Like father, like son, like grandson.
A nearly 60-year tradition continued at the Port Authority Friday, when one family’s third Thomas Kennedy joined the graduation ceremony for 195 new recruits.
Rookie Police Officer Thomas A. Kennedy, 28, is the son of Sgt. Thomas F. Kennedy, an active 27-year veteran assigned to the Emergency Service Squad at JFK Airport.
The youngest Kennedy, who will be assigned to the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan, was assigned the same shield number – No. 464 – that was worn by both his pop and his late grandfather, a one-time PAPD cop who also went by the name Thomas Kennedy.
“I am extremely proud about him joining the force and taking on a number that I had and that my father had,” said Sgt. Kennedy.
Sgt. Kennedy recalled how his father spent 38 years as a PAPD cop after emigrating to the United States from Ireland in 1947 as a 17-year-old.
Once in his new homeland, his dad fought as an American soldier in the Korean War, before being discharged and joining the Port Authority Police Department as a rookie cop in August 1954.
He retired in 1992, at which point his son – the current ESU sergeant – began wearing his dad’s shield number.
Sergeant Kennedy gave up his shield number when he was promoted from police officer in 2003 to sergeant, but the number remained vacant – until today, when the latest Thomas Kennedy joined the PAPD ranks and will wear the number anew.
Thomas Kennedy, the grandfather of today’s recruit, passed away in August 2006.
The Kennedy family policing tradition actually goes back yet a fourth generation, as the newest Thomas Kennedy’s great grandfather – that would be Sgt. Kennedy’s grandfather – was a police officer in County Cork, Ireland, in the towns of Cobh and Clonakilty, at the turn of the century.
Lest there be even more confusion, that Kennedy’s first name wasn’t Thomas – he was James Kennedy.
The latest Thomas Kennedy is one among a class of 173 men and 22 women, the second-largest in the agency’s 85-year history.
“These new officers are among the best-trained and best-equipped law enforcement professionals anywhere in the world,” said Port Authority Executive Director Pat Foye.
The new rookies participated in a graduation ceremony that was held at the Dunn Sports Center in Elizabeth, NJ.