John Vernou Bouvier III, also known as "Black Jack", was born in Manhattan in 1891. His great grandfather emigrated to the United States after serving Napoleon's older brother, Joseph Bonaparte, in the Napoleonic Wars. His son, John Bouvier I, was very successful on Wall Street. His son, John Bouvier II, was a very successful attorney. John III, or Black Jack, was born into a family of successful people. If there is a such a thing as a male socialite, he was one. He attended the best schools- Philips Exeter Academy, Columbia Grammar & Prep School, Columbia College, and the Sheffield Scientific School. He was a member of the Cloister Club, and also a secret society (Book and Snake at Yale). He graduated in 1914.

He worked for a while at his family's stock firm, (Bouvier, Bouvier, & Bouvier), where he learned the business and was beginning to be pretty successful in his own right. He left the firm for a while, joining the United States Navy in 1917. He transferred to the United States Army, where he served as a major, before being discharged in 1919. (Two years, and was the rank of a major, which I found interesting.) He went back to the stock firm after that. He became engaged in 1920 to a woman, but that was called off. Of course, he became engaged to and married Janet Norton Lee. They were married in 1928. They went on to have two daughters, Jacqueline Lee and Caroline Lee. (Jackie & Lee). He and Janet divorced in 1940, due to his gambling, drinking, and whoring ways. That same year he was inducted into the Society of the Cincinnati. She remarried, but he never did. He was not the best father, in my opinion, to his daughters, certainly not when he was too drunk to do anything other than drink.

He was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer early in 1957. He finally checked into a hospital for treatment at the end of July that same year, but he was beyond help. He went into a coma on August 1 and died on August 3. He was 66 years old. His daughters, Jackie and Lee, handled his funeral arrangements, having the service at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan. He was buried in Most Holy Trinity Catholic Cemetery in East Hampton, New York. Several members of the Bouvier family are buried here. I searched him up on Find A Grave, and I thought he would have a magnificent family plot or headstone...he did not. It was really very simple, so all of the money they made on Wall Street did not go to fancy burials. In fact, only one member of this family is listed on the Famous Memorials section of this cemetery page, and it was an author. None of the Bouvier's are listed on it, nor is Lee, who is also buried there.

I read this book sometime last year, and forgot to mark it as read. I am going though my books and downsizing and have found a few that I forgot to mark as read. I am trying to catch myself up with my reviews while doing this book clean out. This wasn't a bad book, and I did learn a lot of facts about Jackie Kennedy's father. The most interesting things that I learned were when I did other research while reading the book. One of those was the cemetery that I mentioned previously, and the others were about his secret societies and social clubs. I wish this book would have included more detailed information about those things, but Google is free so it worked out. If you are a Kennedy fan, this is a good book to have in your collection.