John F. Fitzgerald John F. Fitzgerald John Francis "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald (February 11, 1863 – October 2, 1950) was an American politician, father of Rose Kennedy and maternal grandfather of President John F. Kennedy. Fitzgerald was a Democratic congressman who went on to win two terms as mayor of Boston, and made several unsuccessful runs for Governor of Massachusetts. He made major improvements to the port, and became a patron of the baseball team now known as the Boston Red Sox. He maintained a high profile in the city, with his theatrical style of campaigning, and his personal charm and charisma that earned
F. Scott Fitzgerald T. S. Eliot to write, in a letter to Fitzgerald, "It seems to me to be the first step that American fiction has taken since Henry James ..." Don Birnam, the protagonist of Charles Jackson's "The Lost Weekend", says to himself, referring to "The Great Gatsby", "There's no such thing ... as a flawless novel. But if there is, this is it." In letters written in the 1940s, J. D. Salinger expressed admiration of Fitzgerald's work, and his biographer Ian Hamilton wrote that Salinger even saw himself for some time as "Fitzgerald's successor". Richard Yates, a writer often compared to