More commonplace controversies raged. The CRIMSON ran a poll on "outmoded" parietal hours. At that time, the rules required the presence of a second woman in a room where women guests were being entertained. Despite the ensuing furor, the regulations went unchanged.

Chose Winthrop

In March the time for Freshmen to select a House came around. As usual, the question of distribution in Winthrop arose. Wrote the chairman of the House Committee: "Last year Winthrop was lampooned as being the haven of the athlete. Although it is true that Winthrop is well represented on all the varsity teams, all the activities of the College are also represented." Jack chose Winthrop House.

At the end of his Freshman year, the drums of politics had not yet begun to beat for John F. Kennedy. He remained an amiable fellow, known as the son of Joseph P. Kennedy, interested mainly in athletics.

Jack toured France, Spain, and Italy during the summer and returned with slightly broadened ideas. He was elected to the Spee Club and the Pudding. He also survived a ten-week competition and become an editor on the CRIMSON business board.

Again this fall he went out for swimming. Harold Ulen, varsity coach at the time, remembers him as a good swimmer, but not an outstanding one. Jack was very thin at the time and had spells of sickness, Ulen recalled.

During one of these spells he was in Stillman Infirmary when Ulen was scheduled to hold time trials for the Yale meet. Jack's roommate, football captain Torby MacDonald, smuggled food into his room and then smuggled him out of the infirmary in time for the trials. Tragically enough, he failed to qualify.

Whenever news photographers took pictures of the team, they liked to single out Jack because he was the Ambassador's son. However, young Kennedy disliked such preferential treatment and always disappeared when the press came around.

Kennedy swam varsity for two years and earned his letter in the Yale meet of his Senior year. That year the team had a national champion, a fellow who won just about everything. Dick Tregaskis was later to win a Pulitzer Prize for his Guadalcanal Diary.

On Jack's athletic index, sailing had always ranked high. In June of his sophomore year he brought to Cambridge the MacMillan Bowl, symbol of the intercollegiate championship. "Competing against nine other schools at Wianno, John F. Kennedy and P. L. Reed sailed the Crimson to victory of some 15 points in eight races."

Aside from swimming, sailing, and socializing, Jack moved no mountains in his second year. Since matriculation he had consistently ranked in group IV and did not seem about to rise any higher.

"He could do what he wanted, but did not waste time on what did not interest him," recalled Arthur Holcombe, then associate professor of History and Government. Since Holcombe wanted to "broaden a bit" the Kennedy raised on Boston and Democratic politics, he assigned him a paper on an upstate New York Republican, Rep. Bertrand Snell, a major spokesman for the private power interests.

Though constantly exposed to Democrats (his maternal grandfather, John Fitzgerald, was Mayor of Boston), Kennedy was not particularly partisan. He was for Roosevelt, Holcombe remembered, "but there was not much to argue about in those days--you were either for FDR, or you weren't."

With other Kennedy acquaintances of the time, Holcombe thought that Jack's brother would overshadow him. Joe was the personality kid who wanted to be President, while Jack, like many another action of a well heeled family, had interests that tended to detract from politics and academics.

Ray Colucci, who owns the barbershop in the basement below Elsie's, also said he could tell many tales about Joe, but few about the more reserved Jack. "When Jack was in the chair and you asked him a question, his reply was usually, 'mmm... uh huh'."