Posted on 04/19/2004 5:33:01 AM PDT by crushkerry
On the campaign trail the Kerry's look like a devil-may-care, happy-go-lucky brood. But like many upper crust families, the Kerry's too have a dark history; one swirling in a shadowy fog of divorce, depression, thoughts of suicide, and perhaps even deadbeat parenting.
It all started in 1971 when Julia Thorne met a young Yale grad and Navy boy named John Kerry. We have covered this early part of the story in some detail before.
What is clear is that Thorne suffered from severe depression. She was also so lonely during her life with the ambitious Kerry, she contemplated suicide more than once. But, thank God, Miz Thorne found help through the healing touch of therapy. Away from John Kerry she found balance and happiness.
But that's also where the story gets weird. You see, John Kerry became a bit of a drifter in those post-Julia Thorne days. He fancied himself a bit of a playboy and dated numerous B-list actresses.
And, according to the Boston Globe, found himself is some financial trouble:
He took out a $473,000 loan to purchase a home in Washington, thinking his daughters would be staying with him for periods of time. It was "a huge mistake," he says, as he found himself returning to Boston most weekends to maintain his ties to his children and the state. He sold the D.C. home and bought a Boston condo but "lost his shirt" when he sold it a few years later, as he told the Globe in 1996. "He was broke," [Kerry comrade] Blum says.
At the time, Kerry had to hit the speaking circuit to collect honoraria (a practice that is now illegal for members of Congress) in order "to meet child-support payments, campaign debts, and tuition costs." He collected over $120,000 from such entities as Big Oil and Big Tobacco.
He must not have done a good job of making those child support payments, though. Shortly thereafter Julia Thorne filed a law suit against John Kerry to get more child support from him. The story was covered only briefly in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on June 10th, 1995:
Sen. John Kerry's ex-wife is suing him for higher support payments, saying his income is up substantially. The lawsuit was filed April 6, seven weeks before the Massachusetts Democrat married Teresa Heinz, the widow of Sen. John Heinz III of Pennsylvania. She controls a fortune estimated at $675 million.
Both Kerry and his former wife, Julia Thorne, said the lawsuit has nothing to do with his remarrying May 26. They divorced in 1988.
The story raised some troubling questions. Like, did John Kerry ever miss any of his child support payments during his cash-strapped, Hollywood-lovin' days? And just how little was he paying Thorne for child support? Thorne is the heiress to a $300 million Wall Street fortune, which leads us to believe it was more a matter of principle than of money. Nonetheless, we think voters are entitled to answers.
During the primary, John Kerry said, "The highest office in the land requires the highest level of openness for the American people.... As president, openness will be the hallmark of my administration, not some talking point."
We ask for nothing less before we consider whether or not to put a potential deadbeat dad in the White House.
I would like to learn if Kerry used the GI Bill to attend law school and whether he was on active reserves from 1972-78 to earn money.
I would like to learn if Kerry used the GI Bill to attend law school and whether he was on active reserves from 1972-78 to earn money.
Interestingly, Kerry had three non-interst bearing prommissary notes to the Heinz Trust, each worth between $100 to 250K and another promissary note (at prime rate) to the Mellon Bank, Pittsburg worth over $1 million.
He wasn't even around when their first child was born. He was 50 miles away at school and couldn't bother to come home for the birth.
How do you know Kerry "did his best" to put up with his first wife? I know that she supported him wholeheartedly, both monetarily and emotionally. Marriage vows say: Love, honor, cherish until death us do part. It's obvious that Kerry chose not to honor those vows and saw fit to run away when things got tough.
Gee, it's too bad that his wife was demanding some emotional attention from a man she had emotionally supported (and financed) for years. You need to read a bit about Mr. Kerry's family upbringing to understand the inner-workings of John Kerry and that he more than likely had nothing inside to offer this woman or any woman. He was more interested in pursuing his political career than holding his marriage together.
The best thing that happened to Julia Thorne was getting rid of this putz as she seems to have been able to gain strength from finally breaking away from the depleting relationship she was in.
Child support is a right of those children, and since they weren't able to pursue it on their own, the only one to do it was their mother. I'm sure it was easier to get financial support for the kids than it was to get Kerry's emotional support for them. Having been married to and divorced from a man of similar personality as Kerry, I can understand why Mrs. Kerry chose to go after him for child support. If he wasn't willing to stay and partake in the decisions pertaining to their upbringing, the least he could do was pay financial support. Afterall, to my husband and the likes of John Kerry, it was just another bill to pay each month.
How would you feel if your husband decided 8 years after his remarriage, that it wanted to absolve any record that he had ever been married to you? After sticking the knife in her back and dumping her when the going got rough, he takes that same knife and twists it again 8 years later to bring all those bad memories to the forefront once again. Kerry owes this woman big time, and she'll probably never be repaid for her total support through his anti-war days, law school, political campaigns, etc. The least she should have gotten was child support for the children that she ended up having to raise alone.
If you were worth 37 million and he was "only" earning a couple hundred thousand a year, then yes...(don't you love discussing the financial problems of the rich and famous?);-)
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