest days of her life.

Dr. Kris drove Marilyn to the large white-brick Hospital in New York. She
was wrapped up in a fur coat and used the name of Faye Miller. She signed
herself in for admission and found she was being taken to a room not where
she could rest, but instead, to a padded room in a locked ward.

The more she begged and sobbed to be let out, the more the staff felt she
was psychotic. They threatened her with a straightjacket; they took her
purse, and her clothes were removed from her. They forced her into a bath
and put her in a hospital gown.
Another psychiatrist came in and started giving her a physical. He began
examining her breast for lumps. She told him he didn’t need to do that
because she had just had a complete physical last month, but he didn’t listen
to her.

When she was not allowed to make a telephone call, she felt like a prisoner.
She then turned to her training as an actor. She picked up a chair that was
light-weight and kept slamming it into the glass. She said it took a lot of
banging to get even a little piece of glass, but she did get a tiny piece.

She took the piece of glass and hid it in her hand and sat down on her bed
waiting for them to come in. When they did finally come into her room, she
told them that if they were going to treat her like a nut, then she would just
act like one.

She told the nurses she was going to hurt herself with that piece of glass if
they didn’t let her go. She had no idea that she would cut herself because
she didn’t want any scars on herself, after all, she was an actress. She said
that when she did not cooperate that two big men and two big women
picked her up by her hands and feet with her face down and carried her to
the elevator and up to the seventh floor.
They made her take another bath! It was the second bath after being
admitted. The administrator came in to see her and told her she was a very
sick girl and had been for a long time.

Dr. Kris never showed up even though he had promised. Lee Strasberg and
his wife Paula couldn’t get her out since they were not her family. Joe
DiMaggio finally rescued her. He and Marilyn had a sort of reconciliation
during Christmas after Joe had sent her a “forest of poinsettias.”

For everyone that thinks she died from an accidental overdose by mixing
drugs with alcohol, reading the archives shows you evidence about her
optimism, the feelings that she has finally come to a more assured self and
can solve her own problems by herself and make her own decisions and
business plans for her future.

For anyone who believes in the conspiracy theory, well there is a note that
Marilyn had written where she seemed to distrust and fear JFK’s brother-in-
law, Peter Lawford, the last person she spoke to before her death.
It seems that Peter Lawford admitted to feeling guilty and revealed that
Bobby was the one that decided to shut her up, no matter what the
consequences were going to be. Peter said it was just crazy what Bobby did
and Peter Lawford said he could not believe he was mad enough to let it
happen.

It seems that the doctor from the ambulance, James Hall, came into
Marilyn’s home at the very minute that Dr. Greenson violently broke one of
Marilyn’s ribs and injected the undiluted pentobarbital straight into her
heart. Lawford said that Greenson was acting on Bobby Kennedy’s orders
to take care of Monroe.

In her journaling, she had written that she had felt the feeling of violence
lately and being afraid of Peter Lawford and the fact that he might harm her
by poisoning her. She thought he always had a strange look in his eyes
when she was around.

Marilyn wrote that there was nothing else that scared her except for Peter
Lawford and that it was at different times that she was felt scared of him.
She wrote that she always thought he was a homosexual and Peter did not
like her because he wanted to be a woman and wanted to be Marilyn
Monroe.
IX
 THE KENNEDYS WOULDN’T GO AWAY

“It's better to be unhappy alone than unhappy with someone - so

far.”
— MARILYN MONROE

The FBI would spend two weeks of their summer in 1964 investigating a tip
they had received from a Frank Capell who was writing a book about the
affair of Bobby Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, that accused him and the
entire Kennedy Clan to be the responsible party for Marilyn’s death.

It was rumored forever that Bobby Kennedy, married to Ethel was having
an affair with Marilyn Monroe after JFK got rid of her and passed her off to
Bobby. Capell wonders if the trouble began when Marilyn realized that
Bobby had no intent to divorce and marry Marilyn. Capell goes on to say
that Marilyn was able to destroy him by telling what she knew or had some
written evidence she had in her keeping, so did Bobby take drastic action?

It is essential for one to bear in mind that the FBI would cover for Bobby
Kennedy because he was their boss and Bobby, being the Attorney General
had oversight for the Bureau. The Bureau reports that Bobby was in San
Francisco with Ethel when Marilyn died per an FBI agent that was from
New York.

July 15 th, 1964, the director of the FBI was J. Edgar Hoover, and he sent
Bobby a copy of Capell’s book. He told Bobby that Capell claimed he had a
‘close’ relationship with Marilyn.

So, when she showed up at JFK’s birthday party, all eyes were on her;
especially John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s. He seemed to have an enthusiastic
interest in blondes and was totally smacked with Marilyn. He acted like he
was expecting, almost waiting for when she would show up! It seemed he
didn’t care that his esteemed and elegant wife, the First Lady was there in
attendance. Of course, this was not their first time to meet. He and Marilyn
had met before, two times before (they said) and only flirted a little and that
was all (they said).

Marilyn was escorted to her table by JFK to her/their table and did not
make an apology because he was so infatuated with Marilyn. Being the
cheater, he was, he asked Marilyn for her phone number. Monroe was
happy to hand the answer to his request over to him, and he certainly
wasted no time to call her. It was soon when the two met for their sexual
rendezvous.
When JFK’s birthday rolled around, Marilyn gave him a gold Rolex that she
had the jeweler inscribe on the back. It said, ‘Jack, With love as always
from, Marilyn.’ The watch came with a hot love poem written by Marilyn,
and it read,

“Let lovers breathe their sighs and roses bloom and music sound.
Let passion burn on the lips and eyes and pleasures merry world
go round. Let golden sunshine flood the sky and let me love or
let me die.”

It has been said that the President told his aide to make sure to make the
note and watch disappear. It had been out of the public eye for over forty
years, and then it hit the auction block in 2005 and sold for $120,000.

No one should think that Jackie Kennedy was a dummy about her
husband’s philandering. He took after his father and was relentless with his
infidelities. She tolerated them because she loved her country and wanted to
hold her marriage together. Since she was a real lady, there were many
times she just turned her head to JFK’s playboy ways. Jackie had trouble
turning her head when it came to Marilyn because with her she could sense
trouble for the President.

Marilyn with all her emotional and psychiatric issues, drugs and alcohol felt
sure that JFK was going to leave his Jackie and marry her, Marilyn.
Peter Lawford supposedly claimed that Monroe had called Jackie and let
her know she had been sleeping with JFK, and he promised her that he was
going to leave Jackie and marry her.

Jackie was supposed to have told her that Jack would marry her and that
was great, and then you will move into this big White House, assume the
job duties of the first lady, I will move out for you, and then you will have
all these problems.

Jackie never took his cheating like it was fine. Jack had a close friend, a
George Smathers, who said that Jackie got ‘damn mad’ about all his
infidelities, but she would look the other direction as long as he did not
humiliate her.

Jackie worried about her sexual inadequacies, and maybe they were pushing
JFK towards other women. But, it is recorded in her medical records that
she had complained to Dr. Frank Finnerty, by saying that Jack just gets done
too fast and then falls asleep. Apparently, JFK did not know how to satisfy
his women.
JFK also had a real problem with drugs. He had a ‘doctor’ they called Dr.
Feelgood who would give him high-dose amphetamine injections that had
been laced up with steroids to JFK regularly and eventually started giving
them to Jackie.

JFK had always enjoyed the fact that Jackie had been lenient with his
liberties with other women. But when she put her foot down with Marilyn,
and he thought it through, he knew that Marilyn was just not worth it, and
there were plenty of others to carry on with.

Marilyn did not like it one bit, and she was not letting him go so easy. She
felt like he was meant for her, but she never meant anything to him. After
she found out she was just a fling, she went off the deep end.

It might have been what broke the camel’s back for a beautiful and
successful, but troubled woman. Many, however, would argue that her death
in 1962 was not necessarily of her own doing but more of a “plot” to make
sure she left JFK alone. Years later, people still have their opinions.
X
 DIMAGGIO FAMILY STATES MONROE
WAS NOT ALONE WHEN SHE DIED

“A smart girl leaves before she is left.”

— MARILYN MONROE

A report appeared in the December issue of Playboy that revealed new

details about Marilyn Monroe’s life and raises more questions about her
mysterious death in 1962.

Playboy contributor Lisa DePaulo spoke exclusively with June DiMaggio,

who was a good friend of Marily ns and a niece of Marilyn’s ex-husband,
Joe DiMaggio. June and other of the DiMaggio friends were talking openly
about there being a last-minute ‘second wedding’ that had been planned by
Marilyn and Joe, and Monroe's last evening alive.

The article features uncensored and expanded transcripts of audio tapes of

Marilyn’s therapy sessions. The tapes, which were detailed in part by the
Los Angeles Times in August of that year, came to light for the first time, in
Marilyn's words, the actress was in no way feeling suicidal at the time of
her death.
 "Here is a person stigmatized by the diagnosis of suicide when that
is a completely false, wrong, erroneous diagnosis,"

said the former County prosecutor of L.A., John Miner. Miner had created
those transcripts in the beginning.

Miner was present at Monroe's post-mortem. He didn’t dispute she died of

an overdose of the sleeping pill that was so addictive Nembutal; he posed
the theory it could have been used as the part of an enema, possibly
administered by Marilyn herself or by someone else during the time she
was sedated.

You cannot make the DiMaggio family believe any of this because they had
long thought Marilyn was not by herself when she died. June DiMaggio
tells of her mother, Lee, telling her that she was the last person that spoke to
Monroe on that night of Aug. 4 th, 1962.

Lee has died since then, said she was talking on the phone with Monroe
when Marilyn screamed a name and dropped her phone. Lee never spoke
that name and took it to the grave with her because she feared for her
family’s safety, according to June. Three things seem odd at this point. 1)
She lived in Brentwood in her new home by herself except for her
housekeeper. 2) The only person she was frightened of at that time was
Peter Lawford. 3) It had to be someone her housekeeper knew to let them
into the house, or they had a key.

June revealed that Los Angeles police came to their home at 11 p.m. the
night of Marilyn's death, looking for Joe DiMaggio, and telling her about
the actress's passing. Official reports prove that Monroe's housekeeper did
not call the police until 4:30 a.m. on August 5 th.

The DiMaggio family went on to add that Marilyn and Joe had set a
wedding date to remarry on the day that happened to be her funeral.
Marilyn had bought her wedding dress and picked out her china dishes. Joe
had purchased a ring for her, and they were talking about adopting a child.

In an interview on “Good Morning America,” the interviewer of the

DiMaggio family broached this question to the public:

“If she was remarrying Joe DiMaggio, who she said had been the
love of her life, would she take her life four days before the
wedding?”
Something else that was discovered was that she had only been living in her
house for about five months before she died, and they found every room
had been bugged, even her bathroom.

It seems that everyone feels it was the CIA and FBI that bugged her house
If that is true? Who planted all the bugs? With all the bugs, wouldn’t there
have to be tapes somewhere? So, where the heck are they?
XI
 HER FUNERAL – MAY SHE FINALLY
REST IN PEACE

“I restore myself when I'm alone.”

— MARILYN MONROE

Who better to deliver Marilyn’s eulogy than the director of the Actors
Studio, Lee Strasberg in 1962. It is easily noticed that Strasberg could
barely make it through the closing, which makes the eulogy more
emotional.

Strasberg said that he was sorry that the public that loved her had never had
the opportunity to know her as those who were close to her knew her. There
is no doubt that if she had lived, she would have grown to be one of the
greatest actresses of all time. Now, it has ended. Strasberg hoped that her
death would stir understanding and sympathy for her as a sensitive woman
and artist who had brought pleasure and joy to the world. He went on to say
he could not say goodbye. Marilyn had never liked the word goodbye, but
oddly, she had her method of turning things completely around so that they
would face reality.

“So, I will say au Revoire.”

For the country to which Marilyn has gone, we must all someday visit.
Somewhere Over the Rainbow was then played, followed by a part of
Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony.

Marilyn’s body was viewable because of an open casket. One of her friends
who worked as her make-up artist took care of her make-up.

Joe had her placed in a heavy bronze casket, dressing her in a green Pucci
dress, with her hands holding pink tea roses.

Joe DiMaggio was in charge of all the arrangements for Marilyn’s funeral
down to the tiniest detail. He did not invite anyone from Hollywood or the
press. Only close friends and relatives. DiMaggio said that Hollywood and
the media had only hurt her so why ask them. After she died, for over
twenty years, Joe had red roses delivered to her crypt twice a week, until he
died, just as he had promised her he would do. Joe never remarried, and
while on his deathbed, he said these last words,

“I will finally get to see Marilyn again.”

XII
 MARILYN’S LAST WILL & TESTAMENT

“Nothing's ever easy as long as you go on living.”

— MARILYN MONROE

Ten days before Marilyn’s Mexican divorce was finalized from Arthur
Miller, she signed her last will and testament. Louise H. White and Aaron
R. Frosch, of New York were the witnesses of the will; both were attorneys.

The will was filed in probate in New York August 17 th, 1962. Right after
Marilyn’s death, it was contested by one of Marilyn’s business managers, an
Inez Melson, but they finally established it was valid and it was Marilyn’s
last will and testament. It was admitted to probate October 1962.

The will left the following:

Bernice Miracle, Marilyn’s half-sister, would receive $10,000.

Marilyn’s secretary, May Reis, would receive $10,000.
Marilyn’s friends, Hedda and Norman Rosten, each were to
receive $5,000. If they predeceased Marilyn, $5,000 would go to
their daughter, Patricia Rosten, to be used for her education.
 All of Marilyn’s personal effects and clothing were to go to her
mentor and acting coach, Lee Strasberg.
For Marilyn’s mother’s benefit, Gladys Baker, and a woman by
the name of Xenia Chekhov, the surviving spouse of Marilyn’s
friend and acting coach, Michael Chekhov was to have the sum
of $100,000 held in a trust. Gladys was to receive $5,000 each
year to provide for her maintenance and support, and Xenia to
receive $2,500 each year to provide for her support and
maintenance. The balance of her trust was then to go to
Marilyn’s New York shrink (the one who dumped her at the
psych hospital and did not go back and see her). Dr. Marianne
Kris,

“for being used to further the work of psychiatric institutions or

groups as she shall elect”

after both Baker and Chekhov had died. Mrs. Chekhov lived until
December 1970. Gladys Baker lived until March 1984. The residuary estate
– the balance remaining after these gifts were to be split up so that her
private secretary, May Reis would receive an extra $40,000. Dr. Marianne
Kris would get 25 percent of the balance after the bequest was made to be
used for the same purposes as set above. The remaining 75 percent should
go to Lee Strasberg.

Attorney Aaron R. Frosch was named to be the facilitator of the estate and
trustee of the trust for the benefit of Baker and Chekhov.
Dr. Kris founded the Anna Freud Centre in London, an institution
“committed to improving the emotional well-being of children and young
people,” to which her 25 percent of the estate passed.

Then Lee Strasberg died in 1982, leaving his 75 percent interest in the
estate to his second wife, Anna Strasberg.
 THE 40-YEAR PROBATE ESTATE

M arilyn Monroe’s estate stayed open for what seemed like a long
time – until 2001. The New York Surrogate Court then
declared the estate was completely settled. It authorized that
the remaining assets of the estate be transferred to Marilyn Monroe LLC. A
Delaware LLC formed and managed by Anna Strasberg.

The LLC was purchased by Authentic Brands and NECA for about $50
million in 2010, and in turn, they formed a company named The Estate of
Marilyn Monroe, LLC.

The new estate continues to produce significant earnings.

Some want to know what went wrong with her will?

Have you got your affairs in order yet? Let this be said before going any
further. Marilyn made this will out several years before her death and
probably never gave it another thought. It is easy to forget about your will
and think I have already done that. You do not realize how things that
involve your will change from year to year in your life and it is expensive to
make changes to your will and trust, so it is not something you eagerly look
forward to fixing every few months.

When you first look at the will, it seems like Marilyn planned things out
rather well. But, it seems she made one bad mistake that probably caused
her estate to go to one person she never had any intent to inherit anything –
Anna Strasberg.

Marilyn had only met Anna one time in her life. She was pretty close with
Lee Strasberg’s wife, Paula, but not very much with his second wife, Anna.

Marilyn left her the lion’s share of her entire estate to Lee Strasberg and
never made any provisions about what should happen if he died first. It,
then, went to his living spouse, Anna Strasberg, and they made an entire
fortune off the inheritance, somewhere around $20 to 30 million dollars.
Anna used the profits to make various licensing deals for the publicity
products and rights-bearing Monroe’s image. (If Marilyn or her attorney
had thought it through she would have had it set up if Lee Strasberg passed
away that it would be set up in its own trust with all profits made going to
specific charities.)
It is wondered if Monroe meant to make Anna Strasberg a multimillionaire?
It is doubted, and Marilyn could have made the provisions in her will
stating what should happen with the largesse at the time of Lee Strasberg’s
death. But, she did not do that and by golly, someone she barely knew
wound up capitalizing on that one mistake.
XIII
 FINAL WORDS

For Marilyn when her 23 movies made their first runs, they grossed for a
total more than $200 million. Her fame alone surpassed any other movie
star of her time. She started with the image of a dumb blonde who was
seductive to every man she met. And some of the women, because she was
also known to have relationships of the sexual nature with other women. In
her later years of fame, she was an insecure and sensitive lady who could
not escape all the pressures that Hollywood imposed on her. Her
sensuousness and vulnerability combined with a needless death that caused
her to be eventually raised to an American icon.

To come from where she came and to make it where she did was nothing
short of amazing. It took nerves and guts to make it in the Hollywood
scene, but she did not give up. She was to be admired and pitied at the same
time. She was one of the most insecure people you would ever meet.

When they talk about the current generation and the opioid problem they
always seem to forget about the Hollywood era of Marilyn Monroe and the
barbiturate epidemic of that time and the deaths that were linked with it and
alcohol. It seemed anyone that was someone always had their medicine
cabinet full of some barbiturates.
When it comes to her death if you decide to review the files that have been
released in October of 2017 by President Trump you will want to look into
the archives of JFK assassination or Robert F. Kennedy assassination as you
will not find the good stuff in the Marilyn Monroe death files.

What better way to hide relevant information you do not want the general
public to be able to discover than to place it in someone else's file?

It will be up to you, the reader to decide how you think she died. In reading
this book, you should be able to form a reasonably good idea of what
happened to Marilyn Monroe. She never deserved what happened to her. No
one deserves the treatment she received her entire life.
 WEAKNESSES OF MARILYN MONROE

She craved the attention of every man she met in her constant
search for a fatherly image it seemed. She may be married while
having affairs with two other men and never thought anything
about it being wrong as if no one had ever taught her any moral
code.
Marilyn said she wanted to be pregnant with a child, but every
time she got pregnant, she said she miscarried, but on at least
two of the ‘miscarriages,’ she had them terminated. Probably
because it would ruin her Hollywood figure.
Her constant reliance on alcohol and drugs to keep her going all
day long.
Her insecurities about herself, in particular, brought on by her
upbringing in childhood.
She could never get to work on time. On set, she overslept all
the time because of drugs.
 STRENGTHS OF MARILYN MONROE

She would not give up on her dreams and fought her way to the
top in Hollywood. No one should ever quit trying to succeed in
their dreams as dreams become your goals and they are what
you climb toward to succeed in life. Always keep reaching for
your dreams to achieve and never let yourself give up.
She worked on her body image until every man wanted a part of
her. She ate very little every day to keep her figure, had the right
plastic surgery for her roles as a starlet. She kept to the same diet
every day. It does not say that everyone should go out and have
plastic surgery, but for what she did for a living, it was necessary
she looked her best.
She never thought that she was so good that she did not need to
learn more. Marilyn never felt like she was the best she could be
at acting, so she joined the Actors group and took acting lessons
for quite a long time and was always trying to gain more
knowledge and become better every day.
XIV
 MORE READS ON MARILYN MONROE

Marilyn Monroe: The Biography by Donald Spoto, 1993

The Last Days of Marlyn Monroe by Donald Wolfe 1998
Joe and Marilyn: Legends in Love by C. David Heyman 2012
JOHN F. KENNEDY
DEATH OF THE PRESIDENT
John Fitzgerald Kennedy:

A Mirror of His Generation

I
 IN THE BEGINNING

Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.

John F. Kennedy

“Whooping cough, measles, chicken pox, scarlet fever”

this was the entry written in the little index card made by Rose Kennedy
about her sickly second son, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who was born at 83
Beals Street, Brookline, Massachusetts on May 29, 1917. He was the
second son of four boys and five girls born to Joseph and Rose Kennedy.
He was named after the popular and flamboyant former two-term mayor of
Boston, John Francis Fitzgerald, known as Honey Fitz, who was his
mother’s father.
 THE KENNEDY PEDIGREE

I n Massachusetts, the Kennedy family had been associated with

Democratic politics for many years before John F. Kennedy became
President. His father, Joseph Kennedy senior, married the daughter of
his father’s bitter rival, to improve his chances at business. Rose Kennedy,
although an Irish Catholic in Boston, one of the most discriminated against
groups in America at the time, was the daughter of a once popular mayor of
Boston, John Fitzgerald, known as “Honey Fitz.”

John Francis "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald (1863-1950) was also a Democratic

congressman who went on to win two terms as mayor of Boston. He was
both popular and efficient, improving the port of Boston, making it a major
trading city to rival New York and Philadelphia. He was also a great fan and
supporter of the great Boston Red Sox baseball team. Interestingly, his bid
to stand for the post of mayor for a third term was scuttled when a dalliance
with a young cigarette girl Elizabeth “Toodles” Ryan was revealed, causing
him to pull out of the race. Nevertheless, Fitzgerald continued to be a major
political figure in Boston politics, even helping John F. Kennedy to win his
first election as a congressman. He died in 1950, after whooping it up in the
campaign office, dancing and Irish jig, and predicting that his grandson
would one day occupy the White House.
His bitter rival in the early years of the twentieth century in the Democratic
Party was John F. Kennedy’s paternal uncle, Patrick Joseph Kennedy (1858-
1929), who was also a congressman and senator. Patrick Kennedy was
particularly adept at behind the scenes politics of which the Massachusetts
Democratic Party was then known. He was known as a political operative
for many years in the early twentieth century.

Patrick Kennedy’s son – also John F. Kennedy’s father – was Joseph P.

Kennedy Sr., (1888-1969), who, as a student at Harvard College, found it
incredibly difficult to mix with the predominantly Protestant and Anglo-
Saxon student body, vowed to himself that he would make a million dollars
by the time he was thirty-five. And he not only fulfilled this ambition, but
made many times that amount.

Initially he made his fortune in the stock market, and then he used that
fortune to purchase real estate all over the country. During World War I, he
was appointed Assistant General Manager of Bethlehem Steel, which was a
major supplier of steel to the American war effort. It was in this position
that he met and befriended a young man who was working as Assistant
Secretary of the Navy. This man was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was
America’s only three-term president. Later, during the 1920s, at the height
of the silent film era, he acquired several small film studios in Hollywood,
amalgamating them into a larger company that became Film Booking
Offices of America (FBO) and later was formed into the great company
RKO Studios, founded by David Sarnoff, producing some of the most
popular films of the era. However, his real fortune was made during the
Prohibition era (1920-33) with his distribution rights for Scotch whiskey.
His firm, Somerset importers, became the exclusive agent for Dewar’s
Scotch and Gordon’s Gin. Most interestingly, in a business notorious for its
alliances with organized crime, there is no evidence that Kennedy had any
dealings with anyone in organized crime.

In 1938, President Roosevelt appointed Joseph Kennedy Ambassador to the

Court of St. James in the UK. He distinguished himself as an outspoken
influence who sometimes failed to express the views of the President, and
when he spoke out of line at a crucial moment, was abruptly relieved of his
duties. His anti-democratic views were made public during the Battle of
Britain, in November 1940. Later in his life, he too devoted much of his
energy to the career of his eldest surviving son, John. In a bizarre turn, in
1961, shortly after the election of John F. Kennedy, he was struck with
aphasia and completely lost the power of speech. He died in 1969.
 THE NUCLEAR FAMILY

J ohn (“Jack”) Kennedy was the second son of this distinguished line
of Irish American politicians and businesspeople. The eldest son,
Joseph Junior was a highly decorated athlete at Choate, the
exclusive private boys’ school they both attended, and later a football
player at Harvard College. He was also very popular and an first rate
student, leaving his younger brother John to bask in his reflected glory.
When the United States entered World War II, he enlisted in the United
States Navy as a flyer and, after completing his duties and being granted
leave to return home as a hero, he nevertheless volunteered for a top secret
mission to use unmanned planes filled with explosives to attack German
warships. These planes could be flown using remote control technology but
needed to be taken into the air by human pilots. On one such flight, his first,
Joseph successfully got the plane in the air, but was killed when the
explosives were prematurely detonated, killing both him and his co-pilot
instantly.

Naturally this was a devastating blow to the entire Kennedy family, and
particularly Joseph Senior, who had pinned the family’s political ambitions
on this golden child. However, ambition is ambition, and since it was no
longer channeled through the eldest son, the task fell to the second son,
Jack. After this devastating blow to the family, John Kennedy was
identified as the heir apparent, and political figure in the family. Jack, who
had been dogged by illness and who was more interested in journalism than
public service, suddenly took on this role with great gusto.
The other members of this large Kennedy family were very accomplished
as well. Of his seven younger siblings, both his two younger brothers
became successful politicians, and all of his five sisters, with one exception,
were very successful as socialites or leading volunteers for important social
causes. They include:

Rosemary, the eldest daughter suffered from behavioral problems from an

early age, and in her early twenties, at the behest of her father, she received
a frontal lobotomy that left her debilitated for the remainder of her life. She
spent the rest of her life in a mental institution.
Kathleen (“Kick”) was voted debutante of the year in London in 1938.
She met and married the Marquess of Hartington, the heir apparent to the
title of Duke of Devonshire. Only about four months in to their marriage,
which took place in England, he was deployed and killed in action. She
herself was killed in 1948 in a plane crash in France.
Eunice was active as one of the founding members of the Special
Olympics, inspired by her sister Rosemary. She was married to Sargeant
Shriver, who became ambassador to France, where Eunice began her work
with people with disabilities.
Patricia was both a socialite and a television and film producer.
Although she had many challenged to her film production career, she
worked hard in Hollywood and married the British actor Peter Lawford. His
excessive drinking led to a separation and later a divorce.
Robert Francis (1925-1968) worked for Senator Joseph McCarthy as a
lawyer for the House Un-American Activities committee. He came to
national attention while serving as chief counsel for the Senate’s Labor
Rackets Committee from 1957 until 1959. At one point, he publicly
challenged notorious Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa. The result of
this was his publication of the best-seller The Enemy Within, which dealt
with corruption in organized labor unions. He was appointed Attorney-
General under his brother John, and later (briefly) under President Lyndon
Johnson. He also became a distinguished Democratic Senator representing
the State of New York, and prominent presidential candidate in the 1968
election. He was assassinated in June 1968 before being chosen candidate.
Jean (b. 1928) founded Very Special Arts (VSA) a charity devoted to
allowing people with disabilities to experience and participate in the visual
arts. She also served as US ambassador to Ireland under President Bill
Clinton. She was instrumental in establishing the Northern Irish peace
process and reconciliation with the Republic of Ireland.
Edward (Ted) (1932-2009) became a long-serving Democratic Senator
representing Massachusetts. He served for 46 years in the Senate, from
1962 when he was elected in a special election to replace his brother John,
who had become president. He continued until his death in 2009,
challenging Jimmy Carter, the incumbent president, at the 1980 Democratic
convention. Carter went down to defeat to Ronald Reagan.
No public figure in modern political life relied more on his family than John
F. Kennedy, and none received so much support.
 EDUCATION

J ohn F. Kennedy was educated in many of the country’s top private

boy’s schools, including Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford
Connecticut where, like his older brother, he excelled in sports. He
was also interested in politics from an early age, and was the reputed
to be the only student at the school with a daily subscription to The New
York Times. His father, who, until Joseph’s death, had middling expectations
of his son, made it clear in a letter to John from 1931:

I am urging you to do the best you can. I am not expecting too

much, and I will not be disappointed if you don’t turn out to be a
real genius, but I think you can be a really worthwhile citizen
with good judgment and understanding.

In keeping with his father’s low expectations of him, John F. Kennedy did
only passably well at Choate Rosemary Hall, and after graduating, travelled
to London, England with his parents, ostensibly to study with Harold Laski
at the London School of Economics (where his brother had also studied),
but he returned to the United States when he became ill. He then enrolled
(late) in October at Princeton and spent six weeks there, dropping out again
due to gastrointestinal illnesses. After convalescing at the Palm Beach
Kennedy winter home, he travelled out to Benson, Arizona to work as a
ranch hand, working extremely hard. After this, he enrolled in Harvard in
September 1936. This is where John first distinguished himself. He was
highly visible and active on the varsity swim team. That summer, he entered
and won the 1936 Nantucket Sound Star Championship race in sailing.

He was only a middling student at Harvard during his first two years,
however, after he went to Europe and saw something of other cultures and
their political and social issues, he became interested in world affairs and
also began to distinguish himself as a student. During all of his summer
breaks, he travelled widely in Europe, using London as his home base,
where his father was serving as American Ambassador. In his third year, he
had changed greatly, making the Dean’s List, and during the summer of his
third year, before his senior year, he travelled through Europe, including the
Balkans, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, and the Middle East before
returning to London on September 1, 1939, the very day that Germany
invaded Poland, leading to the outbreak of the Second World War.

In his final year at Harvard, he wrote an undergraduate thesis called

“Appeasement in Munich” about the British participation in the Munich
Agreement that propelled events that led to the outbreak of war. This thesis
was published in 1940 under the title Why England Slept, and became a
bestseller. Kennedy graduated magna cum laude.
Kennedy's 1940 Harvard College yearbook entry, in the John F. Kennedy
Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.
 HEALTH CONCERNS

T he issue of John F. Kennedy’s health has been a subject of

immense interest for many years, although during his lifetime
these issues were carefully hidden from the public. Instead, his
public persona was one of a young and vigorous President, despite the
many ailments he suffered from.

From the first index card about him made by his mother, John suffered from
one serious illness after another. Before he was three years old, he had been
hospitalized with scarlet fever which nearly killed him. Then, in 1930,
while he was a young student, he was admitted to hospital on suspicion of
suffering from leukemia, although it was later diagnosed as colitis. As a
football player at Harvard, he ruptured a disc in his spine, which caused him
to suffer from back pain for the rest of his life. When he was thirty, he was
diagnosed by the great British physician Sir Daniel Davis with Addison’s
Disease, a rare endocrine disorder in which one’s adrenal glands produce
too little cortisol, and, frequently, insufficient levels of aldosterone.
Possibly because of this condition, he suffered from high fevers, and
extensive stomach and colon issues throughout his presidency. He also
suffered from hyperthyroidism and ulcers.

These issues were serious and many, and may have affected his judgment in
critical issues like the Cuban Missile Crisis. Nevertheless, he was a man of
great fortitude and dedication to public service and rarely, if ever, allowed
these personal concerns to enter his public life.
II
 WAR HERO

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest

appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.

John F. Kennedy
 TRAVELS

A fter graduating from Harvard, Jack (as he was then called) audited
graduate courses in government at Stanford University. In 1941,
he left Stanford to help his father write his memoirs. Then he
travelled to South America, including Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. His
trip was cut short when the United States entered the war, after the bombing
of Pearl Harbor Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, leading both John and his
brother Joseph to consider entering the military.

With his brother Joseph who had continued his graduate education at the
London School of Economics, Jack Kennedy had tried to join the United
States Naval Reserve in 1940, but was termed medically unfit for service
because of his persistent back problems. Rather than be defeated, though,
he embarked on a regimen of exercise to try to straighten his back, and on
September 24, 1941, he was accepted into the Naval Reserve, and
commissioned an ensign on October 24 th, 1941.
 TRAINING

H e was employed in Washington D.C. at the Office of Naval

Intelligence. From here, he moved in January 1942 to the
headquarters of the Sixth Naval District in Charleston, South
Carolina. Then he attended the Naval Reserve Officer Training School at
Northwestern University in Chicago from July to September 1942 followed
by the Motor Torpedo Boat Squadrons Training Center in Melville Rhode
Island. This led to his promotion to lieutenant junior grade in October. His
training was completed in December and he was assigned to Motor Torpedo
Squadron 4.

Eventually, Kennedy was put in charge of a series of small ships designed

to stop torpedoes, called Huckins Patrol torpedo ships. He worked in the
United States at first, was then moved to Panama, and finally served in the
Pacific theater.
 THE PT-109

I t was not until April 1943 when he took command of the PT-109,
based in the Solomon Islands. Kennedy, as commander of the PT-109,
engaged a Japanese destroyer Amagiri while on a nighttime mission.
The destroyer caught him by surprise and rammed his much smaller ship
and sliced it in half. Several of his crew lost their lives and Kennedy
himself injured his already fragile back. However, he instigated a vote
among all the surviving sailors from the ship about whether it was better to
fight or to surrender, and they agreed to fight. He recalled later that there
was nothing in the manual about a situation like this. Since they had voted
not to surrender, Kennedy led his men to swim for a nearby island, with him
towing an injured sailor named Patrick McMahon who was badly burned,
behind him. He then moved his crew to another island, and inscribed a
message to the navy in a coconut, which resulted in their rescue, when the
head man of the local village delivered the message to the United States
forces. This took a week though, and both he and his ensign, Leonard
Thom, were later awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for heroism,
and the Purple Heart for sustaining injuries.
Only a month later he returned to active duty, taking command of the PT-
59. From May to December 1944, Kennedy was in Chelsea military
hospital. This was where he was when he heard about his older brother
Joseph, who was killed on August 12, 1944. He was finally relieved of duty
in late 1944 because of the severity of his injuries, and honorably
discharged in March 1945. His exploits were later made into a Hollywood
movie in 1963, called PR-109, starring Cliff Robertson as Kennedy.
Kennedy, in his trademark witty banter once quipped, when asked how he
became a war hero:

“It was easy. They cut my PT boat in half.”

 AFTER THE WAR

I n April 1945, at age 28, he was offered a job as a correspondent for

the Hearst newspaper chain thanks to the intervention of his father, an
old friend of the great newspaper magnate, William Randolph Hearst.
As a correspondent, he attended the opening of the newly created United
Nations, covered Winston Churchill’s unsuccessful re-election bid in the
United Kingdom, and covered the Potsdam Conference, where he closely
observed President Harry S Truman and Joseph Stalin, and wrote personal
reflections his reaction to seeing a bombed-out Berlin. These series of
articles were widely read across the country, and served to keep his name
visible in the public eye, particularly as he was interacting with the people
who were making news. Even this early in his career, Kennedy had an eye
for publicity, and for keeping himself being talked about.
III
 BEGINNINGS AS A POLITICIAN

Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.

John F. Kennedy
I
 THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1960

Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.

John F. Kennedy

In the end, this presidential election was the most hotly contested election in
the United States since 1916 to that point: it was the first to have both major
candidates born in the twentieth century, and the first to have Alaska
(January 3, 1959) and Hawaii (August 21, 1959) participate in the election
(they were both new states). On November 8 th, John F. Kennedy won the
United States presidential election by less than 120,000 out of seventy
million votes cast, and he won the Electoral College vote by 303 votes to
Nixon’s 219, although Nixon actually won more states than Kennedy (26 to
Kennedy’s 22). Ultimately, though, Kennedy became the thirty-fifth
President of the United States at age 43. He is still the youngest person ever
elected to the American presidency.

During the period between his victory and inauguration on January 20,
1961, his only surviving son John F. Kennedy Junior was born on
November 25, adding an air of wonder and renewal to the presidency.
 JOURNALISTIC SUCCESS

A t the end of the War, in August 1945, Jack Kennedy began to

consider what he wanted to do as a permanent career. He had long
been interested in journalism and serious history, and having
written a bestseller, he was well positioned to embark on this sort of a
career, as a public intellectual. While talking to his grief-stricken father,
Joseph Sr. convinced Jack to run for Congress in the Massachusetts
eleventh congressional district which, thanks to the urging of Joseph Sr.,
was vacated by James Michael Hurley, who became Mayor of Boston.

Running for the nomination, he faced ten other candidates, and yet he
nevertheless won the nomination for the Democratic Party by claiming a
mere 12% of the vote. With the help of this two grandfathers and virtually
his entire family, Jack won the seat in 1946, and with nearly 74% of the
vote, despite a win nationally by the Republicans. As it happens, two other
World War II veterans were notable first-time winners in the 1946 election.
These were both Republicans and both were later to have an influence on
his life: Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy.
 CONGRESSMAN KENNEDY

R epresentative John F. Kennedy served three terms as a

Democratic Congressman for the Massachusetts eleventh
Congressional District, during which time he became a very
popular politician, making his name mainly in international affairs issues,
including the Truman Doctrine, which involved a robust defense against
Soviet expansionism.

He was anti-Communist both internationally and nationally, signing and

supporting the Immigrations and Nationality Act of 1952 that required
Communists to register with the government. However, on other issues he
was much more liberal, including his support of the institution and
development of public housing, and his opposition to the Labor
Management Relations Act of 1947 that restricted the power of labor
unions. He also drew the ire of some of the older Senators even within his
own party for his youthful appearance and casual style. He was, after all,
only twenty-nine years old. He served three terms (six years) before he
decided to stand for election to the Senate of the United States and won in
1952, defeating the very popular three-term incumbent Republican Henry
Cabot Lodge Jr.
IV
 KENNEDY IN THE SENATE

Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind.

John F. Kennedy

During his first term as Senator, the House Un-American Activities

committee under the leadership of the Republican junior senator from
Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, began to seek out “a red under every bed.”
These hearings sought to find Communists in the movie industry, the arts
community, politics, and particularly, among immigrant communities. Jews
were a particular target of this committee. Although McCarthy was a friend
of the family, and had dated both Jack’s sisters Pat and Eunice Kennedy,
and employed and befriended Robert Kennedy, Jack’s younger brother,
Kennedy was not a supporter of the Communist witch hunts that became
the hallmark of this committee, and which left an indelible black mark on
American society. Torn in two different directions, Kennedy drafted a luke-
warm speech in which he supported the censure of Senator McCarthy, but
never delivered it because he was hospitalized with back problems. In fact,
Kennedy was the only Democratic Senator who did not publicly support the
censure of McCarthy.
The primary concern in the Senate, thereafter, was Eisenhower’s bill for the
Civil Rights Act of 1957, designed to ameliorate the plight of blacks and
other minorities in the south. Although there was a great deal of procedural
wrangling, the bill was finally passed in September 1957. Kennedy was re-
elected in 1958 to a second term, defeating his Republican opponent by the
widest margin in Massachusetts history.
 MARRIAGE AND LITERARY SUCCESS

O n September 12, 1953, Kennedy married the extremely

accomplished and beautiful journalist for the Washington Times-
Herald, Jacqueline Lee Bouvier. Her influence on Jack’s career
quickly became very important. Two years later, he underwent a painful
operation on his back, and while Jack was recuperating from the surgery,
his wife, Jacqueline Kennedy encouraged him to write a book about eight
United States Senators who had the courage to stand up for important
issues. The result was his best-selling book, Profiles in Courage. The book
was suggested to him by Jacqueline, who came across a quotation from
Herbert Agar’s book The Price of Union that described the bravery of
Massachusetts Senator John Quincy Adams (who also became President in
the 1820s). With help from researchers at the National Library and his
longtime speechwriter Theodore Sorenson, Kennedy wrote the book while
bedridden. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1957. This was also
the year Caroline, his first born, was born.
In 1956, Adlai Stevenson wanted Kennedy to be his running mate for the
Presidential election, choosing him to introduce him at the Democratic
national convention, but Kennedy, a savvier politician than Stevenson,
recognized that no Democratic challenger would be able to defeat the
popular war hero and incumbent Republican President, Dwight D.
Eisenhower. Nevertheless, and possibly inspired by this honor, he began
working very hard drumming up support all over the country by making
speeches, in an effort to secure the nomination in 1960, when Eisenhower
was not able to run again. Instead, he would face the brilliant, but socially
awkward Richard Nixon, the Vice President.
V
 THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN

If we cannot now end our differences, at least we can help make the
world safe for diversity.

John F. Kennedy

The road to the White House has never been simple, not even for John F.
Kennedy. He had been energetically and vocally touring the United States,
speaking on serious issues for nearly four years, and so by January 2, 1960,
John F. Kennedy officially announced that he would be running for the
presidency of the United States. In March 1960, he won the New
Hampshire primary (typically the first primary) and he won it with an
astonishing 88% of the vote. On May 10 th, Kennedy won the West Virginia
primary, receiving 61% of the vote, leading Hubert Humphrey to end his
presidential ambitions. Winning the West Virginia primary demonstrated to
the party and the public at large that Kennedy, a Catholic, could win in a
heavily Protestant state, and even in a strong union state against a powerful
unionist (Humphrey).

At the Democratic Convention, he was still challenged by the liberal Hubert

Humphrey, but managed to defeat him. He became the first presidential
Senator since 1920 from either major political party to be selected by the
voters. He chose as his running mate, against the advice of his advisors,
Texan Lyndon Johnson, the Senate majority leader, as his running mate.

As challenging as securing the Democratic nomination ended up being, it

would be nothing compared to the challenge of defeating a two-term Vice
President to one of the most popular presidents in recent memory. Jack
Kennedy quickly realized that Richard Nixon was seen as the establishment
candidate and that he was, by default, the outlier, the rebellious youngster. It
would have taken a soothsayer to recognize that the 1960s would be a
decade of rebellion, of youth movements, but somehow Kennedy seemed to
intuitively know this. And there were elements about him that made him
both popular and controversial. He was a Roman Catholic for one thing,
which was something that was a huge attraction to the one quarter of
Americans who identified as Roman Catholic, and an impediment to those
who were not. He was also young – for a presidential candidate, at 43, and
he was also the only Pulitzer prize winner ever to run for President. His
wife Jacqueline, recognized both as a trend-setter and a beauty, was a major
drawing card for him, and his appearance of youthful vigor made him
popular among the young people who were increasingly politicized, and
increasingly getting out to vote.

Between September 26 th and October 21 st, 1960, Nixon and Kennedy

participated in the first-ever televised leaders’ debates. There were four of
these events broadcast from various studios across the United States; these
debates were later studied by influential Canadian media philosopher
Marshall McLuhan in his studies of television as a cool medium,
Understanding Media, and The Gutenberg Galaxy. As McLuhan saw it,
Nixon, the policy wonk, with all the numbers at his fingertips, sporting a
five-o’clock shadow, looked hot and uncomfortable on television, while
Kennedy, in full television makeup, looked casual and relaxed, young and
vigorous. Interestingly, when those people who only listened to the debate
on radio rated their performances, many thought that Nixon had won the
debate, while overwhelmingly, the television audiences thought that
Kennedy had won. Fortunately for Kennedy, this was the golden age of
television, and almost everyone who experienced the debates did it on
television.

When Kennedy gave a powerful reaffirmation of his support of the

separation of church and state on September 12 th, while speaking to the
League of Catholic Voters, he cemented his support among many non-
Catholic voters.
VI
 THE PRESIDENCY

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.

John F. Kennedy

In his now-famous inaugural address, Kennedy asked Americans to

“ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for
your country.”

He further asked citizens of the world to

“ask not what America can do for you, but what together we can do
for the freedom of man.”

His inaugural address was singular in the sense that it was outward
looking, making the United States a leader among nations, sworn to uphold
what he referred to as the “rights of man.” Poet Laureate Robert Frost
wrote and read “The Gift Outright”, echoing Kennedy’s aspirations:

The land was ours before we were the land’s

 She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England’s, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she will become.

President Kennedy was sworn in by Chief Justice of the Supreme Court

Earl Warren, nominated his cabinet and attended the many lavish inaugural
balls. The next day, Warren swore in the cabinet. It was a day of
unparalleled achievement.

His first Presidential act on January 21 st was to meet with former President
Harry S Truman and issue an Executive Order 10914 directing a doubling
of the quantity of surplus food to be distributed to needy families within the
United States. The next day, he met with poet laureate Robert Frost, and
established a three-person Government Ethics Committee. The next day he
appointed George McGovern director of the newly established Food for
Peace program to appease developing countries. On January 25 th, he held
his first televised press conference, announcing the release of two USAF
crewmen who had been shot down over the Soviet Union in July 1960.
Then, a mere five days later, on January 30 th, he delivered his first State of
the Union address to a joint session of Congress.

Kennedy was extraordinarily active in his first month in office, a

remarkable contrast to the lackadaisical approach with which current
presidents have tended to proceed.

In March 1961 he began the process of establishing the Peace Corps and
appointing his brother-in-law, Sargeant Shriver to head it. The Peace Corps
is still a vibrant arm of the American government, offering opportunities to
American youth to see and help in other parts of the developing world. In
the social program realm, Kennedy initiated funding for public television in
1962 something that has been threatened but ultimately not cut by every
president since (until Donald Trump successfully cut funding in 2018).
 DIPLOMATIC EFFORTS

O n June 3 rd, 1961, President Kennedy held a summit meeting with

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to try to settle matters over
the Cuban debacle which was brewing after the successful
revolution in that island nation. By September 25th, when he addressed the
United Nations General Assembly, he announced the United States’
intention to

“challenge the Soviet Union, not to an arms race, but to a peace

race.”

At this early period in his presidency, he and Soviet Premier Nikita

Khrushchev had a warm relationship – Khrushchev congratulated him on
his inauguration, and he in turn congratulated Khrushchev in the successful
low earth orbit of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin aboard Vostok 1.

At their first summit meeting in June, 1961, Kennedy told Khrushchev that
he had been angered by one of Khrushchev’s Cold War style speeches, and
decided to take him to task about this. Khrushchev had been at his job much
longer than Kennedy and managed to strong-arm him into achieving little or
nothing. The issues they were discussing included the building of the Berlin
Wall, which was built regardless of the objections Kennedy brought up.
 BAY OF PIGS

T hings became more difficult when, continuing the policy of the

Eisenhower Administration, Kennedy ordered an invasion of
Cuba on April 17 1961 in an attempt to overthrow the new
Socialist government of revolutionary leader Fidel Castro. Now referred to
as the Bay of Pigs invasion (or fiasco, depending on which side you are on),
this operation was an aborted attempt to recapture the island of Cuba with
1400 heavily armed ex-patriot Cubans, under the command of well-trained
and experienced CIA special operations officers.

A mere two days later, though, by April 19, it had completely failed, largely
due to the incompetence of the CIA, and a lack of air cover that had been
promised and not delivered. Kennedy was embarrassed and was forced to
negotiate for the release of the remaining 1100 survivors. Twenty months
later, they were released in exchange for fifty-three million dollars in food
and medicine. Kennedy later commented that it was the fault of the CIA
and that he wanted to

“splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the
wind.”

Various other covert destabilizing operations were considered against Cuba,

including operations called “false flag” operations that would commit acts
of terror against Cuban ex-patriots, targeted assassinations of Cuban
revolutionary leaders, as well as acts like the damaging of US military
hardware, or invading other Caribbean countries like the Dominican
Republic or Haiti posing as Cubans. They were presented to new Attorney
General Robert Kennedy, but he ultimately rejected as unworkable.
However, other plans were still in the works.

In July 1962, Nikita Khrushchev reached a secret agreement with Cuban

premier Fidel Castro that, in exchange for economic aid, he would be
permitted to place Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. He argued that it would
deter the Americans from trying to invade them. Construction on several
missile sites began in August 1962, and, during a routine surveillance flight
over Cuba, the CIA discovered evidence of Soviet arms, including Soviet
IL–28 bombers on the site. On September 4, 1962,
President Kennedy issued a public warning against the introduction of
offensive weapons into Cuba. Despite the warning, on October 14, a U.S.
U–2 aircraft took several pictures clearly showing sites for medium-range
and intermediate-range ballistic nuclear missiles under construction in
Cuba. These images were processed and presented to the White House on
September 5th, initiating the so-called Cuban Missile Crisis.
 THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS

C overt operations against Cuba had been authorized by President

Kennedy and given the name Operation Mongoose beginning in
November 1961. Operation Mongoose aimed to assassinate the
Communist leaders of Cuba and to foment a revolt in Cuba by October
1962. However, the Americans failed to accurately gauge the anger at the
previous puppet dictator Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar, and so it failed, and
while these other plans never materialized, the presence of Soviet Missiles
on Cuban soil initiated a series of events that nearly led to a war between
the two nuclear superpowers.

On October 22 1962, Kennedy met with his closest advisors and considered
their advice, which ranged from bombing the missile sites and invading
Cuba to giving a stern warning to Khrushchev. Kennedy decided on a
middle road of initiating a naval “quarantine” (as distinct from a
“blockade) of “all offensive military equipment” in Cuba. He then went
on national television and announced the discovery of Soviet missiles in
Cuba.

He also sent a letter to Khrushchev letting him know in no uncertain terms

that the United States would not permit offensive weapons to be delivered
to Cuba, and demanding that the site under construction be dismantled. He
then went on national television and delivered a stern address to the
American people. It said, in part:

It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched
from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by
the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response
upon the Soviet Union.

Following this address, the Joint Chiefs of Staff announced that they were
ready for a military strike on Cuba. Khrushchev responded to Kennedy’s
letter on October 24 th with a statement referring to the “quarantine” as a
“blockade” and stating that it was considered an act of aggression. He
further noted that Soviet ships bound for Cuba would continue on their way
regardless of the American blockade. That same day and the next, some
Soviet ships turned back on their own while others were stopped by U.S.
naval forces. When it was determined that they had no offensive weapons
on board, they were allowed to proceed to Cuba. Nevertheless, surveillance
planes that continued to fly over Cuba had evidence that the missile sites
were almost completed. Based on this intelligence, the United States
prepared for war. Kennedy informed his advisors that only an attack on
Cuba would stop the missiles from being placed there, but asked for a little
more time to try to de-escalate the situation with diplomacy.
On the afternoon of October 26 th, anABC news correspondent named John
Scali reported to the White House that he had been approached by a covert
source (Soviet) claiming that if the United States promised not to invade
Cuba, the Soviets would remove their missiles. Later that evening, a
message arrived from Khrushchev saying more or less the same:

If there is no intention to doom the world to the catastrophe of

thermonuclear war, then let us not only relax the forces pulling on the ends
of the rope, let us take measures to untie that knot. We are ready for this.

Despite this passionate plea for peace, White House authorities never
determined that this message was authentic, and the following day, October
27 th, another message arrived at the White House demanding that any deal
would have to include the removal of American Jupiter missiles from
Turkey, which was a member of NATO. To make things even tenser, an
American reconnaissance U-2 jet was shot down over Cuba, killing pilot
Rudolf Anderson Jr.

In a diplomatic move calculated to get maximum effect for the Americans,

Kennedy decided to ignore the second message from Khrushchev
demanding the removal of the missiles from Turkey and responded to the
first, more passionate plea for peace. Kennedy responded by sending a
message outlining the proposed steps for the removal of Soviet missiles
from Cuba under United Nations supervision. In return, he promised, the
United States would guarantee that they would not attack Cuba. He did not
mention Turkey or the missiles that were there, despite the fact that they
were probably going to remove the missiles anyway. This kind of
brinksmanship was notable for its nerve.

Attorney General Robert Kennedy then urgently met with the Soviet
ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin, to tell him that the United States would
remove in fact the missiles from Turkey, but that it could not be included as
part of this deal. The following morning, Khrushchev announced that the
Soviet missiles would be dismantled and removed from Cuban soil. The
missiles were in fact removed by November 20, 1962 and the American
missiles in Turkey were also removed by April 1963. The crisis was thus
averted by subtle diplomacy on both sides. What was most singular about
this crisis was that it was almost entirely conducted at the highest levels,
from the White House. Neither the Senate nor the House of Representatives
had any input into this potentially catastrophic diplomatic spat. Although
this is speculation, it is possible that this was done deliberately to help allay
any potential losses in the upcoming midterm elections. In the November
mid-term elections, the Democrats lost a few seats to the Republicans in the
House of Representatives but managed to maintain their majority, and
actually managed to increase their share of Senate seats, including the
election of Jack Kennedy’s youngest brother Edward (Ted) Kennedy in the
seat President Kennedy had vacated in Massachusetts.
 VIETNAM

P resident Kennedy believed in containing the spread of communism

in the world. From his earliest speeches, he decried the loss of
China, and feared what was referred to as a Domino Theory which
was the theory that if one Asian country fell to communism, they would all
fall, and would be lost to democracy forever which was his most important
foreign policy, stated as early as his inaugural speech. Kennedy also made it
clear that he planned to continue the policy begun by Eisenhower of
supporting the government of Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem in South
Vietnam in the belief that if Vietnam fell to the communists, all the other
nations around it would as well. The fact was that this government was not
a good one and was not popular among the Vietnamese.

President Kennedy spoke to French President Charles de Gaulle about this

issue and whether he ought to commit troops to supporting Diem; de Gaulle
believed that warfare in Vietnam would lead to a “bottomless military and
political swamp,” and he based this advice on the French experience in
French Indochina (as it was then known by the French). In 1954, the French
had been defeated in the battle at Dien Bien Phu, leading to the withdrawal
of French troops, and a significant embarrassment of the French.

In Washington though, there was a significant lack of historical perspective

among the more hawkish of his foreign policy advisors. In general, they
dismissed de Gaulle’s warnings on the belief that American forces were far
better equipped and prepared for war, given their experience in the Korean
conflict.

At first, in 1961, Kennedy felt it appropriate only to fund an increase in the

size of the South Vietnamese army from 150,000 to 170,000, and to supply
one thousand American military advisors to help train this army, even
though both of these actions were contrary to the 1954 Geneva Agreement.
He justified it as an act of one friendly nation to another, and not
intervention in a foreign power.

In addition, the South Vietnamese government instituted a program called

the “Strategic Hamlet” program, in which many peasants were forcibly
moved from their home villages and placed into “secure compounds.”
This fearful and ill-thought-through plan drove many Vietnamese people
who would otherwise have been in support of the government of Diem, and
drove them into the North’s National Liberation Front (NLF), when they
would have otherwise supported the South had this plan not been executed.
And the American government supported this cruel policy. The Vietnam
War was different from other wars from the past in the same way that the
presidential debates were different – it was televised. The very fact that a
war conducted, even in part, by American soldiers, was brought into the
living rooms of America, caused many Americans to question the motives
of their own government in what seemed to be an ill-advised and overtly
cruel war. According to American intelligence, this policy of strategic
hamlets alone contributed to an increase in membership in the NLF by three
hundred percent. In an effort to correct this situation, President Kennedy
sent even more American advisors, so that by the end of 1962, there were
12,000 in South Vietnam, and three hundred helicopters with American
pilots with strict instructions to avoid military combat. This order was very
difficult to obey.

One of the publicity events of this time that turned America viewers off the
Vietnam War was undertaken by a Buddhist monk named Thich Quang
Duc, who had several of his fellow monks douse him with gasoline and
light him on fire on a busy Saigon road. This horrific spectacle was
broadcast on American television. When other monks began to follow his
example, a spokesman of the South Vietnamese government said

“Let them burn, and we shall clap our hands,”

and another offered to provide them with gasoline. Of course this

statement of bravado went down very poorly in America who had already
seen this poor monk die.

As a result of all these many terrible events, Kennedy became convinced

that Ngo Dinh Diem needed to be overthrown, and so he sent Lucien Cone
in, a CIA operative, to pay some South Vietnamese generals $40,000 to
overthrow him, which they did. Ngo Dinh Diem was killed in October
1963; John F. Kennedy himself was assassinated three weeks later.
President Lyndon Johnson greatly increased the American presence in
Vietnam shortly after taking office. The Vietnam War would become the
worst military action until the Afghan and Iraq wars, thirty years later.
 CIVIL RIGHTS

I t is generally acknowledged that President Kennedy came late to the

civil rights movement. In fact, though, in 1957, he had voted against
the Eisenhower administration’s Civil Rights Act. However, when he
was running for President, he made it clear that he was a supporter of equal
rights. But even after he was elected President, he did not act decisively on
this conversion for several years.

While he had made it clear that he planned to act swiftly to end

discrimination and draft some kind of civil rights legislation, in his
inaugural address, when Martin Luther King Jr. was in thrown in prison,
President Kennedy famously telephone King’s wife Coretta Scott King to
express his sympathy. But international crises of great geo-political
importance had been occupying him during his first year in office, forcing
him to neglect certain aspects of domestic affairs, including civil rights.

Nevertheless, Kennedy did go out of his way to start to correct the racial
imbalance in federal departments, appointing more than forty African
Americans to senior posts in the government and appointing five African
American federal judges in his short time as President. Many of these
changes were made necessary by revelations of racial inequality and
discrimination in the media. The reaction of the Ku Klux Klan to the
Freedom Rides of 1961, for example, was broadcast on national television,
shocking the American public. These groups of mostly college-age white
and black kids from northern states went to Mississippi and Alabama to try
to get black citizens signed up to vote and the Ku Klux Klan reacted to
them with great violence, beating them, burning their buses. Even so,
Kennedy condemned the Freedom Riders as unpatriotic at a time of great
national trouble internationally. It is reported that he did this in the belief
that these people were fomenting unrest at a time when the changes they
sought were easier to bring with legislation.

Robert Kennedy, the Attorney General of the United States under Kennedy,
used the courts as a means of enforcing legislation that had been passed but
not implemented. In his time as Attorney General, Robert Kennedy brought
an amazing fifty-seven lawsuits against local officials for obstructing
African Americans who were just trying to register to vote. Officials in
Louisiana were threatened with prison time for refusing to hand over
designated funding for de-segregated schools. When the Washington
Redskins refused to hire African American players – the last NFL team to
refuse – Kennedy refused to let the team play in the federally-funded
stadium. In short order they had their first black player.

Kennedy created the Commission on Equal Employment Opportunity

(CEEO), which tried to ensure that all federal departments gave equal
opportunity to all employees, regardless of their racial background, and all
companies that did business with the federal government would have to
follow this guideline as well if they were to continue to do business with the
United States government.
The fact of the matter is that American Presidents do not have unlimited
power to enact legislation that they wish to, and much of Kennedy’s desire
to help was thwarted by other branches of government, particularly the
individual state governments.

One specific example is that of African American graduate student James

Meredith who, after having served honorably in the United States Air
Force, applied to the University of Mississippi to do a doctorate and was
rejected solely on the basis of his skin color. Meredith sought help from the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
and went as far as the Supreme Court, which ruled in his favor. When he
went to enroll, Attorney General Robert Kennedy sent five hundred U.S.
marshals to ensure his safety. As it happened, over two hundred of these
marshals were injured, and two were shot by those determined to prevent
Meredith from enrolling. Kennedy was incensed and sent federal troops to
the University of Mississippi to ensure that Meredith could enroll and he
did.

On August 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led the March on
Washington for Jobs and Freedom, attended by over 250,000 protesters.
This event galvanized the civil rights movement thrusting King into the
spotlight. It was here that he gave his now-famous “I have a dream”
speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
Prior to this march, President Kennedy had met with organizers, telling
them that he feared the event would end in violence. In this meeting on June
22, Kennedy suggested that the rally was ill-timed because it might
undermine the legislation going forward in Congress. King insisted that the
march should go forward, saying

“Frankly, I have never engaged in any direct-action movement

which did not seem ill-timed.”

Kennedy reluctantly endorsed the March on Washington for Jobs and

Freedom, making sure that all security precautions would be taken.

The events that unfolded in Birmingham Alabama were key to the

development of civil rights in the United States under President Kennedy.
Governor George Wallace was an opponent of desegregation and the Ku
Klux Klan was very strong in Alabama. Birmingham police commissioner
Eugene Connor was notorious for using police brutality, and when several
homemade bombs were detonated in black homes and churches, the civil
rights movement under the leadership of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. made
Birmingham the focus of its attention.

King was arrested in Birmingham while leading a non-violent protest and

he wrote a letter to local white ministers eloquently justifying his resistance
to the violent police crackdown. His now-famous “Letter from
Birmingham Jail” was published nationally along with images of shocking
police brutality, causing a groundswell of support for the burgeoning civil
rights movement.

At 10:22 on the morning of Sunday, September 15, 1963, a bomb went off
on a church’s east side, killing four young girls (14-year-old Addie Mae
Collins, Cynthia Wesley and Carole Robertson and 11-year-old Denise
McNair), and injuring more than twenty. This was the third such church
bombing in a week and thousands of African American protesters gathered
at the scene of the bombing to protest this horror. Governor George Wallace
sent in police to break up the protests, setting off violent clashes throughout
the city. Several protestors were arrested and two were killed (one by the
police) before the National Guard was called in to restore order. But it was
the public outcry against the death of the four young girls that propelled
President Kennedy to act and provide support to help end segregation by
passing both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of
1965 under President Lyndon Johnson.
 THE SPACE RACE

W hen the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, their first satellite, in

1957, the space race was on. President Eisenhower initiated
Project Mercury two years later. NASA selected seven men to
take part in the program: Scott Carpenter, Leroy Gordon Cooper, John
Glenn Jr., Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Walter Schirra Jr., Alan Shepard Jr., and
Donald “Deke” Slayton. The goals of this project were fairly clear: they
were to orbit a manned spacecraft around Earth, to investigate the ability of
astronauts to function in space, and to be able to recover the astronauts and
their equipment safely.

When Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to orbit the
earth, the United States was embarrassed. After the Soviets had beaten the
Americans to the first low earth orbit, the space race was clearly on. After
having watched the launch of the Freedom 7 rocket with his wife Jacqueline
and Vice President Lyndon Johnson in the Oval Office, on May 25, 1961,
President Kennedy delivered a special message to Congress on “urgent
national needs.” He asked for an additional expenditure of between seven
and nine billion dollars over the next five years for the space program,
proclaiming that “this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal,
before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him
safely to the earth.” This turned out to be the greatest peacetime expenditure
by any nation that was not given to the military. More importantly, this goal
transfixed the country and brought together many disparate parts of the
country. On May 5 th, astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American in
outer space. Astronaut John Glenn Jr. orbited the Earth in February 1961,
aboard the Friendship 7 rocket.

Then, on February 20, 1962, John Glenn Jr. became the first American to
orbit Earth. Launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, the Friendship 7 space
capsule reached an altitude of one hundred and sixty two miles and an
orbital velocity of 17,500 miles per hour. Glenn orbited the Earth three
times over four hours, and returned safely to Earth, landing near Bermuda,
in a splash-down in the ocean.

This success made the NASA program popular among the general
population of Americans and, spurred on by this success, they worked
toward landing a man on the Moon. By May 1963, astronauts Scott
Carpenter, Walter Schirra Jr., and L. Gordon Cooper had all successfully
orbited Earth, with each mission lasting longer than the one before it.

Project Gemini, the second NASA space program, aimed to perfect the
entry and re-entry maneuvers of a spacecraft and conduct further tests on
how individuals would be affected by long periods of space travel. Finally,
the Apollo Program was initiated; this was the project to land a man on the
Moon and return him safely. It wasn’t until July 20, 1969, that the Apollo
11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin
Jr. finally realized President Kennedy's dream.
 ASSASSINATION

O n November 22, 1963, President Kennedy travelled with First

Lady Jacqueline Kennedy to Dallas Texas. He had spoken in
several other Texas towns the day before. His motorcade
travelled from the Dallas airfield to the Dallas Trade Mart, where he was
scheduled to speak to Democratic supporters, as part of his re-election
campaign. This was a part of the unofficial re-election campaign.

Dallas had been a particularly troublesome city for Kennedy for some time
– a feud among Democrats in the state meant that he needed to bring them
together if he hoped to win Texas in the next election, a must, if he expected
to be re-elected. To add to the unease in the state, the American
Ambassador to the United Nations, Adlai Stevenson, had been physically
assaulted only a month before in Dallas, and so all Kennedy’s advisors were
on high alert.

After spending Thursday night in Fort Worth, Kennedy gave two brief
speeches and then boarded the plane for the thirteen minute flight to Dallas.
When they arrived at Love Field on the morning of Friday November 22 nd,
they were greeted by well-wishers at the fence. Then President and First
Lady Kennedy got into the back seat of the convertible that was to bring
them downtown. Governor John Connally and his wife Nellie were already
seated in the front. The light rain that had been falling all morning had
finally stopped and so the plastic bubbletop was left off. Vice President
Lyndon Johnson and his wife Lady Bird Johnson, both from Texas, were in
the car behind them as they made their way through the streets of Dallas.
Crowds of people lined the streets to see the Kennedys. From Main Street,
the car turned on to Dealey Plaza at about 12:30 pm, and, as they passed the
Texas School Book Depository, gunfire could be heard in the square. The
President was struck in the neck and head, and he slumped over, caught by
Jacqueline Kennedy, while Governor Connolly was hit in the chest.

The car they had been riding in sped off to Parkland Memorial Hospital
where a Catholic priest administered last rites to the President and he was
declared dead, at 1:00 pm. The governor was seriously wounded by
recovered.

Kennedy’s body was taken to Love Field and placed on Air Force One,
where Vice President Lyndon Johnson took the oath of office, administered
by U.S. District court Judge Sarah Hughes. It was all over by 2:38 pm.

At about 1:30 pm, twenty-four year old Lee Harvey Oswald, who had
recently been hired to work at the Texas School Book Depository was
arrested for the assassination of John F. Kennedy and for the death of
Patrolman J. D. Tippit on a Dallas street, when the police officer had
approached him to question him about the assassination. He was arrested
shortly afterward in a movie theater.
On Sunday, November 24th, Oswald was scheduled to be transferred from
police headquarters to the county jail. On live national television, night club
owner Jack Ruby approached Oswald, with a police officer on either side of
him, raised a pistol at point blank range, and fired at Lee Harvey Oswald,
fatally injuring him; he was declared dead a mere two hours later at
Parkland Hospital. The strangeness of this killing, and Jack Ruby’s apparent
connections to organized crime and some corrupt police, led to rampant
speculation about why this happened, including a number of books and a
popular film. The presidential commission led by Chief Justice Earl Warren,
though, concluded that Oswald acted alone. Ruby was arrested, tried, and
found guilty of “murder with malice” and sentenced to die, although his
sentence was commuted, and he died of lung cancer in 1966 while awaiting
a new trial.
 KENNEDY THE ORATOR

O ne of the things that distinguished Kennedy from other American

Presidents who preceded him was his interest in, and ability at
oratory. While a young man at Harvard, he memorized the “St.
Crispin’s Day speech” from William Shakespeare’s Henry V, in which
Henry refers to his comrades in arms as “we band of brothers”:

If we are mark'd to die, we are enow

To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires:
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England:
God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more, methinks, would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.
Given Kennedy’s co-operation with his own brothers, and his reliance on
family, as well as his military experiences, this must have had great
meaning to him. When we think of Kennedy we think of the great lines
from his many speeches, including his inaugural address, in which he
invited Americans to

“ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for
your country,”

and asking the people of the world to fight the

“common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war

itself.”

This inaugural address still stands out as one of the great rallying cries
for the American people.

His comments about the space race delivered at Rice University in

September 1962, in which he said

“we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things,
not because they are easy, but because they are hard,”

was likewise a succinct description of the herculean task of going to the

moon.
Kennedy’s memorable June 1963 began with a seemingly prosaic task: a
commencement speech at American University in Washington, D.C., on
June 10, 1963. Less than a year removed from a brush with nuclear war
during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy spoke of the need for peace with
the nation’s avowed enemy, the communists in the Soviet Union. He said:

Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet.
We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future.
And we are all mortal. Let us re-examine our attitude towards
the Soviet Union. No government or social system is so evil that
its people must be considered as lacking in virtue. We must hail
the Russian people for their many achievements — in science
and space, in economic and industrial growth, in culture and in
acts of courage.

Similarly, his radio and television Address to the American People on Civil
Rights was delivered on June 11, 1963. It was a reaction to the barring of
African American students from attending the University of Alabama by
Governor George Wallace. In it, he addressed the civil rights movement and
the struggle to attain equal rights for all:

This nation was founded by men of many nations and backgrounds.

It was founded on the principle that all men are created equal
and that the rights of every man are diminished when the rights
of one man are threatened.
He went on….

If an American, because his skin is dark ... cannot enjoy the full and
free life which all of us want, then who among us would be
content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his
place?"

Kennedy spoke without notes for much of the speech, reminding Americans
that when they serve in the army,

“we do not ask for whites only.”

He announced that he was going to introduce a civil rights bill within a

matter of days, knowing that this would risk the support of Southern
Democrats who were staunchly opposed to integration. Like many of his
legislation aimed at improving the country, Kennedy’s bill became law in
1964, shortly after he was assassinated.

Another great address was his “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech, made famous
by the suggestions that his German was incorrect, and that, rather than
telling the citizens of Berlin that he too was a citizen of Berlin, that he was
in fact a jelly donut called a Berliner. As humorous as this suggestion is, in
fact, this is not the case, but a great deal of levity has been made since he
spoke this. He gave the address in West Berlin to an audience of 450,000 at
the Berlin Wall in June 1963. This speech was delivered at a critical time in
the Cold War, and was a high point of the so-called New Frontier. It was
intended as a statement of solidarity with both the citizens of West Berlin,
which had been recently cut off from East Berlin by the erection of the
Berlin Wall, built, as Kennedy noted, not to keep people from getting out,
but to prevent them from getting into West Berlin, after twenty thousand
East Berliners fled there. Kennedy said,

Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was civis romanus sum.
Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is "Ich bin
ein Berliner!"... All free men, wherever they may live, are
citizens of Berlin, and therefore, as a free man, I take pride in
the words “Ich bin ein Berliner!”

During that same international trip, he visited the Republic of Ireland,

where he was received with rapturous applause in the Irish parliament, as
the most successful Irish politician in history. In a long and poetry-filled
address, Kennedy said:

And so it is that our two nations, divided by distance, have been

united by history. No people ever believed more deeply in the
cause of Irish freedom than the people of the United States. And
no country contributed more to building my own than your sons
and daughters. They came to our shores in a mixture of hope and
agony, and I would not underrate the difficulties of their course
once they arrived in the United States. They left behind hearts,
fields, and a nation yearning to be free. It is no wonder that
James Joyce described the Atlantic as a bowl of bitter tears. And
an earlier poet wrote, “They are going, going, going, and we
cannot bid them stay.”
VII
 LASTING LEGACY OF JOHN F.
KENNEDY

We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can
guide us thru that darkness to a safe and sane future.

John F. Kennedy

Although the civil rights legislation took a long and circuitous route through
the courts, it was begun by Kennedy, and many of the breakthroughs in civil
rights began in the time of his presidency. On the other hand, although
Kennedy had made it clear that the United States’ involvement in Vietnam
was to end, he did start the ball rolling that eventually led to an all-out war
in Vietnam, that led to one of the largest protest loci in all of American
history. The escalation of war was done largely contrary to the hopes and
wishes of John F. Kennedy by his successor Lyndon B. Johnson, but none
of the conditions would have been possible had he not begun the ill-
fortuned foray into Vietnam.

Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline were trend-setters, using the White House
as a sort of demonstration of the coming-of-age of America. Together, they
remodeled the building, filling it with contemporary American art and
furniture. They were both attractive people and their fashion sense became
a source of pride for the country.

The blossoming of art, music, theatre, and literature under the Kennedy
tenure was notable and particularly welcome after a very conservative,
though prosperous 1950s. the Kennedy court, featuring John, his glamorous
wife Jacqueline, his brothers (Attorney General) Robert, and (Senator)
Edward became associated with the popular Broadway musical Camelot.
In many ways, the decade of the 60s, now recognized as the most
important to the advancement of the United States as a world-leader both
militarily and culturally, was due in large part to the work of President John
F. Kennedy.
On the other hand, the meddling of institutions like the CIA in the
affairs of other countries was greatly expanded during the Kennedy
administration. This shameful legacy, responsible for the isolation of Cuba,
the establishment of a number of brutal dictators in South and Central
America and Africa, as well as the destabilizing of Vietnam. Cambodia, and
Burma were all begun during the Kennedy administration.
VIII
 HOW CAN WE USE KENNEDY IN OUR
LIVES?

Too often we... enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort
of thought.

John F. Kennedy

Kennedy, to many contemporary observers, is the epitome of the entitled

blue-blood in America. While the nation is a democracy, it is obsessed with
aristocracy, and the Kennedys are, in the eyes of many, America’s royalty.
This, however, was not always so. It was John F. Kennedy who created this
dynasty.

In Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare, Malvolio says

“some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have
greatness thrust upon 'em.”

In many ways Kennedy experienced all three of these means of

achieving greatness: he was born to a very wealthy father and a very
influential mother, both of whom urged, cajoled, and helped him attain
greatness after the eldest brother was killed. And so, in that way, he had
greatness thrust upon him. Nevertheless, his intense work ethic, coupled
with his keen sense of the dramatic and the important, allowed him to
achieve greatness.

Like all people, particularly those who have achieved high office, Kennedy
had many flaws as well, and following his death, a great deal of energy was
spent on digging up his many marital indiscretions. He was a larger than life
man, it is said, with larger than life appetites. It was rumored that
Hollywood actress Marilyn Monroe had an affair with him. It was also
rumored that he had a large number of extra-marital affairs with less famous
women, that there was a revolving door of women to service the president.
It is neither valuable nor relevant to credit these rumors, but what is
relevant in this was that he was a very diligent and dedicated public servant,
many of whose achievements were only realized after his death.

He was often convinced by other great minds – Martin Luther King Jr.,
Robert Kennedy, Robert McNamara – to do the right thing. He was willing
to change his position on many issues, taking advice from wiser minds than
his own. This is a singularly important characteristic in a leader, one that is
woefully lacking in many of our contemporary leaders.

And so, as we look back at the too-short life of this great man, we can see
that he achieved greatness not merely for himself, but for his country.
American power was never greater than under President John F. Kennedy.
In the truest sense of the phrase, Kennedy stayed faithful to what he asked
of his fellow Americans: he asked not what his country could do for him,
but what he could do for his country. This is something that we should
always seek in a great leader.
IX
 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

I look forward to a great future for America - a future in which our

country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its
wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose.

John F. Kennedy

BY KENNEDY

Kennedy, John F., Profiles in Courage, New York: HarperCollins,

2003. Originally published by Harper & Brothers, 1956.

Kennedy John F., Why England Slept, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood

Press, 1981. Originally published in New York by W. Funk, 1940.

ABOUT KENNEDY

Dallek, Robert, “The Medical Ordeals of JFK” The Atlantic,

December 2002
Dallek, Robert, An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963,
Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Co., 2003

Schlesinger Jr., Arthur M., A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy In

The White House, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965.
Copyright © 2019 by Kolme Korkeudet Oy

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