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Early Years John Fitzgerald Kennedy, known as JFK, was born on May 29, 1917, in Brookline, Massachusetts. He was the second child of Joseph Kennedy, Sr. and Rose Kennedy, who would eventually have nine children--JFK's older brother Joe Jr., and his younger siblings Rosemary, Kathleen, Eunice, Patricia, Robert and Edward. This generation of Kennedys would eventually become one of America's most famous political families. Childhood in the Kennedy household was shaped largely by the influence of JFK's father, Joseph, an ambitious man who would achieve great success both in business and politics. The son of a Boston saloon owner, Joseph Kennedy had graduated from Harvard and married into Boston's Irish Catholic upper class in 1914 when he wed Rose, the daughter of the popular mayor John "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald. At the time of JFK's birth, the United States had just entered World War I; Joseph Sr. left his job at a Boston bank to help manage a shipyard in nearby Quincy, which was busy churning out war vessels. After the war ended, Joseph Sr. began investing on his own, first buying out a chain of New England movie theaters in the early 1920s. He spent time in Hollywood, buying and selling movie companies, before returning in 1930