JOSEPH KENNEDY, JR. Biography - Famous Sports men and women

 
 

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JOSEPH KENNEDY, JR.

Name: Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr.                                                     
Born: 25 July 1915                                                               
Died: 12 August 1944 (aged 29)                                                   
Education Harvard University                                                     
Religious beliefs Roman Catholic                                                 
Parents Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy                       
                                                                                 
Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Jr. (July 25, 1915 – August 12, 1944) was the oldest of
the nine children born to Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. and his wife, Rose Fitzgerald   
Kennedy. Older brother of future President John F. Kennedy, he was expected to   
bear the family's political hopes.                                               
                                                                                 
Joseph, Jr. graduated from the prestigious Choate School in Connecticut in 1933 
(his brother John F. Kennedy also attended) and entered Harvard University in   
1934 and graduated in 1938 (political historian Theodore White was a classmate). 
There he played football, rugby, and crew, and served on the student council. He 
spent a year studying under the tutelage of Harold Laski at the London School of 
Economics, before enrolling in Harvard Law School. In 1940, he made his first   
step in what would have been his political life, as a delegate to the Democratic 
National Convention. He left Harvard Law before his final year to enlist in the 
United States Navy as an aviator. He earned his wings in May 1942 and was sent   
to England in September 1943. He piloted the PB4Y Liberator on anti-submarine   
and other missions on two tours of duty throughout the winter of 1943-44.       
Although Kennedy had completed his 25 combat missions and was eligible to return 
home, he volunteered for an Operation Aphrodite mission in which he died on     
August 12, 1944. Kennedy was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross, the           
Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal, and his name is listed on the     
Tablets of the Missing at the Cambridge American Cemetery and Memorial. In 1946, 
the Navy named a destroyer the USS Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., aboard which         
his younger brother Robert F. Kennedy briefly served.