Richard J. Kerry

Richard John Kerry (July 28, 1915 – July 29, 2000) was an American Foreign Service officer and lawyer. He was the father of politician John Kerry and attorney Cameron Kerry.

Early life Kerry was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, to shoe merchant Frederick A. "Fred" Kerry and musician Ida Löwe, both immigrants of Austrian-Jewish origins. He had an elder brother Eric (born ) and an elder sister Mildred (born 1910). Fred and Ida had changed their names from "Fritz and Ida Kohn" to "Frederick and Ida Kerry" in 1900 and converted from Judaism to Catholicism in 1901 or 1902. They were baptized at the same time as Eric. Fred's brother Otto also embraced Catholicism and took on the "Kerry" name. The "Kerry" name, widely misinterpreted as indicative of Irish heritage, was reputedly selected arbitrarily: "According to family legend, Fritz and another family member opened an atlas at random and dropped a pencil on a map. It fell on County Kerry in Ireland, and thus a name was chosen."

Career Kerry joined the United States Army Air Corps in World War II and volunteered to become a test pilot. He flew C-47s and B-29s until contracting tuberculosis, after which he was discharged. Upon returning to Massachusetts after convalescing in Colorado, he became an Assistant United States Attorney. He moved to Washington, D.C., in 1949, where he worked in the office of the General Counsel for the Navy Department.

Kerry entered the American foreign service and served as a diplomat in positions both in the United States and at foreign embassies, including in Germany and Norway. He also served as a lawyer in the Bureau of United Nations Affairs. Kerry authored The Star Spangled Mirror: America's Image of Itself and the World in 1990.

Personal life Kerry met nurse Rosemary Isabel Forbes in 1938 in Saint Briac, France, where he was taking a course in the sculpture of ship models and she was training as a nurse. They married on February 8, 1941, in Montgomery, Alabama, while he was a Cadet in the Army Air Corps. They had four children: Margaret (born 1941); John (born 1943); Diana (born 1947); and Cameron (born 1950).

In retirement, Kerry engaged in his passion for sailing. He made several Atlantic crossings. Kerry sailed the New England and Nova Scotia coasts solo and raced sloops.

Kerry died in at Massachusetts General Hospital on July 29, 2000 from prostate cancer complications, one day after his 85th birthday.

Kerry's son, John Kerry, has said that although he knew his paternal grandfather had come from Austria, he did not know until informed by The Boston Globe in January 2003 that Fred Kerry had changed his name from "Fritz Kohn" and converted from Judaism to Catholicism or that Ida Kerry's brother Otto and sister Jenni had died in Nazi concentration camps.