John F Kennendy (Wikipedia Commons)
HARTFORD, Connecticut – A document discovered at the boarding school attended by John F. Kennedy bolsters a theory that a former headmaster provided inspiration for his famous line, “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country
,” a school archivist said Thursday.
A notebook where the Choate School headmaster kept fodder for his sermons included a quote from a Harvard University dean who wrote: “The youth who loves his Alma Mater will always ask, not `What can she do for me?’ but `What can I do for her?”‘
Kennedy, who sat through the chapel sermons as a teenager in the 1930s, used similar language when he called the nation to service in his 1961 inauguration address.