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John F. Kennedy Hero Essay

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John Fitzgerald Kennedy: A Deserving Hero “Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality” (Bennis). During his life, John F. Kennedy took his innovative and thoughtful ideas and brought them to life. Born on May 29th, 1917 in Brookline, Massachusetts, the Kennedys were a wealthy Irish-American family that was very involved with the politics of Massachusetts. Raised with a silver spoon in his mouth, Kennedy was the son of Joseph P. Kennedy, an American ambassador to Britain during World War II. His mother Rose, on the other hand, was a philanthropist who served as the family’s matriarch. Throughout Kennedy’s life, he attended private schools from his elementary school up to his university, constantly displaying his …show more content…

As the Soviets had advanced much faster than the U.S. in this period of time, Kennedy pushed to excel past their advancements. The space race represented the promise of the New Frontier, inspiring the coming generations of Americans to pursue dreams that had once seemed unattainable. Citizens of the United States were revitalized by Kennedy’s goal, giving the U.S. a refreshing sense of motivation and unity to land a man on the moon before the decade was over. Later on in his presidency, the U.S. had also gone through the Cuban Missile Crisis. Many thought an all-out war was imminent, but Kennedy prevented any sequential conflicts: “…in October 1962, Kennedy imposed a quarantine on all offensive weapons bound for Cuba. While the world trembled on the brink of nuclear war, the Russians backed down and agreed to take the missiles away. The American response to the Cuban crisis evidently persuaded Moscow of the futility of nuclear blackmail” (Beschloss). Kennedy reasoned with Russia and Cuba during times of distress and anxiety, making conservative choices as to not provoke nuclear war. Learning from his mistakes made in the Bay of Pigs invasion, Kennedy did not wish to engage in war with military powerhouses Cuba and Russia. As a Senator,

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