John Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is the junior United States Senator from Massachusetts, in his fourth term of office. As the Presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, he was defeated in the 2004 presidential election by the Republican incumbent President George W. Bush. Senator Kerry is currently the Chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship. He is a Vietnam Veteran and was a spokesman for Vietnam Veterans Against the War when he returned home from service. Family history and childhood years

John Forbes Kerry was born in Fitzsimons Army Hospital in Aurora, Colorado, outside Denver, where his father, Richard Kerry, a Second World War Army Air Corps test pilot, had been undergoing treatment for tuberculosis. Kerry's family returned to their home state of Massachusetts two months after his birth.

Family background

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kerry is the second child of Richard John Kerry, a Foreign Service agent and an attorney for the Bureau of United Nations Affairs, and Rosemary Forbes Kerry, a World War II nurse and member of the wealthy Forbes family. He has three siblings: two sisters, Diana (born in 1947) and Margery Peggy (born in 1941), and a brother, Cameron (born in 1950), who is a litigator in Boston. His mother was a Protestant, but his other immediate family members were reportedly observant Roman Catholics. As a child, Kerry served as an altar boy. Although the extended family enjoyed a great fortune, Kerry's parents themselves were upper-middle class; a wealthy great aunt paid for Kerry to attend elite schools in Europe and New England.[citation needed] Kerry spent his summers at the Forbes family estate in France, and there, he enjoyed a more opulent lifestyle than he had previously known in Massachusetts. While living in the U.S., Kerry spent several summers at the Forbes family's estates on Naushon Island off Cape Cod.[citation needed] Through his maternal grandmother, Margaret Tyndal Winthrop, John Kerry is distantly related to four U.S. Presidents, including George W. Bush, to the first American female writer Anne Bradstreet and to various royals in Europe.[

Childhood years

Kerry has said that his first memory is from when he was three years old, of holding his crying mother's hand while they walked through the broken glass and rubble of her childhood home in Saint-Briac, France. This visit came shortly after the United States had liberated Saint-Briac from the Nazis on August 14, 1944. The family estate, known as Les Essarts, had been occupied and used as a Nazi headquarters during the war. When the Germans abandoned it, they bombed Les Essarts and burned it down.

The sprawling estate was rebuilt in 1954. Kerry and his parents would often spend the summer holidays there. During these summers, he became good friends with his first cousin Brice Lalonde, a future Socialist and Green Party leader in France, who ran for president of France in 1981.

While his father was stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Oslo, Norway, Kerry was sent to Massachusetts to attend boarding school. In 1957, he attended the Fessenden School in West Newton, a village in Newton, Massachusetts. The Fessenden School is the oldest all-boys independent junior boarding school in the country. There he met and became friends with Richard Pershing, grandson of World War I U.S. Gen. John Joseph Pershing. Massachusetts' senior senator Ted Kennedy also attended the Fessenden School, although several years prior to Kerry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The following year, he enrolled at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, and graduated from there in 1962. Kerry's elderly great-aunt, Clara Winthrop, covered the costs. According to Kerry, at St. Paul's, he felt out of place because he was Catholic and liberal, while most of his fellow students were Republicans and Episcopalians.

Despite having difficulty fitting in, Kerry made friends and developed his interests. He learned skills in public speaking and began developing interest in politics. In his free time, he enjoyed ice hockey and lacrosse, which he played on teams captained by classmate Robert S. Mueller III, the current director of the FBI. Kerry also played electric bass for the prep school's band The Electras, which produced an album in 1961. Only five hundred copies were made — one was auctioned on eBay in 2004 for $2,551.

In 1959, Kerry founded the John Winant Society at St. Paul's to debate the issues of the day; the Society still exists there. In November 1960, Kerry gave his first political speech, in favor of John F. Kennedy's election to the White House.

 

Yale University (1962–1966)

In 1962, Kerry entered Yale University, majoring in political science. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1966. Kerry played on the soccer, hockey, lacrosse and fencing teams; in addition, he took flying lessons.To earn extra money during the summers, he loaded trucks in a grocery warehouse and sold encyclopedias door to door.

In his sophomore year, Kerry became president of the Yale Political Union. His involvement with the Political Union gave him an opportunity to be involved with important issues of the day, such as the civil rights movement and Kennedy's New Frontier program. He was also inducted into the secretive Skull and Bones Society.

Under the guidance of the speaking coach and history professor Rollin Osterweis, Kerry won many debates against other college students from across the nation. In March 1965, as the Vietnam War escalated, he won the Ten Eyck prize as the best orator in the junior class for a speech that was critical of U.S. foreign policy. In the speech he said, "It is the spectre of Western imperialism that causes more fear among Africans and Asians than communism, and thus it is self-defeating."

 

Over four years, Kerry maintained a 76 grade average and received an 81 average in his senior year. Kerry, even then a capable speaker, was chosen to give the class oration at graduation. His speech was a broad criticism of American foreign policy, including the Vietnam War, in which he would soon participate.

In 1962, Kerry was a volunteer for Ted Kennedy's first Senatorial campaign. That summer, he dated Janet Jennings Auchincloss, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis's half-sister. Auchincloss invited Kerry to visit her family's estate, Hammersmith Farm, in Rhode Island. It was there that Kerry met President John F. Kennedy for the first time.

According to Kerry, when he told the president he was about to enter Yale University, Kennedy grimaced, because he had gone to rival Harvard University. Kerry later recalled, "He smiled at me, laughed and said: 'Oh, don't worry about it. You know I'm a Yale man too now.'" According to Kerry "The President uttered that famous comment about how he had the best of two worlds now: a Harvard education and Yale degree", in reference to the honorary degree he had received from Yale a few months earlier. Later that day, a White House photographer snapped a photo of Kerry sailing with Kennedy and his family in Narragansett Bay.

Military service (1966–1970)

Kerry joined the United States Navy Reserve during his senior year at Yale. He is quoted as saying that he decided to join the Navy after he approached his draft board for permission to study for a year in Paris, and the draft board refused. In addition, several of his classmates were enlisting in the armed services. Upon graduation from Yale, Kerry entered active duty and served until 1970, eventually reaching the rank of Lieutenant. Kerry was awarded several medals during his second tour of Vietnam, including the Silver Star, Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts. Kerry's military record has received considerable praise and criticism during his political career, especially during his unsuccessful 2004 bid for the presidency.

Commission, training, and tour of duty on the USS Gridley

On February 18, 1966, Kerry enlisted in the Naval Reserve. He began his active duty military service on August 19, 1966. After completing sixteen weeks of Officer Candidate School at the U.S. Naval Training Center in Newport, Rhode Island, Kerry received his officer's commission on December 16, 1966. During the 2004 election, Kerry posted his military records at his website, and permitted reporters to inspect his medical records. In 2005, Kerry released his military and medical records to the representatives of three news organizations, but has not authorized full public access to those records.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kerry's first tour of duty was as an ensign on the guided missile frigate USS Gridley in 1968. The executive officer of the Gridley described the deployment as: "We deployed from San Diego to the Vietnam theatre in early 1968 after only a six-month turnaround, and spent most of a four month deployment on rescue station in the Gulf of Tonkin, standing by to pick up downed aviators."

During his tour on the USS Gridley, Kerry requested duty in Vietnam, listing as his first preference a position as the commander of a Fast Patrol Craft (PCF), also known as a "Swift boat." These 50-foot boats have aluminum hulls and have little or no armor, but are heavily armed and rely on speed. "I didn't really want to get involved in the war," Kerry said in a book of Vietnam reminiscences published in 1986. "When I signed up for the swift boats, they had very little to do with the war. They were engaged in coastal patrolling and that's what I thought I was going to be doing." However, his second choice of billet was on a river patrol boat, or "PBR", which at the time was serving a more dangerous duty on the rivers of Vietnam.

On June 16, 1968, Kerry was promoted to the rank of lieutenant, junior grade. On June 20, 1968, he left the Gridley for Swift boat training at the Naval Amphibious Base in Coronado.

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