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Friends and
observers say John Forbes Kerry's early life instilled in him
a self-sufficiency and confidence that is now sometimes mistaken
for diffidence.
Kerry
was born Dec. 11, 1943. His father was a career foreign service
officer and his mother a member of an aristocratic American family,
the Forbes.
He
spent a major portion of his childhood traveling abroad and attending
boarding schools in Switzerland and New Hampshire. While in school,
Kerry was a good student and an avid athlete.
"He
was this sort of large figure, always active, always the quarterback
in touch football games and the captain in capture the flag,"
his brother Cameron Kerry told the Des Moines Register.
Kerry
also traveled extensively as a boy, gaining a sense of independence.
"The
young John Kerry bounced around a lot and learned to be self-sufficient.
He went on his own to places ... camped in Nottingham Forest looking
for Robin Hood as a young boy or went to those white crosses at
the beaches of Normandy and contemplated what D-Day meant,"
Kerry biographer Douglas Brinkley told the NewsHour in March.
"He told me in an interview once he remembered taking a train
from Berlin then to Frankfurt then to Zurich in the height of
the Cold War and seeing Soviet troops out his window when he was
reading comic books -- and how scared he was to be on his own.
He is somebody who has been very self-sufficient for a long time."
Kerry's family
often discussed and debated world affairs. Brinkley has said that
Kerry and his father Richard "talked about foreign policy
the way most fathers and sons talk about football."
After secondary
school Kerry entered Yale University, where he became a top debater,
president of the political union, and, like both President Bushes,
a member of the Skull & Bones secret society. In 1965 Kerry
committed to join the Navy after graduation, essentially volunteering
for service in Vietnam.
At the end
of his senior year in 1966, he was selected to give the class
oration. Political reporter Joe Klein called the speech "a
broad, passionate criticism of American foreign policy, including
the war he would soon be fighting."
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By Jason Manning, Online NewsHour
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