[kcvl]

In the coming years Kerry would take countless risks, most of them more calculated than flying a plane toward the Golden Gate Bridge. But the episode underscores a life lived on the edge, foolhardy daring

[kcvl]

Among the array of relatives who looked after John, none was more important to his education than great-aunt Clara Winthrop, who had no children of her own. She owned an estate in Manchester-by-the-Sea, complete with a bowling alley inside a red barn. Winthrop offered to pay for much of John's prep school education, an expensive proposition far beyond the means of Kerry's parents. ``It was a great and sweet and nice thing from an aunt who had no place to put [her money],'' Kerry said. Such a gift today might be worth about $30,000 per year, given the school's typical annual cost before subsidies.

``We weren't rich,'' explained Kerry's sister, Diana. ``We certainly had some members of the family we thought of as rich. We were the [beneficiaries] of a great-aunt who had no children. My father was on salary from the State Department, and my mother had some family money but not major.''

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.

After a year at Fessenden, Kerry entered the prestigious St. Paul's School, in Concord, N.H. To step inside the school's campus is to step inside a world that seems frozen in an age of privilege. Much of the 2,000-acre campus, nestled amid white pines along the shores of Turkey Pond, features a neo-Gothic architectural style that echoes Oxford or Cambridge. Meals are served in an Elizabethan-style dining hall with flying buttresses.

More...

[prion]

Is that the whole piece? It seems oddly truncated.

Not that I need to read more of that giant journalistic smooch. Foolhardy daring! Ha!

[syriacus]

A lot of people seem to agree that Kerry is an opportunist....as this google search shows.

Perhaps an opportunist is a "risk taker" who is able to quickly act at moments when the "wind is at his back."

[OldEagle]

The article doesn't say how he received his commission. He was not Annapolis and not NROTC. He mist have receiced a direct commission through Mc George Bundy or one of the Kennedys.

Does anybody know about his military roots? How did he get his commission? What training did he have? Where was he as an Ensign?

[The Great RJ]

Kerry's reckless risk taking and silver spoon upbringing seems so like the Kennedy's. One difference is that the Kennedy's never tried to lie about their money.. they had it and everyone knew and no one cared. Kerry seems to dodge his wealthy upbringing and tries not convincingly to portray himself as the son of Joe Six-pack. He is as phony as Jane Fonda's hair color.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Was this written by hillary's ghostwriter?