• George Washington was once an officer in the British Army.
• John Adams and James Monroe each carried a gun to school.
• Thomas Jefferson played fiddle in a combo at college.
• John Quincy Adams failed his first entrance exam to Harvard.
• Andrew Jackson is the only president who was ever a prisoner of war.
• Franklin Pierce was constantly in trouble at college for ingesting illicit substances – root beer and gingerbread.
• Abraham Lincoln’s father objected to his reading and studying, considering it lazy and a waste of time.
• Andrew Johnson never spent a single day in school.
• Ulysses S. Grant wanted to be a math professor.
• Rutherford B. Hayes wasn’t allowed to play with other boys until he went to school.
• James Garfield started going to school and could read proficiently at the age of 3.
• Teddy Roosevelt was afraid of his laundress when he attended Harvard.

• Woodrow Wilson, the only president with a Ph.D., dropped out of three colleges.

• FDR argued against annexation of Hawaii in a college debate on grounds that it would make the U.S. vulnerable to attack and would be too expensive to defend.

• Harry S. Truman ordered and consumed an ice cream soda then discovered he lacked the nickel to pay Jesse James, Jr. for it.

• Dwight Eisenhower taught Sunday School to the children of West Point personnel when he was a cadet.

• John F. Kennedy had his phone tapped by the FBI because he was considered a security risk when he worked for naval intelligence during World War II.

• Gerald Ford was once a male model for magazine features and ads.

• Ronald W. Reagan wrote a short story in college in which the ghosts of George Gipp and Knute Rockne appear as characters.

• Jimmy Carter once shot his younger sister with a BB gun.

If you are interested in purchasing Presidential Education: Prelude to Power once it is published, please send an expression of interest so we can let you know when it becomes available. 

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Excerpt from the John F. Kennedy chapter:

          Joe and Rose were finally married, to the chagrin of her father, "Honey Fitz," in October 1914. They set up housekeeping in Brookline, in a seven-room house on Beals Street, for which Joe borrowed the down payment. Joe surprised Rose with a brand new Model T Ford, also bought with borrowed money. They hired a maid to cook and clean and do all the work that most brides do for themselves. Right from the outset they were determined to live richly. Joe worked in the bank his father had invested in and thought about how to get rich quick.

     The eldest of their nine children, a son they named Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Jr., was born in 1915.  John "Jack" Fitzgerald Kennedy, named for Rose's father, was born May 29, 1917. From his earliest childhood, Jack understood that all his parents' hopes for making a lasting mark were centered on Joe, Jr. Jack was spared the heavy responsibility and pressure that rested on Joe, Jr. but he chafed at being consigned to second place and the knowledge that he could never be first.

          Being first was paramount in Joe, Sr.'s world. He had no use for losers and he made his children feel that either placing second or being sick equated to being a loser. Jack had a slightly deformed spine and a recurring, debilitating illness of the digestive tract that no amount of medical intervention ever succeeded in curing. For a boy who was ill as often and as seriously as Jack, his father's strictures against "losers" posed a monumental problem. He concealed his illnesses as best he could and when he couldn't conceal them, he faced them with a cheerful and self-deprecating attitude. It redoubled his emotional burden that his brother Joe was strong and robust, as well as being the eldest son and his parents' favorite. To Jack it was obvious that he would have to work hard even to maintain second place. But Jack also had a buoyant, irrepressible spirit that, together with his engaging smile, won him friends and kept him out of a great deal of trouble that hed actually earned.

          Jack was not quite two when his sister Rosemary was born and from then on, all during his childhood and adolescence, there would be additional siblings at intervals. It was a fact of his life and he appears not to have felt any particular sibling jealousy for any of the younger ones. He was a good brother and looked out for them, especially Rosemary.

          Joe and Rose agreed on many of the issues that confront married couples but they disagreed on one of the most important ones. The church taught that wives must be faithful helpmeets and submit to their husbands and bear the children that God sent them. Joe agreed wholeheartedly with the church as to wives' duties but he believed that real men maintained a constant stream of sexual conquests outside of marriage and he did his best to live up to that belief. Joe passed this belief down to his sons and as they grew up, they understood that their sexual prowess was an important factor in winning and keeping their father's respect.

          Rose was in her fourth pregnancy early in 1920 when she rebelled. She had been used to a full social life, admired and deferred to as the mayor's pretty daughter before her marriage; afterwards she was confined at home with an apparently unending procession of babies to raise. She fled to her father's home, leaving her three young children behind. She stayed away three weeks. Honey Fitz was not unsympathetic but he pointed out that she had insisted on marrying Joe and that her church would not condone a divorce. Joe made some concessions in what was a more or less formal contract, allowing Rose some freedom to travel without him or the children in order to give her some relief from the demands of her family. He agreed that he would be home or nearby in case of emergency at times when she was away.

          It was shortly after Rose returned home, when Jack was about three months shy of his third birthday, that he went down with scarlet fever. This was a much-dreaded disease at the time because there was very little doctors could do to ameliorate the symptoms, much less cure it. It was extremely contagious and so often fatal that strict laws of quarantine were observed. As soon as his rash, sore throat, and fever were diagnosed, Jack was isolated from his siblings and his mother and they were isolated from the rest of the world in case they were already infected.

          The Irish nanny, Kico Conboy, was assigned to look after little Jack in the nursery. Joe, Sr. wanted to get him out of the house so the rest of his family would be safe but the nearest facility that would take scarlet fever patients was Boston City Hospital and they would not accept Brookline patients. Honey Fitz came to the rescue. Through his contacts he was able to get space for Jack at the hospital. Nanny stayed home to look after the other children and Jack was placed in an isolation ward where he could see no familiar face. In fact, he couldn't see any faces, because the doctors and nurses all wore masks when they attended him.

          Jack came very close to death during those weeks in the hospital and Joe and Rose were frightened that they would lose him. Rose had just given birth to Kathleen a few days before Jack's fever was diagnosed so she did not visit him, but Joe left his office early every day to go and sit by Jack's hospital bed. He made a bargain with God: if God would spare Jack's life, Joe would give the church half his wealth.

          Nearly a month after entering the hospital, Jack's fever began to subside and he began to feel better. Another month found him so much better that it was decided to move him from the hospital to Maine for fresh, bracing country air to complete his convalescence. Joe hired a private nurse and sent her off with Jack to Poland Springs for two weeks. Then he wrote a check for $3,500 to the Guild of St. Apollonia, which benefited poor children by providing free medical and dental services. Jack returned home just before his birthday to meet his newest sister.

Father to the Man. If the boy is father to the man, Keith Kovacek had two fathers, himself and his identical twin brother, Kurt. The twins are about to graduate from high school as the story opens. Life in their small Oregon town is good and the boys look eagerly forward to whatever life has in store for them, confident of their ability to meet whatever the future holds. Disaster strikes when Kurt is killed in an accident as he and his pregnant sweetheart, Merrilee Corbin, are on their way to be married.

Keith is unwilling for his brother's child to be aborted or born a bastard and given up for adoption so he talks Merrilee into marrying him. Her parents hated Kurt and they easily transfer that hatred to Keith. Merrilee's pregnancy is difficult and Mrs. Corbin is delighted when the baby is still-born. With the reason for their marriage gone, Merrilee divorces Keith and they go their separate ways.

After obtaining his degree in architecture, Keith returns to his little Oregon town to practice. He and Phyllis Rowe fall in love, marry, and produce a daughter. When Lindsay is three, the marriage falls apart and Phyllis leaves Keith for another man. She leaves Lindsay behind and moves away so that Lindsay grows up without any further contact with her mother. Keith adores his little daughter and delights in her company. He hires a housekeeper and they manage well enough until Lindsay's second year of high school. Then his love for Lindsay and his determination to help her through the challenging years of adolescence force Keith to confront issues of responsibility that he would much rather duck. The pregnancy of one of his girlfriends brings Keith full circle to deal with the same problems that he dealt with vicariously for Kurt twenty-odd years earlier.

If you are interested in purchasing Father to the Man once it is published, please send an expression of interest so we can let you know when it becomes available. joyouspub@comcast.net