John F. Kennedy

Brian A Fitzgerald

Eng/147

March 2 2015

The Things That John F Kennedy Was Well Known

In October 1962, a spy plane photographed missiles sites being built by Russia on Cuban soil. President Kennedy did not want the Russian military and Cuban people to know he knows about the missile arsenal. So he held a secret meeting with his cabinet for a few days to resolve the issues at hand. By 1963 there were signs of less tension between Russia and USA. President Kennedy urged Americans reexamine the cold war and called for a strategy of peace that would make the world a safer place for divisity "For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal."

On October 14, 1960, in the wee hours in the am, Senator John F. Kennedy spoke to a crowd of eager students at the University of Michigan at a presidential campaign speech. In his improvised speech, Kennedy asked, "How many of you, who are going to be doctors, are willing to spend your days in Ghana? Technicians or engineers how many of you are willing to work in the Foreign Service, and spend your lives traveling around the world?" His young audience responded to this speech well with a petition signed by a thousand students willing to serve abroad in the Peace Corp program. Kennedy asked R. Sargent Shriver, to direct a Peace Corps Task Force. Shriver outlined seven steps to forming the Peace Corps in a remembrance to Kennedy in February 1961. Tanganyika and Ghana were the first countries to participate in the program. President Kennedy welcomed the inaugural group of volunteers at the White House on August 28, 1961, to give them a personal farewell before their departure to Africa.

President Kennedy understood the urge to restore America's confidence and intended not

just to match the Soviets, but out due them. On May 25, 1961, he stood before Congress to

deliver a message on "urgent national needs." He asked for an additional amount of funds over

the next five years for the space program, proclaiming that "this nation should commit itself to

reach this goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him

safely to the earth." President Kennedy was happy with this goal as a means of focusing

and mobilizing the nation's development in space efforts. Cynics questioned the ability of the

National Aeronautics Space Administration to fulfill the President's timetable.

Within a year, however, Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom became the first two Americans to travel into space.

In 1961, a new space program, Project Mercury, was initiated two years later, during President Dwight D. Eisenhower's administration

References
John F. Kennedy Presidental Library And Museum Cuban Missile Crisis, (n.d). Retrieved from
(Para 5) http://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/JFK-in-History/Cuban-Missile-Crisis.aspx John F. Kennedy Presidental Library And Museum Peace Corps. (n.d). Retrieved from
(Para 1) http://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/JFK-in-History/Peace-Corps.aspx John F. Kennedy Presidental Library And Museum Space Program. (n.d). Retrieved from
http://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/JFK-in-History/Space-Program.aspx