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The Other Rich Mrs. Kerry
BY JOSEPH CURL
Everyone's had a little time to catch up with Teresa Heinz, but few know much about the first Mrs. John F. Kerry or the campaign issue that could reprise last election's undercurrent of marital fidelity and spousal adoration (think Al and Tipper Gore in that lengthy lascivious liplock).
While President Bush coos over Laura, the first lady and constant wife, in every speech, his opponent traded in one multimillionaire wife—in the throes of a dark clinical depression—for another deep-pocketed woman, and then had the Roman Catholic Church annul his 18-year first marriage, throwing the couple's two children into a murky realm of illegitimacy.
The top echelon of the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign likely will not play the annulment card, but less scrupulous surrogates almost certainly will sneak out the information, especially as the GOP ticket struggles to lock down social conservatives, including the 4 million evangelical Christians who skipped a trip to their polling precincts in 2000.
Don't look for info about wife No. 1 on johnkerry.com—it isn't there (although Kerry in the first paragraph mentions his strong Catholic faith). But there's the skinny: Kerry proposed to Julia Stimson Thorne just days before he shipped out to Vietnam, and they wed in a Catholic church upon his return in 1970. Both were 26.
Thorne, like nearly all of the woman who have been courted or married by Kerry, comes from big, old money. Her grandfather bought the island of Hilton Head off the coast of South Carolina during the Depression for use as a personal game preserve.
Along with a hefty pocketbook (one estimate put the Thorne family's fortune at $300 million), Kerry also brought more pedigree—Thorne is a direct descendent of George Washington, with relatives that include Henry Stimson, the secretary of state under President Hoover and secretary of war under Presidents Roosevelt and Truman. (Kerry's mother's ancestors include the first governor of Colonial Massachusetts. And Kerry had rich relatives, the Forbeses, who put him through top boarding schools and Yale, giving him his taste of high living, which he has since found unquenchable.)
The couple had two daughters, Alexandra in 1973 and Vanessa in 1976, but all was not bliss in the Kerry mansions. They separated in 1982 (when Kerry was Massachusetts lieutenant governor), with Thorne in the depths of a severe depression and on the brink of suicide, which she blamed on her husband's cold and distant nature, his long absences, and his fierce ambition (which she was bankrolling). The separation came as Kerry was mulling a bid to run for the Senate seat vacated by Paul Tsongas in 1984; Thorne said she still associates politics "only with anger, fear, and loneliness." In 1988, the final divorce went through (she later wrote a self-help manual, "A Change Of Heart," designed to help other unhappily married couples; in the book, she called her relationship with Kerry a "suffocating marriage.")
For the next few years, Kerry sowed his newly freed oats with Emma Gilbey of gin fame and money and now married to Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times. He also dallied with Catherine Oxenberg, an actress and member of the Yugoslav Royal Family; actress Morgan Fairchild, who now stars in those annoying "Old Navy" commercials; Patti Davis, Ronald Reagan's daughter; sizzling redhead Dana Delaney of "China Beach" fame; and Michelle Phillips of The Mamas and The Papas.
"Finally, a Democratic presidential candidate with good taste in women," Jay Leno said last month, goofing on former President Clinton's proclivity for affairs with showy, big-haired and mostly unattractive consorts.
When advisers told Kerry to cool it with the hotties, he set his sights on the Mozambique-born Teresa Heinz, whose first husband, John, a Republican, died in a plane crash in 1991. Kerry and Heinz had met at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janiero and he escorted Heinz, a devout Catholic, to Mass. He found her "very earthy, sexy"—and very rich, with estimates topping $500 million. They married in 1995.
The first Mrs. Kerry filed papers the following year seeking more child support. Kerry interpreted the move as vindictive and fired back: he asked the Catholic Church to formally annul his failed marriage. He didn't even tell her; the church sent her a letter in November 1996 (some say Kerry filed for the annulment because Heinz is a devout Catholic who wanted to participate fully in church ceremonies; others say it was retaliatory).
Thorne, who had emerged from her depression, shot a letter to the church—along with a copy to a Boston newspaper. In vivid language, she said that, as the mother of Kerry's two children, she would not cooperate with a policy that was "hypocritical, antifamily and dishonest."
Kerry, who says on his Web page that he "was raised in the Catholic faith and continues to be an active member of the Catholic Church," joked about the annulment in 1997 on a radio show, saying "75 percent of all the annulments in the world take place in the United States, and I guess the figure drops to 50 percent if you take out all Massachusetts politicians." At the time, Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II and his former wife, Sheila Rauch Kennedy were in the throes of a very messy and very public annulment. The scandal ruined Kennedy's political career. He had planned to seek the Massachusetts governorship, but bailed after his ex-wife detailed his bid for an annulment. Months later, he announced he would not seek a seventh term in Congress. At the same time, his brother, Michael, who had served as his campaign manager, was mired in his own scandal over an affair with an underage babysitter.
While Mrs. Kennedy vehemently fought the annulment, Thorne, after expressing her displeasure with the church, acquiesced to her ex-husband's wishes. Still, she was not too happy, telling The Boston Globe in 1997 that the church's approach to her annulment was "disrespectful to me ... aloof to any emotional issues and devoid of any sense of the humanity of what this means to me and my children."
In that letter to The Globe, she wrote that she supports Kerry, his Senate career and his new marriage. Thorne, who now lives with her new husband, architect Richard Charlesworth, in Bozeman, Mont., also reportedly supports his presidential bid this year, but she has so far refused to speak with reporters.
And don't look for her to appear any time soon. Like the last woman connected to Kerry—a former staffer who wound up in Kenya denying an affair with the senator—Thorne plans to move to Italy, where she spent much of her childhood, if the press gets too close.
Joseph Curl is a White House correspondent for The Washington Times and has covered President Bush since his inauguration. |
