JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY


     A.  John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born May 29, 1917 in Brookline, Massachusetts. In private conversation before the 1960 election, Senator Kennedy commented, "Do you realize the responsibility I carry? I'm the only person standing between Nixon and The White House." He defeated Nixon, becoming the youngest man ever elected to the U.S. Presidency. On January 20, 1961 he was inaugurated as our 35th President.

     B.  His wife, Jacqueline Kennedy, sat by his side in the same car, when the bullets passed through his head and killed him, on Friday, November 22, 1963. A 7-man commission appointed by President Johnson (Republican Vice-President candidate in 1948 and former Chief Justice Earl Warren; Senator Richard B. Russell of Georgia; Senator John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky; Congressman Hale Boggs, Jr. of Louisiana; Congressman and later to be President Gerald R. Ford of Michigan; ex-CIA Director Mr. Allen W. Dulles; and former Chairman of the Board of Chase National and Chase Manhattan Bank, Mr. John J. McCloy) concluded that the murderer was Lee Harvey Oswald. Millions watching television witnessed the shock of a real assassination on live television, for the first and perhaps only time, when Oswald was shot and killed on Sunday, November 24, 1963 by Jack Ruby. Fifteen years later, in 1978, another government study concluded that a probable conspiracy existed in the killing of President John F. Kennedy.

     C.  John Kennedy's murder was probably the most significant event of the 20th Century. Millions, perhaps billions, found hope and inspiration in his words and in his ability to lead. He was survived by a stunned nation, a shocked world, by his wife, and by two children who hardly had the chance to know their father.