Collection item of the week: Childhood photographs of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. These two photographs show the President’s father, Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., as a toddler (right) and high school student (left). The former was taken in approximately 1890 when Joe was two years old and living with his parents in East Boston. The latter was taken around 1905 and shows Joe as the colonel of a student regiment at the prestigious Boston Latin School at approximately 17 years of age. These framed pictures are on display atop the desk in the boudoir of the President’s mother, Mrs. Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, among other personal effects of hers. Mr. Kennedy was ambitious from a young age. He reportedly saw little purpose as a teenager in playing on a baseball team unless he were its captain and strived to overcome a middling academic record through athleticism, popularity, and charisma. Serving as the commanding officer of the student regiment, therefore, was in line with his other positions as captain of the high school’s baseball team and Senior Class President. Despite wearing a uniform in this photo, however, Mr. Kennedy never served in the military. During his first married years here on Beals St., the outbreak of World War I prompted Mr. Kennedy to leave his job as the youngest bank president in America to work as the Assistant Manager at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, MA. By doing so and working for the Bethlehem Steel Company, he remained exempt from the draft for soldiers and became involved in overseeing the production of many of the warships used in that conflict. Often working six days a week and 12 hours per day, Mr. Kennedy took business phone calls about the shipyard during his limited hours at home and was often physically unavailable to his young family throughout those years. Mrs. Kennedy may very well have spent more time looking at these photos of her husband than she did with him while he was in that position. Mr. Kennedy’s commitment, savvy, and business success at the shipyard, though, paid off in a professional sense and served as a powerful springboard for his later financial and political endeavors.
Posted on: Tue, 01 Jul 2014 12:00:01 +0000
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