Jean-Louis Kerouac aka Jack was born on March 12, 1922 in Lowell, Massachusetts, to Leo and Gabrielle who immigrated from Quebec, Canada. Kerouac learned to speak French at home, then learned to speak English at school. His father owned a printing shop and his mother stayed at home. In the summer of 1926 Jack's older brother Gerard died of rheumatic fever at the age of nine. The family was overcome with grief and became more involved in the church, as shown in some of his books. Jack enjoyed playing sports and reading in his free time. He was on the basketball, track and football teams. Although he wanted to start writing, he felt that playing a sports injury would help him more in his future. During the Great Depression her family struggled financially and her father became an alcoholic and gambler while her mother found work at a local shoe store to provide for her family. In 1936 the family was devastated by the flood of the Merrimack River which swept away the printing house, which only increased his father's alcohol addiction and the family lived in poverty, but Jack shone in his sports as he was the star of the running at Lowell High School. High. With this he obtained a university scholarship. After graduating from Lowell in 1939, he received a scholarship to Columbia University. But before attending college he went to Horace Mann Boys' Preparatory School in Brooklyn for a year at age 17. (biography.com) During his freshman year at Columbia University he broke his tibia. He also discussed mush with his coach, Coach Lou Little, who benched him. While on the bench, Jack began writing sports for the Columbia Daily Spectator student newspaper and later joined the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity. Like his foot... in the center of the paper... on the experience. (Knocking movement) In the 1960s he had finished his most famous novels. But in 1969 Kerouac went broke, became an alcoholic and had already married his third wife Stella Sampas in 1966. During one of his rampages in a local bar he was beaten by some of the other drunken patrons and a few days later he died while watching television . of internal bleeding in St. Petersburg, Florida, at age 47. (Weinreich) Kerouac was buried in Edson Commentary, his hometown, and is honored with a Bachelor of Arts degree from his Lowell University. Jim Irsay, owner of the Indianapolis Colts, paid about $2.43 million for the original scroll of Kerouac's most famous novel and put it in a traveling exhibit that ended in 2009. (poetry hunter) Kerouac had only one child with his second marriage to Joan Haverty who had a daughter named Jan Kerouac. (biography.com)