A Nation of Immigrants

John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) graduated from Harvard with honors in 1940 and served as a P. T. Boat Commander in the South Pacific during World War II. He was decorated twice by the Navy for the serious injuries he suffered when his boat was rammed in two while attacking a Japanese destroyer in the Solomons, and for "his courage, endurance and excellent leadership" in towing injured members of his crew to safety. A writer and newspaperman, Kennedy in 1940 wrote Why England Slept, a best-selling analysis of England's unpreparedness for war, termed by the New York Times "a notable textbook for our times." The son of Joseph P. Kennedy, former Ambassador to Great Britain, and the grandson of Boston's one-time Mayor and Congressman John F. Fitzgerald, Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946 at the age of twenty-nine, and re-elected in 1948 and 1950. In 1952 he became the third Democrat ever elected to the Senate from Massachusetts, receiving the largest vote ever polled by a Senator in the history of the state. He was President of the United States from 1961 to 1963. He was the youngest man ever elected to the Oval Office and the first Roman Catholic President.