Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr.

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Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. bigraphy, stories - American businessman, political figure, and father of John F. Kennedy

Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. : biography

September 6, 1888 – November 18, 1969

Joseph Patrick "Joe" Kennedy, Sr. (September 6, 1888 – November 18, 1969) was a prominent American businessman, investor, and ambassador. Kennedy was an Irish American and was the father of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, United States Attorney General and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, United States Senator Edward M. Kennedy, naval officer Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., Special Olympics co-founder Eunice Kennedy Shriver, and former U.S. Ambassador to Ireland Jean Kennedy Smith; paternal grandfather of U.S. Representatives Joseph P. Kennedy III and Patrick J. Kennedy II; and patrilineal great-grandfather of U.S. Representative Joseph P. Kennedy IV. He was a leading member of the Democratic Party and of the Irish Catholic community. He was the inaugural Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), and later directed the Maritime Commission. Kennedy served as the United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1938 until late 1940, including the early part of World War II.

Born to a political family in East Boston, Massachusetts, Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. was educated at Boston Latin School and Harvard University, and embarked on a career in finance, making a large fortune as a stock market and commodity investor and by investing in real estate and a wide range of industries., John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Retrieved January 7, 2012.

During World War I, he was an assistant general manager of Bethlehem Steel and developed a friendship with Franklin D. Roosevelt, then Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Kennedy made huge profits from reorganizing and refinancing several Hollywood studios, ultimately merging several acquisitions into Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO) studios. After Prohibition ended in 1933, Kennedy consolidated an even larger fortune when he traveled to Scotland with FDR’s son, James Roosevelt, to buy distribution rights for Scotch whisky. His company, Somerset Importers, became the exclusive American agent for Gordon’s Gin and Dewar’s Scotch. In addition, Kennedy purchased spirits-importation rights from Schenley Industries, a firm in Canada.Richard J. Whalen, The Founding Father, 1964. He owned the largest office building in the country, Chicago’s Merchandise Mart, giving his family an important base in that city and an alliance with the Irish-American political leadership there.

His term as ambassador and his political ambitions ended abruptly during the Battle of Britain in November 1940, with the publishing of his controversial remarks suggesting that "Democracy is finished in England. It may be here, [in the US]."Boston Sunday Globe of November 10, 1940. Kennedy resigned under pressure shortly afterwards. In later years, Kennedy worked behind the scenes to continue building the financial and political fortunes of the Kennedy family. After a disabling stroke on December 19, 1961, at the age of 73, Kennedy acquired aphasia and lost all power of speech, but remained mentally intact. He used a wheelchair after the stroke. He died on November 18, 1969, two months after his 81st birthday. Kennedy was one of four fathers (the other three being Dr. George Tryon Harding, Sr., Nathaniel Fillmore and George H. W. Bush) to live through the entire presidency of a son.http://www.presidentsparents.com/parents-at-the-inaugurations.html

Business career

Kennedy made a large fortune as a stock market and commodity investor and by investing in real estate and a wide range of industries. He never built a significant business from scratch, but his timing as both buyer and seller was usually excellent. Sometimes he made use of inside information in ways which were legal at the time but were later outlawed. In fact, it was Kennedy who later assisted in outlawing the very manipulations he had once engaged in, in the course of his role on the SEC, after President Franklin D. Roosevelt had appointed him as its first-ever chairman.Nasaw, p. 66-67. After Kennedy’s death, and only a week before his own death, gangster Frank Costello claimed to an author/collaborator that he had been associated with Kennedy in bootlegging during Prohibition. But to this day, as Kennedy’s most recent and most thorough biographer David Nasaw asserts, no credible evidence has ever been found that links Joseph Kennedy to any illegal bootlegging activities.Nasaw, p. 79-81. When Fortune magazine published its first list of the richest people in the United States in 1957, it placed him in the $200–400 million band ($– today), meaning that it estimated him to be between the ninth and sixteenth richest person in the United States at that time.