The following excerpt re Kerry's childhood (from Boston Globe's Kerry biography) explains why so many American voters cannot connect with Kerry's standoffish personality. How many Americans are shipped off to boarding school at the age of 11? What emotional scars does that event inflict on the child's adult personality?:
>>When Kerry was 11, his father was appointed legal adviser to James B. Conant, head of the US High Commission for Germany, which later became the US mission to the country. Kerry was sent for the next two years to boarding schools in Switzerland, joining his family in West Berlin only on vacations. By the time Kerry turned 13, his parents decided that they would stay in Europe, and that -- in what Kerry calls a ``Victorian'' process -- their son would return to New England for his education. ``My parents were fabulous and loving and caring and supportive, but they weren't always around,'' Kerry recalled.
The constant shuffling between boarding schools, he noted, was ``to my chagrin, and everlasting damnation -- I was always moving on and saying goodbye. It kind of had an effect on you; it steeled you. There wasn't a lot of permanence and roots. For kids, [that's] not the greatest thing.''
Kerry, the eldest son, experienced a distance from his father that was more than geographical; Richard Kerry retrained a lingering bitterness over his father's suicide. ``My dad was sort of painfully remote and shut off and angry about the loss of his sister [who had polio and cancer] and the lack of a father,'' Kerry recalled.<< |
