page_title: John Kerry
section_title: Marriages and children
hierarchical_section_title: John Kerry / Personal and family life / Marriages and children
caption_attribution_description: English: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, a Vietnam War veteran, delivers the keynote address at the LBJ Presidential Library’s Vietnam War Summit on Wednesday, April 27, 2016. Kerry, a former U.S. senator and co-founder of Vietnam Veterans of America, gained national attention when he spoke out publicly against the Vietnam War after returning from two tours of duty. Kerry’s speech was part of the LBJ Library’s three-day Vietnam War Summit, which continues on Thursday, April 28.
context_page_description: John Forbes Kerry is an American politician and diplomat who served as the 68th United States Secretary of State from 2013 to 2017. An attorney and former naval officer, Kerry first drew public attention as a decorated Vietnam veteran-turned anti-war activist. He went on to serve as a prosecutor and as Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, before serving as United States Senator from Massachusetts from 1985 to 2013. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the Democratic nominee for President of the United States in the 2004 election, which he lost to incumbent President George W. Bush.
  Kerry grew up as a military brat in Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. before attending boarding school in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. In 1966, after graduating from Yale University, Kerry enlisted in the United States Naval Reserve, ultimately attaining the rank of lieutenant. From 1968 to 1969, during the Vietnam War, he served an abbreviated four-month tour of duty in South Vietnam. While serving as the commanding officer of a Swift boat, Kerry sustained three wounds in combat with the Viet Cong, earning three Purple Heart Medals.
context_section_description: Kerry was married to Julia Thorne in 1970, and they had two daughters together: documentary filmmaker Alexandra Kerry (born September 5, 1973) and physician Vanessa Kerry (born December 31, 1976).
  Alexandra was born days before Kerry began law school. In 1982, Julia asked Kerry for a separation while she was suffering from severe depression. They were divorced on July 25, 1988, and the marriage was formally annulled in 1997. "After 14 years as a political wife, I associated politics only with anger, fear and loneliness" she wrote in A Change of Heart, her book about depression. Thorne later married Richard Charlesworth, an architect, and moved to Bozeman, Montana, where she became active in local environmental groups such as the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. Thorne supported Kerry's 2004 presidential run. She died of cancer on April 27, 2006.
  Kerry and his second wife--Mozambican-born businesswoman and philanthropist Teresa Heinz, the widow of Kerry's late Pennsylvania Republican Senate colleague John Heinz—were introduced to each other by Heinz at an Earth Day rally in 1990. Early the following year, Senator Heinz was killed in a plane crash near Lower Merion. Teresa has three sons from her marriage to Heinz, Henry John IV, André, and Christopher. Heinz and Kerry were married on May 26, 1995, in Nantucket, Massachusetts.
caption: Kerry at the LBJ Presidential Library in 2016
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