Posted on 10/09/2004 10:47:34 PM PDT by neverdem
ST.-BRIAC-SUR-MER, France, Oct. 4 - The estate that belonged to John Kerry's grandparents sits high on a bluff in this Brittany resort town, a massive stone house overlooking a stunning landscape of wind-tossed ocean and jagged headlands. Villagers still speak in awed tones about his grandmother, who was known for her generosity and her regal horseback rides along the hilltops.
It was here, on childhood summer visits with his cousins, that Mr. Kerry played on the beach and fished for octopus in the tidal pools. And it was here that the boy from Massachusetts glimpsed a much grander life than he had known back home, and began, perhaps, to acquire the sheen of privilege and sophistication that would become an inescapable part and a persistent liability of his life in politics.
"Look - the best view in all of northern France," said Ian Forbes, Mr. Kerry's maternal uncle, speaking in French, as he led a reporter to the back of the family house in St. Briac with its vast lawn stretching toward the sea.
Today, Mr. Kerry's life is defined against similarly grand settings. In winter, he goes helicopter skiing while staying at his wife's Idaho retreat, a 15th-century farmhouse transported from England and reassembled on the banks of the Big Wood River in Sun Valley. In summer, he windsurfs and sails off the coast of Nantucket, where she has another home. The couple have an 18th-century town house in Boston where the kitchen is two stories high. There is a 23-room town house in Washington, an 88-acre Pittsburgh area estate, a private Gulfstream jet and a personal staff of six, including caretakers and a cook.
If Mr. Kerry is elected, he and his wife will be the richest couple ever to live in the White House, said Kevin Phillips, a political commentator and the author of "Wealth and Democracy.''
Even adjusting for inflation, their net worth far surpasses that of such wealthy predecessors as John F. Kennedy and his wife. In an election driven in large part by the candidates' personalities, that extraordinary wealth and the air of privilege Mr. Kerry seems to carry with him have often been a stumbling block, exacerbating the perception that he is an aloof man whose elite tastes separate him from the concerns of ordinary people.
Mr. Kerry's friends and advisers say the patrician label is unfair. Unlike President Bush, he did not grow up rich, and his parents relied on relatives to pay for his education at private boarding school. In college, he worked for two summers loading trucks at a Massachusetts warehouse to earn pocket money. Even as a first-term senator, he was sometimes so short of cash that he slept on friends' couches during weekends in Boston. And before marrying Teresa Heinz in 1995, he told a close friend that her enormous wealth made him uncomfortable.
But Mr. Kerry's elitist reputation goes deeper than his wife's fortune, now estimated at $1 billion. Mr. Bush, despite his own family's legacy of wealth and political power, manages to come off as a simple-hearted Texan who likes to clear brush and go bass fishing in his spare time, a man whose indulgences are barbecue and nonalcoholic beer.
Mr. Kerry, by contrast, exudes a Brahmin reserve. His accent is no longer the upper-class drawl of his youth, but his soft vowels and formal diction still hint at a privileged lineage. On the campaign trail, he sometimes calls people "man,'' a habit that may grow from his 1960's youth but now sounds like a strained effort to connect with ordinary folk.
Mr. Kerry and his wife are also cursed with the kind of good taste that suggests old money. On the walls of their Boston and Washington town houses hang a collection of Dutch and Flemish still lifes mostly from the 17th century, so precious that the insurance company asks that the artwork not be photographed. Visitors comment on the restrained stylishness of the couple's homes, at least two of which were decorated by Mark Hampton, the New York designer who counted Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Estée Lauder and Pamela Harriman among his clients.
Many of these details reflect the influence of Ms. Heinz Kerry, who owns four of the five homes (the Boston town house, acquired after their marriage, is owned jointly). She is the art collector, the wine connoisseur and the gourmet, friends say. Mr. Kerry is happy to enjoy all those things with her, but his own tastes tend to be much simpler. His favorite foods are peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and chocolate chip cookies, said his brother, Cameron F. Kerry. He is essentially a man of the outdoors, and his indulgences are much more likely to focus on buying boats, cars, bicycles or windsurfing gear, friends say. "Teresa has all these wine cellars, but John's not a big wine drinker," said Wade Sanders, who has known Mr. Kerry since 1966, and is currently making appearances on behalf of Mr. Kerry. "He'll occasionally bring a bottle or two out to Nantucket, that's about it."
He remains surprisingly frugal about clothing, friends say, often wearing shoes and jackets until they are nearly worn out. "We were packing clothes for him one time in Boston, and he was deciding which jackets to bring," said Danny Barbiero, who has known Mr. Kerry since high school and has occasionally traveled with him during the campaign. "I said, 'John, when you buy something, why not just buy four, and put one in each house?' He would never do that."
Still, Mr. Kerry has never been able to escape the aroma of class privilege that clings to him. His political enemies have used it against him ever since his first run for public office in 1972, when a Massachusetts cartoonist portrayed him sitting in an armchair at the Yale Club in New York, with a butler visible in the background.
World of Privilege
Class is not a new weapon in American politics.
"The vast majority of our presidents have been wealthy, often very wealthy," said Ted Widmer, a former speechwriter for Bill Clinton who teaches American history at Washington College in Maryland. "But they need to find ways to counter the perception that they are effete, that they care about the trappings of wealth for their own sake."
If Mr. Kerry is more vulnerable to such impressions than many other politicians, perhaps that is because of his unusual background. He grew up in a family with little extra money, but he was constantly pressed up against the windows of a more glamorous and wealthy world, thanks to his mother, Rosemary Forbes. (His mother, as one of 11 siblings in the Forbes family that made its fortune in the China trade, inherited little of her own parents' fortune.) As a boy, he often stayed at Groton House, the 300-acre Massachusetts estate owned by a maternal aunt and uncle, Angela and Frederick Winthrop. And in the summers, he stayed in Brittany at Les Essarts, as the Forbes estate is known.
Mr. Kerry also spent time in the summers on Naushon, a pristine private island off the Massachusetts coast that has been owned by another, more distant set of Forbes cousins since the mid-19th century. Only family members and their guests are allowed onto the island, which is in the Elizabeth Islands chain, near Woods Hole.
Mr. Kerry has revisited both Brittany and Naushon over the years. After his mother died two years ago, he helped scatter some of her ashes in Naushon, said his sister, Peggy Kerry. The rest are to be scattered near the family house in Brittany, she added.
Unlike Mr. Bush, whose family had similar New England roots, Mr. Kerry was drawn to the elite world he glimpsed as a young man, friends say, perhaps because his lack of family money made him something of an outsider. Relatives helped pay for his education at St. Paul's School in Concord, N.H. Later, at Yale, he formed a bond with the college president, Kingman Brewster, another scion of an old New England family and the embodiment of what used to be called the liberal establishment.
"John's drive to succeed came from being surrounded by people who had it all," said George Butler, who has known Mr. Kerry since 1964 and recently released a documentary film about him.
After college, Mr. Kerry continued to orbit a world of unusual privilege, thanks in part to his first wife, Julia Thorne, who came from a very wealthy family with Colonial origins. When the couple divorced in 1988, Mr. Kerry went through some lean years, relying on his government salary as he shuttled back and forth from Washington to Boston, where he was busy helping to raise two young daughters. This was the time later dubbed his "gypsy period" by his second wife - when he sometimes lacked a place to live in one city or another, and had to rely on friends or supporters for help. But all that came to a decisive end in May 1995, when he married Teresa Heinz.
About 100 close friends and relatives attended the ceremony, which took place during a chilly spring afternoon on the lawn outside her Nantucket home. Afterward, the wedding party took over a highly regarded island restaurant, the Chanticleer Inn, where every place setting was decorated with a tiny bottle of Heinz ketchup. At one point, the bride's son, Chris Heinz, teasingly daubed Mr. Kerry on the forehead with ketchup, to welcome him into the family and its tomato-based fortune, recalled Mr. Sanders, one of the guests. Later, the guests danced to a band called - inauspiciously, perhaps - the French Millionaires.
Mr. Kerry's life changed at that point, and not just because the marriage made him happier. The couple bought and renovated a five-story 18th-century town house on Louisburg Square in Beacon Hill, giving the senator a permanent home in his home state at last. He also gained a Washington home, Ms. Heinz Kerry's 23-room town house in Georgetown, and the two vacation homes in Idaho and Nantucket.
Seen from the outside, those houses are not especially ostentatious. The Sun Valley house, for instance, at the end of a 100-yard driveway about a mile north of town, is smaller than many of its neighbors, and rendered invisible from the road by landscaping. The Nantucket house is set on a small lot, with a screened-in porch, and a green and white loveseat swing on the front lawn.
It is the neighbors who are unusual. In Idaho, the billionaire financier George Soros lives next door. Just across the river is Steve Wynn, the billionaire Las Vegas casino executive; also nearby are the actor Tom Hanks and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California. The Nantucket house is on Brant Point, an area so sought after that a vacant lot there sold last year for $8 million after the house on it burned down, said Dalton Frazier, an island real estate agent.
Inside, the Heinz-Kerry houses are elegantly decorated but comfortable and unpretentious, and full of details that express the personalities of their owners, visitors say. "There are not huge bathrooms with Jacuzzis," said Wren Wirth, an old friend of Ms. Heinz Kerry's whose husband is former Senator Tim Wirth. "They are modest by current standards, and sensible and cozy."
The Boston house, Mr. Kerry's main residence, is full of curious nautical items, including a telescope and a model 19th-century sailing ship, that reflect his love of the sea. In a library near the entrance is a striking painting of Herman Melville, whose writings, friends say, Mr. Kerry treasures. (He also loves the poetry of Rudyard Kipling, Robert Frost and T. S. Eliot, and can recite many poems from memory.) On the wall in the master bedroom is a framed original letter written by Abigail Adams, the wife of the second president, about the influence women can exert in politics, Mr. Barbiero recalled.
Although they employ a cook, both Mr. Kerry and his wife take great pleasure in cooking, several friends said, and do so whenever they have time.
"The kitchen is where everybody spends their time," Ms. Wirth said of the Boston house. "There's somebody chopping, somebody answering the phone, somebody mixing."
Mr. Kerry and his wife guard their privacy scrupulously, friends say, in part because they do not want to burden their children or other relatives with their celebrity. Some of the people who work for Ms. Heinz Kerry, including a caterer who often cooks for her and the caretaker of her Idaho house, said they had signed confidentiality agreements barring them from disclosing details about their employer. A number of friends declined to answer questions about the way Ms. Heinz Kerry and her husband live, saying they feared the details could give the wrong impression.
However, the couple are anything but reclusive, and like to give dinner parties.
"They are wonderful entertainers," said Jessica Catto, who has been friendly with Ms. Heinz Kerry for several years and served on an environmental board with her. "They make you feel at home and relaxed; it's an atmosphere that is bubbly and fun and conducive to great discussions."
Mr. Kerry mostly ignored the social world in Washington before getting remarried, said David McKean, his Senate chief of staff. Starting in the mid-1990's, the couple began having salon-style gatherings at their Georgetown home, where policy experts, politicians and diplomats would be invited for freewheeling discussions over dinner on subjects ranging from climate change to China policy. Their social life often crosses party lines, and in 2001 they gave a dinner party for Paul O'Neill after he became treasury secretary.
An Indelible Image
Some aspects of Ms. Heinz Kerry's wealth have been exaggerated in news reports. Her private jet, for instance, is often described as a "$35 million Gulfstream V" model. In fact, said a broker with knowledge of the sale, it is a Gulfstream II, bought used in 1993 for about $3 million, the low end of the scale for private jets. It is hardly a cheap item, costing about $1.5 million a year to operate. Mr. Kerry rarely flies on it, preferring to take commercial flights on his routine trips to and from Washington, said David Wade, a Kerry spokesman.
Ms. Heinz Kerry bought the jet in the wake of her husband's death in a charter plane crash in 1991, because she believed owning their own plane would make her and her family members safer, said Grant Oliphant, the associate director of the Heinz Endowments.
Mr. Kerry and his wife also have at least eight cars, including three sport utility vehicles at the Idaho house. He also has a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. The cars are not flashy; there are two Chrysler sedans, and Mr. Kerry still drives his 1985 Dodge convertible.
Another area where Ms. Heinz Kerry's wealth has left a visible imprint is sports. Mr. Kerry had always been an outdoorsman and a superb athlete who went skiing, biking and boating whenever he could.
"Now he carries those on in more places," Cameron Kerry said.
The senator owns two bicycles made by Serotta, including an Otrott model, which usually sells for about $8,000. In summer, he goes windsurfing and kite-boarding off the coast of Nantucket. He has had a number of boats over the years, but about three years ago he bought a more opulent one: a 42-foot Little Harbor powerboat, purchased for about $500,000. The boat has sleeping berths for two, and Mr. Kerry mostly uses it to cruise along the Massachusetts coast, or to ride with friends out to Nantucket.
It is on the water, Mr. Kerry's friends and relatives all say, that he is most at ease. Seven or eight years ago, Mr. Sanders recalled, Mr. Kerry invited him to Cape Cod, where the two men got into Mr. Kerry's boat to ride out to Nantucket. As the boat reached open water, Mr. Kerry took the throttle up to full speed. Flicking on the boat's stereo system, he shouted, "Check it out!" and a broad grin lit up his face. The music blasting from the speakers was Wagner's "The Ride of the Valkyries," the same sequence played by Robert Duvall's character in the Vietnam movie "Apocalypse Now."
Images of Mr. Kerry windsurfing off Nantucket have become a staple for his Republican critics, who sometimes deride it as an elitist hobby. Windsurfers say this is not fair: The basic equipment for the sport can be had for about $1,000. Mr. Kerry's total investment is about $6,000, said Nevin Sayre, the former American windsurfing champion, who often sails with him.
Last month, Mr. Kerry visited his old windsurfing pal John Chao, founder of American Windsurfer magazine, near the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon. The weather was calm, forcing them to cancel their windsurfing jaunt, and Mr. Kerry said he would fly back in a few days if the breeze picked up. Mr. Chao, sensing that a flight across country just to go windsurfing might play into the rich sportsman stereotype, advised him against it.
Mr. Kerry agreed not to fly back, but added that he did not want to change his lifestyle for the sake of appearances. Mr. Chao recalled, "He said: 'I'm not going to live my life in fear. I'm going to be who I am.' ''
Maisonneuve/Sipa
At right is his family's house in the Brittany resort town of St.-Briac-sur-Mer, where he spent summers as a child, providing a glimpse of a grander life than he had known back home.
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
The Heinz-Kerry properties include two vacation homes, with this one, second left, just outside Nantucket, Mass. It was the site of the couple’s wedding in May 1995.
Villagers still speak in awed tones about his grandmother, who was known for her generosity and her regal horseback rides along the hilltops.
OMFG
Bump.
A more honest title would be "Our First Welfare-Recipient Presidential Candidate"
yep, his whole life hes been a p*ssy whipped, elitest snob, of the worst kind, the kind with no money...
pathetic excuse for a man, ie wussy.......
Written as only an asskissing liberal snob could.
The word "would" fits so much better there. Must be nice being the most successful gigolo in American history and all.
The only room in the house where his head fits.
Something is up when the New York Times writes something like this. I wonder if they can see how weak he is, and are considering sinking his ship?
Just dang! That sounds like he had go work for 2 summers!
Wouldn't this article be a logical place to call for the disclosure of his wife's tax returns?
Also, I notice that despite the description of his sports prowess, there is no mention of Kerry's apparently bogus claims to have run in the Boston Marathon in the late 1970s or early 1980s.
I think instead the NY Times is trying to get the information out in as harmless a way as it can. As I noted above, they didn't call for the release of Momma T's tax returns, which is the logical conclusion to reach.
LOL!
John Kerry's yacht, the Scaramouche
Ordinarily yes, but Bush is the fortunate son, not this fortunate gigolo.
Also, I notice that despite the description of his sports prowess, there is no mention of Kerry's apparently bogus claims to have run in the Boston Marathon in the late 1970s or early 1980s.
Well, he was probably low crawling on his belly, hunting for deer with a side by side, double barrel shotgun worth almost 5 figures.
Never worked for any of it. Le snob.
And wierd, is his "music" on his boat. I guesss thats where he spends his time to dream up his pretend "Vietnam war hero" stories, and sears, SEARS them into his memory.
Yes, and isn't it funny that none of that old money belongs to either one of them? All that old money came from her first husband.
The first election in history funded entirely by Republicans. :P John Heinz is probably running around the afterlife trying to make any kind of deal so he can come back and take his money away from those two.
Soro is their neighbor.....boy howdy wouldnt he have it MADE, if Kerry got in...he could be even MORE crooked 24/7 than he already is....prolly what all his ranting and money slung Kerrys way is about....
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