All the senator's women
By David R. Guarino and Andrew Miga
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
Boston Woman magazine never drew a lot of interest locally, and it eventually folded.
But its February 1989 issue had a scorcher of a story that quickly drew in political Massachusetts - mostly with knowing nods of understanding.
The piece, called ``The Politics of Passion,'' detailed the romance, lengthy ``affair'' and breakup of a woman and a U.S. senator.
The woman, given the assumed name of Nora Flax, talked about the opportunistic, ego-driven pol who went to Washington and quickly developed a love for the television cameras and Hollywood actresses.
``When these guys are elevated to a public position - every day of their life, they have women throwing themselves at them,'' she was quoted as saying. ``It served his ego, this movie-star thing.''
Most everyone in the reading public assumed the woman was Boston attorney Roanne Sragow and the senator was John F. Kerry [related, bio].
Kerry called the piece ``fiction,'' and told a reporter the rumors of his Don Juan-esque Washington and Boston living in the days after his split from heiress wife Julia Thorne were also the work of gossips.
The senator was often seen prowling area nightclubs, attending parties at a million-dollar Commonwealth Avenue apartment and traveling extensively.
He called himself a lonely man looking for love.
``I don't really want to be linked publicly with anyone until I'm committed and want that relationship known,'' Kerry told the Boston Globe later that month. ``I'd just like to fall in love. I'd rather have a relationship than not.''
Sragow, of course, wasn't the only woman publicly linked to Kerry. There were actresses Morgan Fairchild, Catherine Oxenberg and Susan Sullivan along with singer Michelle Phillips.
But Sragow, according to reports, was the most serious. The two reportedly began dating about the time of Kerry's split from Thorne in 1982, having worked together as lawyers for years.
Sragow was reportedly heartbroken at the end of their relationship, prompting speculation that she authored the mysterious Boston Woman story. But she has never commented publicly about Kerry or the relationship and was appointed a judge by Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, Kerry's former running mate.
Friends, even today, insist Kerry is better as a married man and didn't at all enjoy his high-living times.
``The truth of the matter is that he didn't have that much fun,'' David Thorne, Kerry's Yale roommate and twin brother of Kerry's first wife, told the London Sunday Times. ``It wasn't so much a playboy phase as a transitional phase.''
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