John F. Kennedy

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, on May 29, 1917. He served in the Navy in the Second World War, represented a Boston district in Congress from 1947 to 1953, and was one of Billerica's two United States senators from 1953 until 1960, when he was elected the thirty-fifth President of the United States. He was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Billerica's schools marked his death at once. When the state Commissioner of Education asked the schools to hold "fitting programs," the Vining School turned its Thanksgiving program of November 24, 1963, into a tribute to the president, and in 1964 the pupils of the Pollard School gave to the Kennedy Memorial Library Fund.

The town was then building two elementary schools. For the annual town meeting of March 1964 the Board of Selectmen proposed naming the new West Billerica school the John F. Kennedy School, but the article was indefinitely postponed, and that building became the Frederick J. Dutile School. At the same meeting the town appropriated $1,175,000 for a new elementary school in East Billerica, on land off Salem Road bought in 1963 from James H. and Marie E. Finney, and it was this school that took the president's name. By 1965 it was being called the John F. Kennedy School; its pupils spent that fall in double sessions at the Parker School and the Pollard School while the building on Kimbrough Road was finished.

The John F. Kennedy School opened in February 1966 with 724 pupils in 24 classrooms under principal Catherine L. Torre, and by December it had 820 pupils in 25 rooms. The Permanent School Building Committee later listed it as the John F. Kennedy Memorial Elementary School. It still serves East Billerica at 20 Kimbrough Road.

References

1. John F. Kennedy (Wikipedia)
2. School Committee Report, 1963 (Vining School tribute to President Kennedy)
3. Warrant for Annual Town Meeting, 1964, Article 56 (John F. Kennedy School)
4. John F. Kennedy School Report, 1965
5. John F. Kennedy School Report, 1966 (opened February 1966)
6. Permanent School Building Committee Report, 1977