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My research into the subject of Women Heroes has pleasantly broadened my horizons. By visualizing the obstacles these women faced when attempting to make even a small contribution to society, I became respectfully humbled, duly impressed, and deeply grateful. I now realize that many of the advantages available to me today were created on the backs of the women of yesterday.

I am always humbled by mothers who, in spite of their day's popular or political climate, instill vision, determinedness and purpose in their children. Consider the atmosphere of our country during the year John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born. It was May, 1917. One month prior to his birth, in April, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson ended his policy of "Absolute Neutrality," and committed our troops to the efforts of World War I.

Europe had been in turmoil since the turn of the century. Nations were forming and breaking alliances, seeking to protect themselves against countries they viewed as threatening. Finally, aggressor nations began to utilize these alliances as a means to procure even more real estate. America originally sought to distance herself from these conflicts, thinking perhaps, that the "movement" would play itself out. Although our involvement in the war lasted just over a year, its effect forever altered our role in World Politics.

Rose Kennedy did not succumb to the doomsday prophesies the war animated. She chose instead, to encourage her children to understand, through literature and historical observations, the political complexities and cultural differences that precluded the war. Not only that, but she instilled in them a deep belief that our democracy would yet play a major role in the world. A positive and hopeful one. Thus, twenty-one years after John Kennedy's birth, in an effort to deter world dictatorship, Rose's sons fought valiantly in the Second World War. Her eldest son, Joseph, lost his life while flying over Normandy.

After we won the war, our nation celebrated. The technologies we had utilized to build a giant fighting machine became the tools that spawned an age of privilege and abundance. Electricity powered washing machines, disposals, televisions and automobiles; innovations abounded, the like of which had never been seen.

A working father could buy a home, provide the finest furnishings available, and introduce his children to the widest array of toys ever seen. But Rose Kennedy, although affluent, did not allow her children to bask in these pleasures to the

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