Read a Sample Chapter
John Kerry
By George Butler Bulfinch Press
Copyright © 2004 George Butler
All right reserved. ISBN: 0-821-26204-1
Chapter One
John Kerry: A Portrait Certain memories are as keenly etched as photographs.
MANCHESTER, MASSACHUSETTS. June 1964. An informal lunch before a party. The lunch is being held on a lawn scattered with tables and guests on a spit of land surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean. Waves break in the distance and a sea breeze rustles the leaves of old, well-tended elm trees.
This event was a Bundy family party that included my friend Harvey Bundy and his two uncles, McGeorge and Bill, both high officials in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. I was standing alone, watching, when a tall figure, rail-thin and Lincolnesque, came across the grass. "Hi, I'm John Kerry," he said simply. We shook hands. I had heard a lot about him from Harvey, who was his roommate, and from two other friends at Yale, David Thorne and Dick Pershing. Specifically, I had heard that John was the youngest president of the Yale Political Union.
During the conversation that followed, I remember thinking: "This man will be President." There was, in John Kerry, a real presence that I could feel, and a will that I would grow to appreciate over time.
That summer, long before any political ambitions could be realized, John planned to earn a lot of money in Boston peddling encyclopedias door-to-door. By coincidence, I had my own plan to sell Webster's dictionaries in Dallas, Texas. We had a good laugh over this, neither of us realizing how much more difficult this job would be than the job choice of our college friends: interning in an investment bank.
As we also grew to appreciate, John and I had some things in common. Not the least of these was that we were Brahmins-with-a-catch: although our mothers were from old New England families, our fathers were not. Both had been military men haltered by ill health, sidelined from combat in World War II. Both had lived lives of restless momentum, always traveling. John and I, both active in college, would owe much of our drive, I believe, to the curious fact that both of us began with one foot on each side of an invisible fence.
That night, with lights strung in old elm trees and dark waves breaking at the bottom of the cliffs on which stood the grand house where the party was being held, the dance band played the first fast number of the evening. All the guests started to ... Charleston. John Kerry, tapping his patent-leather shoes with his fingertips, was easily the best dancer on the floor.
NEW LONDON, CONNECTICUT. June 1966. John invited me to go to the Harvard-Yale crew races. The plan was for Richard Kerry, John's father, to sail his boat Merlin to a dock in New London, where we would meet them. In midafternoon, I parked my Volkswagen and saw John, Dick Pershing, and his girlfriend Kitty Hawks already standing on the dock loading some baskets of food onto Merlin.
In fine, hazy evening light, we sailed out onto the estuary of the Connecticut River to watch the contest. Harvard was favored in all boats. This did not seem to deter John or Dick. "A better view is needed," said Dick. "To the top of the mainmast," replied John. The two friends skillfully climbed the old wooden mast, where they balanced precariously on the spar. However, the cheerleading efforts of Kerry and Pershing could not improve the Yale crews as they lost race after race.
When the races were over, the group assembled a picnic and ate hamburgers cooked over a charcoal grill. Kerry and Pershing amused themselves by reciting alternate verses of Kipling's "Gunga Din" in excellent Cockney accents.
"Din! Din! Din!" was Pershing's refrain.
I knew he was going into the 101st Airborne Division. What I did not know was that this would be the last time I would see him.
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS. August 1966. The day blazed with sunshine. It was hot and still on the deck of a yacht club on the shore of Lake Michigan. This was a lunch in honor of Harvey Bundy and his bride-to-be, Blakely Fetridge. John Kerry was sitting at the head of a table, looking pensive. He would not be able to attend the wedding, because today, in the early afternoon, he was taking a plane back to Boston. Early the following morning he would be inducted into the Navy.
There was much discussion of the Vietnam war at the table. Once again, the party included prominent administration elders who were vocal in their encouragement for us to volunteer for duty. Additionally, I-who was going on to graduate school-was subtly approached by a CIA official about future service.
Then lunch was coming to an end. John looked up at the skyline of Chicago. "Yesterday," John said, "George and I rented a plane and I flew him right along this shore. What an amazing city ..."
It was time for him to go. There was much handshaking and goodluck wishing.
From the deck, I watched him enter a taxi to report for duty at the Naval War College.
We have always stayed in touch since our first encounter in the summer of 1964. John wrote me from Vietnam. I replied first from New York, where I was working for Newsweek, then from Detroit, where I was in my own version of a war in "Murder City." It was while I was living in the ghetto that I took up photography and eventually, when I came to Boston to work for John, took his campaign's publicity photos. I did so because there was no one else to do it.
These photos began as utility pictures. Then, as I developed as a photographer, they became a record (and, along the way, a book, when Kerry, Thorne, and I published a volume called The New Soldier in 1971).
As an ongoing record, they illustrate many things about John Kerry. But now, looking at a whole book of photos that have never been printed until these last few months (who would publish photos of John Kerry before he won the primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire in January 2004?), what stands out are the humble beginnings of a career, the sense that this was going to be a long slog, the wholly unglamorous daily life of a young political candidate. Only willpower, pure willpower, kept Kerry going on more occasions than I care to remember. His career would be marked by diligence, absolute determination, raw idealism, and absolute disregard for bad polling numbers or any obstruction.
It is always a long slog. In late 2003, when John was at his nadir and I had an assignment to photograph him, I could barely look through my Leica, so ravaged and tired was the face I saw in my viewfinder. But even then, as I kept telling often impatient and incredulous parties, "John is a great closer. Watch him in the stretch."
I'd seen the arc of Kerry's life. I knew he was tough as steel.
This is my photographic record of my experience with John Kerry. It began long ago at a party that might be described as the end of an era. It's ended in a hard-earned presidential race in an entirely new world.
Holderness, New Hampshire May 2004
(Continues...)
Excerpted from John Kerry by George Butler Copyright © 2004 by George Butler. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
loading...