Funeral
A Requiem Mass was celebrated for Kennedy at the Cathedral
of St. Matthew the Apostle on November 25, 1963. Afterwards, Kennedy was interred in a small
plot, 20 by 30 ft., in Arlington National Cemetery. Over a period of three
years (1964–1966), an estimated 16 million people visited his grave. On March
14, 1967, Kennedy's remains were disinterred and moved only a few feet away to
a permanent burial plot and memorial. It was from this memorial that the graves
of both Robert and Ted Kennedy were modeled.
The honor guard at Kennedy's graveside was the 37th Cadet
Class of the Irish Army. Kennedy was greatly impressed by the Irish Cadets on
his last official visit to Ireland, so much so that Jacqueline Kennedy
requested the Irish Army to be the honor guard at her husband's funeral.
Jacqueline and their two deceased minor children were later
interred in the same plot. Kennedy's brother Robert was buried nearby in June
1968. In August 2009, Ted was also buried near his two brothers. John F.
Kennedy's grave is lit with an "Eternal Flame". Kennedy and William
Howard Taft are the only two U.S. presidents buried at Arlington. According to the JFK Library, "I Have a
Rendezvous with Death", by Alan Seeger "was one of John F. Kennedy's
favorite poems and he often asked his wife to recite it".
Personal life,
family, and reputation
The Kennedy family in
Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, in 1963
The Kennedy family is one of the most established political
families in the United States, having produced a president, three senators,
three ambassadors, and multiple other representatives and politicians, both at
the federal and state level. While a Congressman, Kennedy embarked on a seven-week
trip to India, Japan, Vietnam, and Israel in 1951, at which point he became
close with his then 25-year-old brother Bobby, as well as his 27-year-old
sister Pat. Because they were several years apart in age, the brothers had
previously seen little of each other. This 25,000-mile (40,000 km) trip was the
first extended time they had spent together and resulted in their becoming best
friends. Bobby would eventually play a
major role in his brother's career, serving as his brother's Attorney General
and presidential advisor. Bobby would
later run for president in 1968 before his assassination, while another Kennedy
brother, Ted, ran for president in 1980.
Kennedy came in third (behind Martin Luther King Jr. and
Mother Teresa) in Gallup's List of Widely Admired People of the 20th century. Kennedy
was a life member of the National Rifle Association.
Wife and children
The First Family in
1962
Kennedy met his future wife, Jacqueline Lee
"Jackie" Bouvier (1929–1994), when he was a congressman. Charles L.
Bartlett, a journalist, introduced the pair at a dinner party. They were married a year after he was elected
senator, on September 12, 1953. After
suffering a miscarriage in 1955 and a stillbirth in 1956 (their daughter
Arabella), their daughter Caroline was born in 1957 and is the only surviving
member of JFK's immediate family. John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr., nicknamed
"John-John" by the press as a child, was born in late November 1960,
17 days after his father was elected. John Jr., a graduate of Brown University,
died in 1999 when the small plane he was piloting crashed en route to Martha's
Vineyard. In 1963, months before JFK's
assassination, Jackie gave birth to a son, Patrick. However, he died after 2
days due to complications from birth.
Popular image
Kennedy and his wife were younger in comparison to the
presidents and first ladies who preceded them and both were popular in the
media culture in ways more common to pop singers and movie stars than
politicians, influencing fashion trends and becoming the subjects of numerous
photo spreads in popular magazines. Although Eisenhower had allowed
presidential press conferences to be filmed for television, Kennedy was the
first president to ask for them to be broadcast live and made good use of the
medium. In 1961 the Radio-Television News Directors
Association presented Kennedy with its highest honor, the Paul White Award, in
recognition of his open relationship with the media.
Mrs. Kennedy brought new art and furniture to the White
House, and directed its restoration. They invited a range of artists, writers
and intellectuals to rounds of White House dinners, raising the profile of the
arts in America. On the White House lawn, the Kennedys established a swimming
pool and tree house, while Caroline attended a preschool along with 10 other
children inside the home.
The president was closely tied to popular culture,
emphasized by songs such as "Twisting at the White House". Vaughn
Meader's First Family comedy album, which parodied the president, the first
lady, their family, and the administration, sold about four million copies. On
May 19, 1962, Marilyn Monroe sang "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" at
a large party in Madison Square Garden, celebrating Kennedy's upcoming
forty-fifth birthday.
"Camelot
Era"
The term "Camelot" came to be used retrospectively
as iconic of the Kennedy administration, and the charisma of Kennedy and his
family. The term was first publicly used by his wife in a post-assassination
Life magazine interview with Theodore H. White, in which she revealed his
affection for the contemporary Broadway musical of the same name, particularly
the closing lines of the title song:
Don't let it be
forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief, shining moment that was
known as Camelot. There'll be great presidents
again ... but there will never be another Camelot.— Jacqueline Kennedy
Health
In 2002, Robert Dallek wrote an extensive history of
Kennedy's health. Dallek was able to consult a collection of Kennedy-associated
papers from the years 1955–1963, including X-rays and prescription records from
the files of White House physician Dr. Janet Travell. According to Travell's
records, during his presidential years Kennedy suffered from high fevers;
stomach, colon, and prostate issues; abscesses; high cholesterol; and adrenal
problems. Travell kept a "Medicine Administration Record,"
cataloguing Kennedy's medications: "injected and ingested corticosteroids
for his adrenal insufficiency; procaine shots and ultrasound treatments and hot
packs for his back; Lomotil, Metamucil, paregoric, phenobarbital, testosterone,
and trasentine to control his diarrhea, abdominal discomfort, and weight loss;
penicillin and other antibiotics for his urinary-tract infections and an
abscess; and Tuinal to help him sleep."
Years after Kennedy's death, it was revealed that in
September 1947, while Kennedy was 30 and in his first term in Congress, he was
diagnosed by Sir Daniel Davis at The London Clinic with Addison's disease, a
rare endocrine disorder. In 1966, Dr. Travell revealed that Kennedy also had
hypothyroidism. The presence of two endocrine diseases raises the possibility
that Kennedy had autoimmune polyendocrine syndrome type 2 (APS 2).
Kennedy also suffered from chronic and severe back pain, for
which he had surgery and was written up in the American Medical Association's
Archives of Surgery. Kennedy's condition may have had diplomatic repercussions,
as he appears to have been taking a combination of drugs to treat severe back
pain during the 1961 Vienna Summit with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. The
combination included hormones, animal organ cells, steroids, vitamins, enzymes,
and amphetamines, and possible potential side effects included hyperactivity,
hypertension, impaired judgment, nervousness, and mood swings. Kennedy at one time was regularly seen by no
fewer than three doctors, one of whom, Max Jacobson, was unknown to the other
two, as his mode of treatment was controversial and used for the most severe bouts of back
pain.
Into late 1961, disagreements existed among Kennedy's
doctors concerning his proper balance of medication and exercise. The president
preferred the former, because he was short on time and desired immediate
relief. During that time, the
president's physician, George Burkley, did set up some gym equipment in the
White House basement, where Kennedy did stretching exercises for his back three
times a week. Details of these and other
medical problems were not publicly disclosed during Kennedy's lifetime. The President's primary White House physician,
George Burkley, realized that treatments by Jacobson and Travell, including the
excessive use of steroids and amphetamines, were medically inappropriate, and
took effective action to remove the president from their care. Dr. Nassir Ghaemi, a physician who reviewed
Kennedy's medical records in his presidential archives, has opined that
Kennedy's leadership (e.g. the 1962 Cuban Missile crisis and other events
during 1963) improved greatly once the treatments of Jacobson had been
discontinued and been replaced by a medically appropriate regimen under
Burkley. Ghaemi concluded there was a "correlation; it is not causation;
but it may not be coincidence either".
Personal tragedies
Kennedy and his family have experienced a number of personal
tragedies. His older brother Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. was killed in action in 1944
at age 29, when his plane exploded over the English Channel during a first
attack execution of Operation Aphrodite during World War II. Kennedy's younger sister Rose Marie
"Rosemary" Kennedy was born in 1918 with intellectual disabilities
and underwent a prefrontal lobotomy at age 23, leaving her incapacitated for
the rest of her life, until her death in 2005. His younger sister Kathleen
Agnes "Kick" Kennedy died in a plane crash en route to France in
1948. His wife Jacqueline Kennedy suffered a miscarriage in 1955 and a
stillbirth in 1956: a daughter informally named Arabella. A son, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, died two days
after birth in August 1963.
Affairs, extramarital
relationships and friendships
Kennedy was single in the 1940s when he had affairs with Danish
journalist Inga Arvad and actress Gene Tierney. Before and after he assumed the presidency,
Kennedy reportedly had affairs with a number of women, including Marilyn
Monroe, Gunilla von Post, Judith Campbell, Mary Pinchot Meyer, Marlene
Dietrich, Mimi Alford, and his wife's press secretary, Pamela Turnure.
The extent of Kennedy's relationship with Monroe is not
fully known, although it has been reported that they spent a weekend together
in March 1962 while he was staying at Bing Crosby's house. Furthermore, people
at the White House switchboard noted that Monroe had called Kennedy during
1962. J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI director,
received reports about Kennedy's indiscretions.
Kennedy inspired affection and loyalty from the members of
his team and his supporters. According
to Reeves, this included "the logistics of Kennedy's liaisons ... [which]
required secrecy and devotion rare in the annals of the energetic service
demanded by successful politicians."
Kennedy believed that his friendly relationship with members of the
press would help protect him from public revelations about his sex life.
Lem Billings was a close and long-time friend of Kennedy and
the Kennedy family. Billings had his own room in which to stay at several of
John F. Kennedy's residences. Though there has never been any proof of
homosexual activity between them, Kennedy would often, and even when married,
share a bedroom with his lifelong friend.
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