5. Smith, Nine of Us, 54–55.

6. Leamer, Kennedy Men, 67.

7. Ralph Horton OH, JFKL; Leaming, Jack Kennedy: Education, 30.

8. “When he was home,” Eunice later said, “[Mother] let him sort of take over.” RK, Times to Remember, 148.

9. Smith, Hostage to Fortune, xxv; Goodwin, Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, 351; Charles Laurence, “Grandpa Joseph’s Letters Edited by Adopted Kin,” National Post, January 13, 2001. As Amanda Smith notes, the volume of Kennedy family letter-writing picked up markedly at the start of the 1930s. “As the younger children learned to write and as Joe and Jack set off for boarding school (from which they were obliged to write home weekly), the volume of family correspondence grew dramatically. The children evidenced less care in saving letters received from their parents than did their parents in saving letters from them. Their father’s correspondence with them survives largely because he dictated it and filed the letters he received from them along with the carbon copies of the letters he had sent. Their mother’s correspondence, which at the time was often handwritten, appears to be less complete.” Smith, Hostage to Fortune, 64.

10. Kennedy, True Compass, 40, 30–31.

11. Alfred Adler, The Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler: A Systematic Presentation in Selections from His Writings, ed. H. L. Ansbacher and R. R. Ansbacher (New York, Basic Books: 1956), 379–80, quoted in Leamer, Kennedy Men, 46; James quoted in Dorothy Rowe, My Dearest Enemy, My Dangerous Friend: Making and Breaking Sibling Bonds (London: Routledge, 2007), 87.

12. Kennedy, True Compass, 21; RK, Times to Remember, 120.

13. Burns, John Kennedy, 28.

14. JPK to JPK Jr., July 28, 1926, box 1, JPKP.

15. KLB OH, JFKL; Goodwin, Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, 353.

16. RK, Times to Remember, 110–12; Smith, Nine of Us, 154.

17. Collier and Horowitz, Kennedys, 61.

18. RK, Times to Remember, 94; Parmet, Jack, 18–19.

19. Parmet, Jack, 19.

20. RK, Times to Remember, 192; McTaggart, Kathleen Kennedy, 10; JFK to RK, n.d., printed in Smith, Hostage to Fortune, 97; Kennedy, True Compass, 24.

21. Cameron, Rose, 101–2; KLB OH, JFKL.

22. John F. Kennedy, ed., As We Remember Joe (privately published, 1944), 3.

23. McTaggart, Kathleen Kennedy, 14; Kessler, Sins of the Father, 43; KLB OH, JFKL.

24. Quoted in Meyers, As We Remember Him, 6.

25. Seymour St. John, “JFK: 50th Reunion of 1000 Days,” June 1985, CSA.

26. Quoted in Kennedy, Fruitful Bough, 210–11.

27. McTaggart, Kathleen Kennedy, 12; Damore, Cape Cod Years, 23; Cameron, Rose, 98–100.

28. Kennedy, True Compass, 33. At Christmastime in Bronxville, Jean Kennedy Smith related in her own memoir, each child could expect just one special gift, such as a doll, a game, or roller skates. Smith, Nine of Us, 47, 77.

29. KLB OH, JFKL.

30. Mary Pitcairn Davis interview, CBP; McTaggart, Kathleen Kennedy, 15; Leamer, Kennedy Men, 67.

31. Quoted in Burns, John Kennedy, 130.

32. Quoted in Perry, Rose Kennedy, 51. See also Larson, Rosemary, 43–59.

33. Perry, Rose Kennedy, 51–52; McTaggart, Kathleen Kennedy, 11.

34. RK interview by Robert Coughlan, January 24, 1972, box 10, RKP; Leamer, Kennedy Men, 47.

35. JPK to Rosemary Kennedy, November 13, 1929, box 1, JPKP; Nasaw, Patriarch, 153.

36. Whalen, Founding Father, 165.

37. From the Choate class of 1933, the school placed forty-six students at Yale, twenty at Princeton, eight at Williams, and three at Harvard. Choate News, January 28, 1933.

38. Years later, Jack would claim he was denied admission to Groton on account of his Catholicism. Brauer, Second Reconstruction, 13.

39. Wardell St. John to JPK, May 20, 1929, box 20, JPKP; JPK to Wardell St. John, April 20, 1929, CSA; JPK to Russell Ayers, May 1, 1929, printed in Smith, Hostage to Fortune, 83–84.

40. Russell Ayers to JPK, June 27, 1933, CSA; Housemaster (Ben Davis) report, June 1930, box 20, JPKP.

41. On June 20, 1930, Assistant Headmaster Wardell St. John wrote Rose that Jack had achieved a score of 124 on the Otis-Lennon School Ability Test, “which is nine or ten points above our School average.” St. John predicted on that basis that Jack would do very well at Choate. He advised Mrs. Kennedy not to inform her son of his Otis score, as that might incline him to depend too much on his ability, which “in itself is never at all sufficient!” Wardell St. John to RK, June 20, 1930, box 20, JPKP.

42. Goodwin, Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, 459; Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 85.

43. JFK to John Fitzgerald, n.d., box 4b, JFKPP.

44. JFK to RK, n.d., box 1, JFKPP; JFK to JPK and RK, n.d., box 1, JFKPP.

45. JFK to RK, n.d. (1930–31), box 1, JFKPP.

46. Nelson Hume to JPK, January 7, 1931, box 21, JPKP.

47. Stossel, Sarge, 24; Leamer, Kennedy Men, 65.

48. In his next report, the grades slipped a bit: English II, 86; History II, 77; Math II, 95; Latin II, 55; Science II, 72; Religion II, 75. Canterbury Record, box 1, JFKP.

49. JFK to JPK, n.d. (1930), box 5, JPKP; JFK to JPK, n.d., box 4b, JPKP.

50. JFK to JPK and RK, March 31, box 21, JPKP.

51. JFK to JPK and RK, postmarked March 5, 1931, box 21, JFKPP.

52. Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 87–88.

53. Wardell St. John to RK, June 24, 1931, box 20, JPKP; Bruce Belmore to Choate School, July 11, 1931, CSA; Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 88–89.

54. Meyers, As We Remember Him, 11.

55. George St. John to JPK, October 20, 1931, CSA; Clara St. John to RK, October 7, 1931, CSA.

56. Goodwin, Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, 458; Seymour St. John and Richard Bode, “ ‘Bad Boy’ Jack Kennedy,” Good Housekeeping, September 1985. For the experience of another Choate student in this period, the poet and publisher James Laughlin, see MacNiven, Literchoor Is My Beat, 28–29.

57. Quoted in St. John, “JFK: 50th Reunion”; Hamilton, JFK: Reckless Youth, 90.

58. Both letters quoted in St. John, “JFK: 50th Reunion.”

59. St. John to JPK, October 20, 1931, CSA; Leamer, Kennedy Men, 76.

60. Leaming, Jack Kennedy: Education, 21. Said a classmate years later: “I recall that in our third form year teacher Ben Davis one day sent Jack out of French class to comb his hair. When he returned, it looked worse than ever. ‘Le Petit Chou,’ said Ben with a sigh. It looked worse than a head of cabbage.” St. John, “JFK: 50th Reunion.”

61. Ralph Horton OH, JFKL; KLB OH, JFKL; Perret, Jack, 33; Meyers, As We Remember Him, 15. See also Lem Billings’s recollections in The New Yorker, April 1, 1961.

62. Horton OH, JFKL. In a different interview, Horton said, “Jack had an excellent mind, and it wasn’t channeled into the type of work we were doing. He hadn’t matured to channel it as he did in later years at Harvard.” Horton OH, CBP.

63. Horton OH, CBP.

64. Blair and Blair, Search for JFK, 33; Horton OH, JFKL; KLB to RK, January 1972, box 12, RKP. The prime place of football in campus life can be seen in back issues of The Choate News from the period. Jack did, however, win praise for his effort on the junior squad: “Aggressive, alert and interested—Jack was a tower of strength on the line.” Leinbach Football Juniors report, n.d. (fall 1933), Choate School Archives–Outline, box 1, JFKPP.

65. JFK to JPK, December 9, 1931, box 1, JFKPP.