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In a chaotic and information-saturated age, Kennedy’s most famous speeches offer a model for how to make one’s thoughts heard and understood. Working alone and in collaboration, on deadline and off the cuff, often even dictating his speeches while doing other things, Kennedy was a masterful communicator. But where his gift for communication really stood out was in his speech writing. During his life, Kennedy was a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and an articulate conversationalist. I offer this brief and popular anecdote as a way to begin thinking about what JFK can teach us about writing, and how we can learn to communicate effectively by his example. But what Kennedy displayed for the rest of his life was the coconut. For his cunning and valor, Kennedy received the Navy Marine Corps Medal and the Purple Heart, two distinguished war decorations. Kennedy eventually flagged down a local fishing boat and gave them a coconut, which they took to a nearby Allied naval base. One night, after the patrol boat was rammed and sunk by a Japanese destroyer, killing two of his crewmembers, Kennedy had risked life and limb to take his crew to safety on a nearby island, where, lacking pen and paper, Kennedy had improvised a distress signal, the coconut. Need Small Boat.” “11” was a designation for Kennedy’s patrol boat, which he commanded in the Pacific during World War II. Etched across its husk was a simple message: “11 Alive. Today’s post was written by John Evans, lecturer at Stanford University.Īs a congressman and senator, and later as the president of the United States, John F.