Years at College

Intellectual concerns were also clearly secondary to John Kennedy during his first two years in the college. Somewhat strangely, though, he also seemed less interested than in politics than he did in athletics and social activity.

As a freshman, rooming in Weld 32, his first project was to make the freshman football team. He managed to do this, despite his low weight of 156 pounds, and became a reasonably sure-fingered end. The next year, however, because of sprained back, Kennedy did less well in football. He played occasionally on the junior varsity, and then quit football at the end of the season.

Swimming, however, was Kennedy's favorite sport and the one in which he performed best. He swam back-stroke four years and "worked damn hard at it," a friend said. Coach Harold Ulen remembers him as a good swimmer but not an outstanding one; he also recalls that Kennedy was frequently ill.

Kennedy tried to make up for his illness by determination. In his sophomore year he was sent to Stillman Infirmary diet was too skimpy, he had his roommate Torbert McDonald (now a Congressman) smuggle in steak and frappes. Then Kennedy sneaked out of the infirmary for the time trials. But he failed to qualify.

Kennedy also lost the first election he entered at Harvard. One of 35 candidates, he failed to place among the top six in the first round of balloting for class president.

His second venture into politics was more successful. Kennedy was elected chairman of the Freshman Smoker committee that brought sexy Gertrude Neissen to sing in Memorial Hall.

Spee Club

In the fall of his sophomore year Kennedy joined Hasty Pudding and the Spee Club. He used the Pudding only occasionally but for three years he was an active member of the Spee and many of his friendships centered in the club.

That second fall Kennedy also was elected to the Business Board of the CRIMSON. After making the paper, however, he was never much concerned with it, although he does appear in the picture of the CRIMSON staff in the 1940 Yearbook.

Kennedy's academic record during his two years at the college was mediocre. As a Freshman he received C's in English, French, and History 1, and an B in Economics 1. This placed him in Group IV. He was in Group IV again at the end of sophomore year, although he had produced one good long paper in government tutorial for Authur Holcombe, then an associate professor of Government. Aware of Kennedy's strong Democratic background, Holcombe assigned Kennedy work on Rep. Bertrand Snell, an upstate New York Republican who often spoke for private power interests. Kennedy apparently enjoyed his study of Snell.

The first half of Kennedy's junior year was much like the two years that preceded it. By this time, however, Kennedy's father was a news-making ambassador to Great Britain, and Neville Chamberiain had appeased Hitler at Munich. Jack Kennedy decided to spend the second semester of his junior year in Europe and he received University permission to do so.

After spending the spring in Paris, Kennedy traveled to Russia, Turkey, Palestine, the Balkans, and Germany. He stayed in American embassies, and sent back detailed reports to his father.

Thesis

In September, 1939, shortly after the Nazis and Russians invaded Poland, Kennedy returned or his senior year at Harvard. To make up time lost the previous spring he took additional courses and received B's in all of them. But his major work of the year was his thesis: Appeasement at Munich--The inevitable Result of the Slowness of the Conversion of the British Democracy form a Disarmament to a Rearmament Policy.