When Joe's second son, John F. Kennedy, was ready to make his run for the presidency, the family fortune was estimated to be between $300 million and $500 million, one of the world's great private hoards. "I never felt the Great Depression firsthand," Senator Kennedy said as he campaigned in 1960. "I learned about it at Harvard." By then, the moneymaking was clearly of secondary importance in the Kennedy ambitions. "None of my children give a damn about business," Joe said with pride. "The only thing that matters is family. I tell them that when they end this life, if they can count their friends on one hand, they will be lucky. Stick with family."

There was magic in that moment in history. Old Joe, whose methods and money were more suspect than ever, stayed out of sight while that handsome clan captivated America. Rose and her daughters gave teas and speeches; Bobby ran Jack's campaign; and Ted gallivanted across the West riding broncos and making ski jumps. And the young Senator's wife Jackie shivered in the cold blasts of Wisconsin, wearing her designer sheaths and elbow-length shell gloves, beautiful, hushed and unyielding in her honesty about where she came from and who she was.

In power, the Kennedys strode over their failures — the Bay of Pigs, the Berlin Wall — with hardly a sidelong glance. John Kennedy's popularity grew, resting on eloquent speeches, his ravishing family and his toughness in national-security affairs and against racism as civil rights upheavals seized the nation. "Jack's the luckiest kid I know," rasped Old Joe one day in New York City after the dark summer of 1961. "He has learned most of the lessons of being President right at the start."

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July 11, 1960	May 24, 1968	July 26, 1999
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