Today is the beginning of a new Wednesday feature here at John Kerry is My Hero.  Any stories or anecdotes or essays that you care to share about how John Kerry has affected your life will be published in the next Wednesday installment of Tales From the Kerryverse.  Whether it’s an account of a personal meeting or discussion you had with the Senator, what the campaign and his vision for America have meant to you, any story, large or small, funny or serious, as long as it’s positive, will be posted here (Kerry-related personal photos welcome, too!)  Leave your story as a comment on any post here, let me know it’s intended for Tales From the Kerryverse and how you want to be credited and then watch for it the very next Wednesday!

One of my favorite aspects of having learned more about John Kerry and his life and career is the enormous variety of people who have been inspired by him.  I would love to see stories from and about your families, friends, and kids and their adventures in the Kerryverse, too.  

For our first compilation, we have two wonderful stories.

Diane tells us about a chance meeting with the Senator:

I feel like I’ve told this story a million times, but it’s my favorite one.

Years ago - I’d say it must have been in about the late ’80’s - my family and I were strolling around Beacon Hill on a beautiful fall Sunday. We were walking down Beacon Street right near the Bull & Finch Pub, when out of the corner of my eye I noticed a tall man passing who seemed familiar. I did a double take as I realized it was Senator Kerry. At the same time he looked around and smiled at me and said hi. I said hi and smiled back, and that was it. He came across as a little shy, but very friendly.

That tiny incident had a disproportionate effect on me. It taught me that all the garbage I’d read about him in the Globe and Herald was - well - garbage. It taught me not to believe everything I read in the papers. I knew that the kind of person I wanted representing me in the Senate was a man who would walk around and take the time to notice and interact with people on the street, one on one. The meetings I’ve had with him since have only reinforced that initial impression.

and Jessica has sent us this beautiful account of how work on the 2004 campaign and JK and THK’s environmental philosophy had a very tangible effect on her life:

The Little House by Jessica Szabo

The little house 26 miles outside of Pittsburgh was built as the garage to a row house, became a one bedroom home that housed my mother, her sister, and her parents, and years later, my parents and me. (more…)

John Kerry is a great dad. I know this because I have a great dad. My dad is not
perfect and neither am I, but I love him and I know he loves me. Who wants
perfection when you can have that?

That’s the feeling I get every time I see John Kerry with his daughters. Their
lives have not been idealized or airbrushed, but they have triumphed over any
difficulty through love. They tease each other, they laugh together, they are
there in the hard times to support each other. They have a genuine bond, the kind
of connection that it is just not possible to fake and that shows in every smile
or hug.

We see them mostly in public situations, but their love and pride in each other is
plain to see, even in the camera’s glare. These two smart, beautiful, decent women, (more…)

Thanks to Noisy Democrat, who brought this to my attention, I find I’m not the first to have blogged about John Kerry’s superpowers!  The Rude Pundit extolled them just before the 2004 election, far more concretely and pungently than I, in a post that has me cheering and wishing I’d known about it in those tense days so I could have shown it to everyone I know.

OK, just kidding.  But it’s true, in a way.  Before the Democratic National Convention in July, 2004, I saw myself as a true-blue liberal, a “cradle Democrat” — I voted the straight Democratic ticket, I turned up my nose at fundamentalists of all stripes, I supported labor and the underdog, I scoffed at the military, at religion, at career politicians.  Like most people, I’d inherited my beliefs and values from my parents and friends, from books I’d read, from popular culture. 

I was pretty darn ignorant and I liked it that way.

I sat out the 2004 primaries because I was just too heartsick over the debacle of 2000 to risk adding to my despair.  But I knew when the Democratic candidate was chosen, I would work for him.  So when John Kerry became the nominee, I sighed and gritted my teeth and got ready to join the team to get rid of George W. Bush.  I volunteered at the campaign office downtown, donated what money I could, made countless phone calls, sent e-mails and distributed literature. I drove up with friends and canvassed in New Hampshire and as I went door to door and the people of that savvy state asked me hard questions about the candidate, I realized I had to find out a lot more about him if I were going to be an effective campaigner.

I read the Boston Globe biography  and the George Butler photo book first.  Hey, this guy wasn’t “just a politician”, he was a real person, with an amazing history and a really cool family!  I wanted to find out more. (more…)

As far as he’s concerned, John Kerry is neither a hero nor a superhero. He’s a man, with a private life, loving family and friends, and a job. It happens to be a job he’s dead serious about, but that is simply how he has chosen to live his life on this earth, all in a day’s work, nothing heroic about it.

A hero is not something self-ordained, but rather created by the admiration and regard of others and, while we do well to remember that he is also human, we can find inspiration and guidance in his example. John Kerry has earned this admiration throughout a lifetime of principle, sacrifice and service and he is a indeed a hero to many around the world.

A superhero is something else again: invincible, miraculous, Fearless in his pursuit of (more…)

Within the last seven months, my beloved mother suffered a stroke and a followup event which left her with some trouble in finding words.  Her vocabulary is still enormous and her cognition is near perfect, but sometimes she can’t find the exact words she wants exactly when she wants them and the results of her intense effort to communicate are often unintentionally poetic and wonderful.  Although her phrases are not always conventional, I find that they strike nearer the heart of truth than most ”normal” speech.

The other day, I was remarking to her that my father, who is also recently home from a short stay in a nursing home, was being accompanied on his first grocery shopping expedition the same day she was.  She struggled for a diplomatic response to this earth-shattering news and came up with: “I guess it’s the old-fashioned get busy.”  Even though I can’t know exactly what she meant to convey with this expression, it immediately became part of my permanent lexicon.

 And, musing on it, I realized that it can be applied to no one more appropriately than John Kerry. I remember how worried I was about him after Election Day 2004 and how amazed and impressed I was when, (more…)