by John Kerry
I was settling into a new childhood home, which I loved. I dreamed of being old enough to start a paper route delivering the Washington Evening Star, with my red wood-slatted wagon to stack the newspapers in. I was on the cusp of starting Little League, a huge deal for a kid who would plead with his dad—not a baseball fan—to take him to Griffith Stadium to watch the Senators, where I obsessively followed Eddie Yost and even snagged his autograph on my baseball, which I still have.
Then—just like that—it was time to move again. Pa announced he was being sent abroad to Berlin to serve as the legal advisor to the high commissioner of Germany. I never got to become a Boy Scout, have an Evening Star paper route or experience Little League. None of this is to complain, but there were milestones meant to be part of a young boy’s life, and these began to create expectations and hopes in me, but I didn’t have a vote in the matter.
I don’t think it ever occurred to my parents that because we were going off to Europe, there were things we were leaving behind that actually mattered to me. Later, when I came back to the States to attend high school, I watched my younger cousin Robby Winthrop’s Little League games and thought what fun it would be to be playing.
I grew up in a wonderful adventure, but it was not the everyday adventure of most people my age. Despite my remarkable opportunities and life-shaping experiences, a part of me longed for the comforts and consolations of familiarity, for one neighborhood, one school, one backyard and the same neighbors from one year to the next.
Now it was on to Berlin and a new life in a place that had great meaning to my parents. In the summer of 1954, we set off on the great adventure, packing up completely, leaving our home and going to live in Germany. Somewhere along the way, I was told I was going to school in Switzerland. That was it, no discussion and no choice. I just accepted that this was what you do when you pull up stakes, leave your home and go to another country. Pa had gone to school in Switzerland, so at least there was a certain historical rationale. My younger siblings were headed to Berlin to be with my parents. At the time I wasn’t too sure where Switzerland was or how far I would be from my parents. I certainly didn’t think about what it meant to be leaving the security of home with mother and father and siblings. For the moment, what excited me was the prospect of crossing the ocean on one of the great liners of the time, the SS America. It was smaller than the SS United States, which held the transatlantic speed record and which we traveled on in 1958 en route to Norway, but it was a beautiful vessel with great lines and accommodations. Believe it or not, in those days, U.S. diplomats traveled first class. So, much to my surprise, we traveled in style.
Somehow my mother got us organized to leave—big trunks packed to the rim with all that my sister Peggy and I would need at our boarding schools. My father was already in Paris, where he had been teaching at the NATO Defense College. As usual, Mama was picking up the pieces. We took the train from Washington to New York City. There we stayed for a day or so before boarding the America. Drop-off car rentals had yet to be invented, and flying was out of the question with all our luggage. Mama had arranged a huge treat for the night before we boarded. We went to see Peter Pan on Broadway starring Mary Martin. To this day I remember the thrill of seeing a flying Peter Pan swing out over the audience suspended by nearly invisible wires. Captain Hook terrified me to no end, even causing me to dream for a while of crocodiles with a clock ticking away. New York was amazing and quite a grand start to the adventure of a lifetime we were embarking on.
The next day we boarded the SS America. If ever an eleven-year-old had been given a paradise for a playground, this was it. I loved every minute of the voyage and started exploring from the moment we stepped aboard. I remember racing from one deck to another and was surprised when I confronted a gate marked with second- or third-class signs. It seemed weird. Occasionally, I found a way through them, but mostly I explored the complex of decks and salons that made up first class. There were shuffleboards, Ping-Pong tables, swimming pools, gyms, stores and endless corridors in which to get happily lost.
Dinner was a big deal. Everyone got dressed up to appear at the appointed hour for a multicourse meal in a large dining room with a lower and upper tier of tables, all covered in white tablecloths and sporting beautiful silverware. A live orchestra played each night. The ship’s captain had his own table but would circulate to chat with all the passengers and make them feel important and welcome. There was at least one special night that included party hats, streamers and balloons. Since then, every movie I’ve ever seen that has a scene of a meal on an ocean liner brings back memories of those carefree, fun dinners.
One early morning the ship slowed and the air changed. You could smell land as we quietly slid into the bay that enveloped the harbor of Cobh, on the southern side of Great Island in Cork Harbour. The ship stopped altogether. A small, fast boat approached us, came alongside, and a man was lifted up into the ship through a hatch door that had been opened on the ship’s side. I learned he was a “pilot” who was going to guide the ship up the channel. The beautiful green hillsides were magical, sloping up from the water, my first introduction to the stunning green and beauty of Ireland.
I knew only the broad brushstrokes of Irish history and the background of emigration. I knew there was a County Kerry, which fascinated me in a parochial way. Little did I know I was looking at the place the Titanic made its last port of call after Southampton and Cherbourg as it set out on its fateful voyage. We slid into the beautiful harbor, where a large vessel came alongside to collect those passengers disembarking. I happened to notice a young man and a beautiful young woman, possibly college students, whom I had seen hanging out together, embracing before she got off in Ireland. Peggy and I had caught them kissing on the lower deck one night after dinner. I was filled with youthful curiosity about their relationship. Yes, despite my age, I had begun to notice enough about the opposite sex to be intrigued by this relationship. Had they just met on board? How serious was this deal? What was going on? I was totally captivated by this goodbye. The image of these two beautiful people in their romantic world was indelibly stamped in my imagination.
The next morning, we arrived in the bustling port city of Le Havre. There we were met by my mother’s sister Eileen. She was jabbering in French to the porters, who were all dressed in blue overalls. In fact, back then, for a young lad’s first look around, it seemed almost everyone was dressed in blue overalls. They were busy, under the chaotic direction of my aunt, separating the luggage, and all I could hear was the frequently uttered phrase “walla, walla.” Later I learned it was a staple of the French language—“voilà voilà,” which roughly translates to “here it is,” but when barked out by my aunt many times in a row and very fast, the repeated word clearly meant something like “Here you are, and I’m so relieved to have found you!”
From Le Havre we drove straight to Les Essarts, which had been rebuilt and opened the year before. It was exciting to return, seven years later, to the place I had first been introduced to as a ruin while holding Mama’s hand. We drove past the beaches of Normandy where the great D-Day invasion took place, past Mont Saint-Michel, one of the wonders of the world, and arrived at the “new” Les Essarts. Although the house had been immensely important to my mother and her immediate, but large family, from the day I arrived at the new house right up to this day, for me and my extended family, and down to a few more generations now, the house and its environs have been a hugely special place in our lives.
My grandmother put the house at the full disposal of all family members. She had her own property in town, called Plaisance. She would walk up to the main house every day surrounded by her corgis, sit in the garden and hold court. She was a graceful woman with a head of white hair accented by a streak of blue. I thought she exuded wisdom and a quiet elegance.
Les Essarts became a gathering spot for the offspring of her children, who had produced plenty of their own children. Those offspring, myself included, now manage
the house as a refuge for the next generations. But it was so much more too. It became the place that provided much of the glue for those in the family who, because of Grandma and Grandpa’s introduction to life abroad, found their lives playing out where they had been raised. And for those of us in America, it was the magnet for our staying connected. All twenty-nine of us first cousins were in many ways more like brothers and sisters. We literally grew up together and shared in one another’s development—the victories and the tragedies.
In summer we would go together to calisthenics class on the beach; have great picnics; learn about teatime and the splendor of a midafternoon snack of biscuits and chocolate, tea or Orangina; play tennis; explore the surrounding villages and history of the war; ride bicycles for miles into the French countryside; and eat exotic foods like crêpes and galettes on the ramparts of Saint-Mâlo. We put on plays we wrote to entertain the adults and ourselves. It was idyllic. Grandma made certain of that. It was always very hard to leave at the end of a stay.
On this first excursion into living abroad, I began to dread the separation from family. I was going to boarding school for the first time. That fact was beginning to sink in. After working through the painful goodbyes with all my cousins, we took the train to Paris, where we met Pa. Then from Paris we drove to the German part of Switzerland en route to Zug. When we stopped in Zurich, parking the car by the train station so my parents could change money, my sister Diana and I distinctly remember practicing our German from a How to Speak German book. From the car window we would ask passersby for the time: “Wie spät ist es?” It became a great game as to who would ask. The problem was that people actually understood our question and answered. Their rapid-fire answer left us looking at each other dumbfounded because we couldn’t understand a word they said. We would break out into raucous laughter until the next victim came along and repeat the exercise. Then, to add insult to injury, a big bus that was blocking the view pulled out, and there was an enormous clock hanging from the station displaying the time for all to see. We laughed hysterically. Even today we still say “Wie spät ist es” to each other.
That night was my last with the family before they dropped me off. We stayed in a hotel in Zug at the base of the mountain Zugerberg, where my school was perched at the top. That first night in Switzerland was also my introduction to an eiderdown that, for a boy who was used to being tucked into bed with sheets and a blanket, struck me as a strange way to stay warm. The next morning as we headed off to the new school, I felt as if I were going to prison or to the executioner. We drove into the courtyard of Institut Montana Zugerberg, a school that is still thriving. There I was introduced to the headmaster and the dormitory chief. My clothes were unloaded. The minutes ticked by. The moment came for goodbyes. The tears I had held back came pouring out. I could see my mother was upset too. Then, when I had sufficiently pulled myself together, my parents got in the car with my siblings and vanished down the mountain to take my sister Peggy to her school near St. Gallen. I was alone. A huge emptiness engulfed me. For three weeks I moved on automatic pilot, thinking of home, missing my family, trying to make friends and adjust to a very alien experience. I alternated between sorrow, stoicism, tears and a brave face.
It was a rude awakening but also fascinating. Soon friendships began to form. I liked my American roommate, Barry Eldridge. A routine set in. My dorm supervisor had persuaded me that the time until Christmas, when I would go to Berlin, was not that far away. I began to count the days and settle in. I had been sent there to learn German, but with 150 Italians, 50 Germans and 3 Americans, I mostly learned Italian—especially colorful swear words. It was the only way to get food passed at the table. Days ticked by. We few Americans were tutored separately in a small class. The fall came fast on top of the mountain, which boasted a stunning view down onto the large Lake Zug, called the Zugersee in German. There was a funicular station close to the school. It was our connection to Zug and the outside world. On Saturdays we were allowed to take it down into town, wander around and spend our allowance. This is when I fell in love with Swiss chocolate. Occasionally we took a field trip to Zurich, and I remember that when Thanksgiving came we Americans were treated to a gathering with other Americans at a hotel nearby. I waited with keen anticipation for letters from my mother. I loved the moment when this blue envelope with her distinctive, meticulous script would appear and I would read and reread her accounts of life in Berlin.
Fresh from my Catholic confirmation in Washington, I would pray a lot at school. It gave me strength and comfort. There was a tiny chapel below our second-floor window in the dorm. On Sundays I would attend services. At night, I would sometimes kneel at the window and say a Rosary. Occasionally Barry joined me. Then one day I remember coming back to my room and Barry was gone, and I mean gone, with no trace of him left behind. The bed was stripped. I was told just that he’d gone home, with no real explanation. It was as if he had died. I was dumbfounded by his departure and felt abandoned. We had become friends. He was my American connection. How could this friend just vanish?
From the seeming constancy of the pain of goodbyes to my family to the later loss of friends in the war, I have always had a terrible time with any separations and goodbyes. I still do. School in Switzerland—despite all the positives about the experience—is where it all started.
One day in the fall, we were in our classrooms, when outside we noticed a large number of uniformed soldiers with guns running through the campus. They were darting around and behind buildings, taking cover and running across open spaces as if avoiding enemy fire. It was the Swiss army conducting exercises. Naturally, we poured out of the classrooms to watch. There we were, an entire school of boys, gawking at these guys trying to pretend they were at war, defending their country, while sarcastic taunts from Italian and German teenagers were hurled at them. I think the whole school played hooky for a while following the maneuvers. I was fascinated. Playing soldier seemed like such a magnificent escape from the real world. Of course, at eleven, I had little to no understanding of what war really was.
• • •
IN SEPTEMBER 1957, I was deposited at St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire. I arrived with my trunk of labeled clothes per the admissions instructions, ready for a new adventure. I was in the eighth grade, and it was my seventh school. (At one, Fessenden School in Newton, Massachusetts, I met Dick Pershing from New York City, who, like me, was doing a year of transition before going off to secondary school—in his case, Exeter. Neither of us had any inkling that our lives would be intertwined, but we enjoyed each other’s company at this early age. Dick helped make boarding school fun and sometimes mischievous.)
It’s fair to say that I arrived at St. Paul’s somewhat lost. I had moved so often that it was hard for me to connect to one culture or place, let alone make lasting attachments with many friends. But I had learned some good moves on a soccer field in Europe. And I did gain great independence and confidence during my travels in Europe. After all, how many kids get to travel alone at age eleven by train from Switzerland to the divided Cold War city of Berlin and stay up all night to journey through East Germany and watch Russian soldiers rap the muzzles of their guns on the compartment windows when they caught you peeking out?
I felt confident, but I didn’t understand the ebb and flow of the dominant current of St. Paul’s. The majority of my classmates appeared to come from Philadelphia, New York City, Long Island and Connecticut. Many knew each other from country day schools or urban schools with long pedigrees. With that came a pretty automatic pecking order. A good part of the humor and vernacular was alien to me. Whether it was madras jackets or Peal shoes, they seemed to have similar points of reference.
So St. Paul’s took some adjusting to, but despite my own missteps and awkwardness, I came to cherish the intimacy of the classrooms; the extraordinary beauty of the campus with the magical change of seasons (with the notable exception of the time between winter and spring, known as mud season);
the intellectual give-and-take between teachers and students, and friend to friend; the tranquillity of a Channing Lefebvre organ recital at Evensong in the school’s stunning chapel; learning to play hockey and enjoying the uniqueness of black ice on the ponds; throwing a lacrosse ball around or playing Ultimate Frisbee in the long, lazy light of warm spring evenings when we procrastinated before study time; the deep friendships made, some of which survive to this day and two of the best that were lost on the battlefields of Vietnam. St. Paul’s did a lot for me—which is what a school should do—and I am forever grateful for the tutelage of special teachers such as Andre Jacques, Herbert Church and Reverend John Thomas Walker.
In the fall of 1960, I traveled one November day to Boston for a visit to the orthodontist. I took the train from Concord to Boston’s North Station, dutifully and painfully went to my appointment in Kenmore Square and then was planning to catch a late-afternoon train back to Concord. When I arrived at North Station I noticed an unusual hustle of people, many of them carrying “Kennedy for President” signs or wearing plastic hats with “Kennedy” emblazoned on the brim. It was the eve of the election—November 7, 1960, and I learned that Senator John F. Kennedy was due to arrive shortly for the final rally of the campaign before going to Hyannisport to await the returns.
