The First Ms. Kerry

Everyone loves a mystery, so is it any wonder about speculation regarding John Kerry's first wife, Julia Thorne? Evidently she has decided to not become a part of the political frey this campaign season ... and who can blame her?

She’s anathema to her ex, to his staff, to his new wife, and to his loyalists—not to mention to the political establishment....“It’s not politically acceptable to have any kind of mental illness,” she points out."

Still, in the interest of curiosity I went about seeing what it was that I could find out about her that I didn't know, or know to be true.

Long before her 14 years as “spouse of”—years she associates only with “anger, fear, and loneliness”—Julia Thorne had strong Washington ties.

Reading between the lines, it was likely a difficullt marriage and rather ugly divorce. Kerry was broke without her and probably tried to go light on support and such. There are some indications of infidelity and she definitely felt "suffocated" by the marriage. At the same time, she infers there may have been a substance abuse issue on her part, so she might not have been an ideal spouse at the time, either.

True to form, I guess Kerry couldn't make up his mind about much in his younger days any better than he can now. She was actually the one who proposed to him.

Kerry’s life changed another way while he was in San Diego. In October 1968, while in the parking lot of the San Diego Zoo, his then-girlfriend, Julia Thorne, asked him to marry her. According to historian and author Brinkley, the zoo’s pair of giant Komodo dragons made Julia think of jungles, which made her sad knowing Kerry would soon be heading to Vietnam.

And so, she sat down on the hood of a random white Chevrolet sedan in the zoo’s parking lot and proposed, Brinkley says. Kerry was quiet at first and then said yes. But the couple agreed to wait until Kerry returned from Vietnam to publicly announce their engagement. They married on his return.

They did carry on a big lie in his first campaign. Apparently the marriage was all but over through that period but they didn't let on.

She had been warned that marriage could be a pig in a poke—by no less an authority than Clare Boothe Luce herself.

“She said when I was engaged to marry John, ‘I advise you to write your own marriage vows. Don’t accept the standard ones. Think hard: What do you want of this marriage? What do you want for yourself? What do you want from him?’ ”

Did she take the advice?

“No, of course not. And I should have. I was completely naive. . . . Worst of all, after my parents’ divorce, I was needy. I wanted my husband to transform my life.

“And I swallowed the message of the wedding industry that focuses on the romance, the dress, the reception, the sexy body—the fantasy that if you marry the right man at the right wedding, you’re going to be happy ever after. “But the only important and challenging thing is the relationship. The fact is that you’re taking two people with all their baggage and issues and childhoods, and you stick them into a small pot together to stew, and then you add children, financial problems, illness—and nothing prepares you, nobody teaches you to handle that.”

The handsome and bemedaled young Navy hero of the Vietnam War did transform her life, but not as she expected.

One thing I saw at CrushKerry is untrue.

His first wife, Julia Thorne wasn’t amused. She said the annulment of the 14-year marriage to Kerry was “devoid of any sense of humanity of what it means to me and the children.”

This is the same wonderful man she had to sue for child support. And still the press is silent. Read on…

The fact is her comments reffered to the church more so than Kerry. She felt terribly violated by the annulment. Can you hang that on Kerry? To some extent. But her anger seemed more focused on the church, which is probably why she wrote a blurb for Sheila Rauch's book linked below.

One story I found interesting involves Kerry's (medal, ribbon, not his, etc) fiasco. Apparently she let the cat out of the bag to the Nixon Whitehouse even before the incident.

Lunching one day in 1971 at the Italian Embassy with a group of elegant Washington women, she told the assemblage, at length and with enthusiasm, about her husband’s planned march on Washington as a leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. The demonstrators planned to hurl their Purple Hearts and Bronze and Silver Stars over the White House fence to protest America’s continued presence in Vietnam. As she regaled the group, one cavedweller tried to nudge her into silence—but to no avail. As it turned out, the pretty blond staring at her from the next chair was Shelley Buchanan, Nixon speechwriter Pat Buchanan’s bride.

A passage supporting possible substance abuse and hiding a troubled marriage for the sake of politics follows.

I ask Thorne how many political wives find themselves profoundly depressed, or turn secretly to drugs or the bottle, because of the self-abnegating role they must assume and the lies they must live with.

“Like Kitty Dukakis and me,” she says. “When John won the primaries for the lieutenant governorship of Massachusetts, we went to do our publicity photographs with Kitty and Mike Dukakis. Kitty had just come out of a rehab center, and I had just asked John for a separation—and here we were, living these enormous lies. We had to live those lies for the whole campaign. I call that ’shadow work.’

“Speaking for myself, I found it humiliating. After all, it’s the husband’s career, his job. What’s it got to do with his marriage? A person can be a perfectly wonderful politician, but maybe not a perfect husband or wife. I mean, it’s known that John Kennedy was a terrific philanderer, but does that change his politics?”

It's unclear if her reference to Kennedy's philandering was a subtle nod to what she experienced with Kerry. She does start off by saying she was humiliated. But you can't really draw a solid conclusion from what's there.

She seems to have set about getting her life and emotions on track, using writing in a theraputic sense. She has published two books and wrote the dust jacket for a third, Sheila Rauch Kennedy's book on political divorce and Catholic Annullment that tanked Joe Kennedy's political career.

Then, one morning in the early ’90s, a dear friend got up and, without warning, shot himself. She then decided to speak out, to try to help others who were suffering as she had. Her 1994 book, You Are Not Alone, was recommended by Ann Landers as the “best $10 you will ever spend.” Like the new A Change of Heart, it was based on Thorne’s own experiences, frankly confronted, and was bolstered with helpful insights from other sufferers, experts, and counselors.

From all appearances she is content now. Apparently she was diagnosed with cancer a year or so ago. She has undergone treatment and is now cancer free.

“I went to a Wyoming ranch every summer, and one year a man came out in the ranch truck to meet me. I saw him and I thought: This man looks like a middle-aged hippie alcoholic. And he looked at me and thought: She looks like a bitch on wheels. And we’ve been together ever since.

“He’s an architect. He met every single criterion I’d set. I wasn’t going to compromise, and he was it. And I laid out my ground rules up front: I want my space, my children come first, and I don’t want to get married again. Now we are both very happy.”

I think it appropriate to admire anyone who has struggled in life and been able to get on top of whatever demons they faced. And I'm certain there's still enough mud lying around to sling over the next few weeks without someone further troubling the first mysterious Ms. Kerry. There's a pic of her with the last and most significant link to the Washingtonian interview from 1996.

Comments

[annie]

Sorry to hear about this lady's death, at much too young an age.

But I am glad that she managed to find some happiness with a new partner after her years with Kerry, and the frustrations of being a political wife that appear to drive so many women to despair!!