Posted on 11/02/2004 1:17:49 AM PST by Main Street
As a graduate of the Yale class of 1966, I resent the self-serving lies and misrepresentations advanced by my classmate John Kerry. Herewith, a few corrections:
John Kerry has been using the Pershing name to dramatize his Vietnam experience, claiming to have been a close friend of Richard Pershing, the grandson of General (Black Jack) Pershing. Richard Pershing was a member of the Yale class of 1966, and he was killed in Vietnam shortly after we graduated. However, Kerry's constant references to his 'dearest' friend are exaggerated and exploitative. In fact, Dick Pershing and I roomed together for all 4 years at Yale.
I don't remember John Kerry ever being in our room or even being a particular favorite of Dick's. In this regard, it is particularly revealing that a recent biography of General Pershing, Until The Last Trumpet Sounds (by Gene Smith), includes an entire chapter on Dick, primarily on his years at Yale; the name John Kerry does not appear.
The Pershing Family did know Kerry, but they disliked him intensely. This antipathy stemmed primarily from an incident at the Pershing home on Park Avenue not long after Dick's death: at a gathering of friends and family, Kerry worked the room with his anti-Vietnam message, incurring the undying enmity of Mr. and Mrs. Pershing and Dick's older brother Jack, a Green Beret. The family was shocked and insulted by Kerry's insensitivity.
Kerry has implied - as recently as the first Presidential debate – that he became disillusioned about Vietnam by his military experience. However, as early as 1965, in his Junior year at Yale, he was giving anti-war speeches; and his Class Day Oration in 1966 - prior to graduation - criticized American involvement in Vietnam. These sentiments clearly antedated his Vietnam experience. So why did he join the Navy? He told some classmates that it would help his career.
The above pattern suggests a callous and opportunistic personality -- hardly what I would call Presidential.
Dave Schlossberg, MD Yale '66
I'm not really surprised. Kerry's life seems to be partially a work of fiction anyway.
Regards, Ivan
For this guys entire life he has been nothing but a calculating fraud.
George W. Bush will be reelected by a margin of at least ten per cent
If he ever tells the truth about anything, that would be shockingly out of character. I doubt it will ever happen.
Sorry for the late reply, but as this piece seems to still be circulating on the 'net, it seems worthwhile to post.
Dave Schlossberg might actually exist, but you have to wonder how well he really knew Dick Pershing if he didn't know that Kerry and Pershing met at prep school and were friends since the age of thirteen:
>>>In 1957, after his father had become the chief political officer at the US Embassy in Norway, the 13-year-old Kerry entered the Fessenden School in West Newton, Mass. There he began a pattern of filling his family void by forming close friendships with like-minded boys, including Richard Pershing, grandson of the famed US general John Joseph Pershing. Like Kerry, the young Pershing had been educated in Europe; the intertwining of their later lives would leave a deep imprint on Kerry. <<<
http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/kerry/061503.shtml
Of course, maybe ol' Dave wasn't privy to the goings on over at Skull and Bones, to which Kerry and Pershing belonged:
>>>Of the 15 members of Skull and Bones, an extraordinary bond formed between the four on their way to Vietnam: Kerry; Thorne; Fred Smith, a Kerry flying partner who would later found Federal Express; and, Pershing, Kerry's close friend since age 13.<<<
(Boston Globe, linked above)
>>Kerry's rising profile brought him notice at Skull and Bones, Yale's exclusive secret society, which two years later also welcomed Bush. As a senior, Kerry was tapped to join, coming in with two close friends, Richard Pershing and David Thorne.<<<
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-kerry25jul25,1,4783108.story?coll=la-home-headlines
>>> A decade ago, he orchestrated one of the biggest reunions his Bones class had ever had. The Massachusetts Democrat gathered almost all 15 together to mark the 25th anniversary of the death of their fellow Bonesman, Richard Pershing, Kerry's close friend who was killed in action in Vietnam.
Kerry credited Bones for the strength of their friendship.
"I have never felt so void of feeling before," Kerry wrote in a letter to his parents after Pershing died, according to The Boston Globe. "With the loss of Persh something has gone out of me - he was so much a part of my life at the irreplaceable, incomparable moments of love, concerns, anger and compassion exchanged in Bones that can never be replaced."
At the sober reunion in honor of Pershing, Kerry led his fellow Bonesmen to Arlington National Cemetery, where they reminisced by their friend's grave. A Marine played taps. Everyone spoke at the grave, including Kerry. <<<<
(Baltimore Sun, March 23, 2004)
And it seems quite apparent he didn't get invited on those fun weekends with the other guys:
>>>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.<<<
http://www.twbookmark.com/books/61/0821262041/chapter_excerpt19417.html
>>Pershing's dazzling girlfriend from Smith College caught everyone's eye: Kitty Hawks, the smart, witty daughter of the legendary Howard Hawks, who directed ``The Big Sleep'' and ``Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.'' Reached at her home in New York, Kitty Hawks described her time with Pershing and Kerry and the other bonesmen in romantic terms: ``To fall in love with one of them was to fall in love with all of them. It was an amazing time. There's not a day that goes by that I don't think about it.''
Hawks added: ``There was an element of sobriety to Johnny, and Dick didn't have that. All of us thought [Kerry] would be an important person in this country somehow. It didn't feel so much as ambition as destiny, that this was bound to happen to him in one way or another.'' <<<
(Boston Globe, linked above)
>>Pershing brought out Kerry's merry side, taking him along with his crowd on Manhattan club crawls and hockey excursions.<<<
(LA Times, linked above)
Now, as for Jack Pershing, it seems his "emnity" was so undying that he stood in for his late brother as a member of Kerry's wedding party just two years later. ("Tour of Duty," pages 340-341)
And the Pershing family "disliked" Kerry so intensely that it offered him use of their Jamaica estate on his honeymoon ("Tour of Duty," page 341). See also:
>>For his honeymoon, Kerry chose a telling location: the Pershing family's Jamaica home. Richard Pershing, a close friend of Kerry's and a fellow member of Yale's Skull and Bones society, had been killed in Vietnam. Pershing's grandfather, General John Joseph "Black Jack" Pershing, had commanded US forces in Europe during World War I. <<<
http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/kerry/061703.shtml
There's a whole lot of Boston Globalism happening in your post. Are you sure it is a reliable source? I don't trust it's manufactured biography of Kerry, nor it's cheerleading stories designed to boost his political career.
Really --- Kerry recited a lively rendition of Gunga Din? HA! His boring preppy monotone would put any poetry lover to sleep.
aaack!!! It's is supposed to be its. I hate when I do that.
Well, that may be true about the monotone, I wouldn't know.
However, it is an awfully good job of "manufacturing" a friendship - and a relationship to the Pershing family - if it is described by EVERY biographer, and by friends and girlfriends going back for 40 years.
And I don't really think you can "manufacture" membership in Skull and Bones.
Contrast this with a single unsubstantiated letter from a previously unknown individual, who claims to have known Pershing yet evidences so little knowledge of his life and family.
Yes, it's really too bad we can't go back and edit our own posts !
First campaign ends in defeatTo win the primary, the newcomer overcame the election eve arrest of his brother, Cameron, and campaign field director Thomas J. Vallely, both then 22, in the basement of a Lowell building that housed the headquarters of Kerry and another Democratic contender, state Representative Anthony R. DiFruscia of Lawrence. It was almost 2 a.m. - 30 hours before the polls opened - when the two were arrested on charges of breaking and entering with intent to commit larceny.
by Brian C. Mooney
6/18/2003
PART 4
Boston Globe
That day's Sun blared a memorable, double-deck headline: "Kerry brother arrested in Lowell 'Watergate."' DiFruscia, getting some extra ink in the campaign's waning hours, had drawn the parallel to the break-in at Democratic headquarters in Washington three months earlier.
But here's more from that same article:
The Kerry camp declared it a setup, saying that the two responded to an anonymous phone call, minutes earlier, threatening to cut the campaign's 36 phone lines on the day before its get-out-the-vote effort. Lowell Police arrested the pair in an area near the trunk line for all of the building's phones.
[...]
Kerry's brother today declines to elaborate on the circumstances surrounding the arrests and the charges, which were dropped a year later.
"It was an impulsive, rash thing that we did and that John Kerry ended up having to deal with," said Cam Kerry, now a partner at the Boston law firm of Mintz Levin Cohn Ferris Glovsky and Popeo. "That's all we're going to say on that one."
Vallely, a former Marine who served in Vietnam and later became a state representative in Boston, had more to say.
"I kicked in the door," he said, and then, police swarmed the area. Vallely said DiFruscia's office was of no interest; the Kerry phone lines were. In hindsight, he said, "We probably were overreacting to someone who was joking."
Mr. Kerry was arrested during that campaign. He describes the incident with a slight grin. An anonymous telephone caller informed him that an opponent was planning to cut his campaign's phone lines, so he and an associate broke into the building where the phone lines were housed to make sure they were secure. The police arrived with suspicious alacrity, he said, leading him and others in the campaign to believe that political opponents had set him up. He was arrested for breaking and entering, but the charges were later dropped.
"It was obviously not the smart way to do it," Mr. Kerry said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/15/politics/campaign/15CAM.html?ex=1103778000&en=b4f1b8d4a76d95c7&ei=5070&pagewanted=2&ei=5070&en=b491c7d0d4b6bc2c&ex=1092196800&oref=login
Yeah, I knew that. I've known Val a long time (since the "other" Globe, a defunct forum system).
you protest too much.
To - or about - what?
Ah.
He wanted to be John F. Kennedy.
My wife (an amateur genealogist) downloaded a 120 page genealogical report on Kerry. He's related (on his mother's side) to all sorts of people including at least six links to George W Bush. He's also distantly related to my wife's family - Mayflower descendants.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.