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Hearts, Kerry had asked to leave Vietnam nearly six months early. Kerry, then 27, cut a figure that was both haunting and haunted.
On May 23, 1970, he married Julia, and honeymooned at the Jamaica home of his lost friend Pershing. On weekends, they visited amputees at VA hospitals, bringing them books and news. He was appalled by their neglect; it seemed like these men had been forgotten. "Boiling underneath him was a sense of betrayal," said Sanders. "A palpable anger with the way we had been treated and used."
Shortly after Kerry's return, he heard of a fellow skipper's death. His friend Donald Droz had been wounded, and while crewmates radioed for help -- "I need a medevac!" -- he bled to death. Droz left behind a widow and a 3-month-old girl. Kerry's outrage prompted the most difficult decision of his life, he said. Despite his military upbringing, Kerry decided to protest the war. "Donnie was the catalyst," Kerry said. "I thought, 'I gotta get off my butt.' I owed Dick [Pershing] and Donnie."
Kerry understood that speaking out might make him famous, but at a time when many Americans supported the war it also might complicate his political ambitions. "I asked him, 'Do you think that's wise?' " his brother recalled. "He said, 'It's something I have to do.' " In April 1971, Kerry led a Vietnam Veterans Against the War march in Washington. Dressed in green fatigues, he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Accounts have focused on his recounting of war atrocities, but the real heat in his delivery came when he condemned the government for abandoning them: "We are also here to ask, and are here to ask vehemently, where are the leaders of our country? . . . We are here to ask, where are McNamara, Rostow, Bundy, Gilpatric and so many others? . . . These are commanders who have deserted their troops, and there is no more serious crime in the law of war." Kerry added: "This administration has done us the ultimate dishonor. They have attempted to disown us."
It was a long way from his graduation speech. "The difference between the Yale commencement and the Senate Foreign Relations speech is that they're both critical of U.S. policy in Vietnam, but Yale is a political science student and Washington is a visceral outcry," Cam Kerry said.
As a protester, Kerry embarked on his public life, with all its controversy and complications. But in private, with simple consistency, Kerry has stuck to a pattern. For all of Kerry's faults -- friends have called him high-maintenance, vain or long-winded -- he has been there when his friends needed him.
When George Butler, a college friend, broke his hip and femur in 1994, Kerry tracked him down the next day at a hospital in New York. Butler had been lying alone, worrying about a blood clot going to his brain. Suddenly, there was Kerry ringing his phone. He was in Tokyo, where it was 4 a.m.
Another time, Sandusky, Kerry's former helmsman, called him from Illinois and said, "I'm ready to cash it in. I can't stop the bad dreams, and I can't stop the drinking." Over the next 24 hours, Kerry talked to Sandusky -- canceling meetings, instructing aides to yank him off the Senate floor -- until his isolated friend agreed to check into a treatment center. Over the next 12 weeks, Kerry called Sandusky's doctors to make sure they hadn't forgotten his crewmate. "John's not demonstrative, he's never comfortable with his own emotions, I mean -- he's a guy," said Gregory. "But he's extremely loyal."
Kerry has tried to pass that on to his two daughters. Vanessa recalled telling her father about a principal who had asked for assistance. "I said I don't know if I can take this on. Dad said, 'You never, ever turn your back on someone in need,' " said Vanessa. "It was a little bit of a reprimand."
Kerry's impulse is reflexive, sometimes irrational and, at times, has not served his interests. "His worst fault is being so loyal," said his wife, Teresa. "Sometimes he doesn't want to hurt people and sometimes I've told him it's better to relieve people of situations -- letting someone go you really love."
'My Thinking Place'
Tracy Droz Tragos, the daughter of the fallen skipper, heard from only one veteran while she was growing up. Kerry sent Christmas cards to her mother, a rubbing of Don's name from the Vietnam Memorial to her grandmother, and offered Tracy a Senate internship. At the end of the summer, he told the young woman who had never known her father some of Don's favorite jokes. Awkwardly, perched on his Senate couch, he hugged her while she cried. Even so, Tragos was stunned when a reporter told her that Kerry keeps her father's picture in his private study. "We're not important people," Tragos said, groping for words. "He knows so many fancy people, wealthy heads of state and celebrities who he could have on his desk. The
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