'Boston Globe' book on Kerry Out Today

By: E&P Staff On the morning of November 23, 1921, Frederick A. Kerry -- born as Fritz Kohn in Austria -- made his way to a washroom at the Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston, near his office, just before lunchtime, pulled a handgun from his pocket and shot himself in the head.

The death of Sen. John F. Kerry's grandfather was front-page news the following day in many Boston papers. A Boston Herald headline read: "F.A. Kerry Ends Life in Hotel -- Shoe Dealer Weakened and Depressed by Severe Illness -- Reorganized Many Department Stores."

Kerry's attorney attributed the shooting to his client's suffering from severe asthma, but one of his granddaughter's later said she was told that he "had made three fortunes and when had lost the third fortune, he couldn't face it anymore."

The episode is recounted in full in the opening chapter of the long-awaited book, "John Kerry: The Complete Biography by The Boston Globe Reporters Who Know Him Best," published today. The reporters are Michael Kranish, Brian C. Mooney and Nina J. Easton, and the book grew out of their often tough-minded reporting on Senator Kerry for the newspaper over the past several years.

The book covers Kerry's entire life and political career. Writing about his time at Yale University, the authors note that George W. Bush was a student there for part of the same period. Kerry and Bush have both said they don't recall meeting at Yale, but David Thorne, a close friend of Kerry and the brother of his first wife, says in the book that he was on hand one day when the two men met. According to Thorne, they discussed the then-hot issue of busing to integrate schools, with Kerry in favor of it, and Bush opposed.

The book also claims that the "secret code number" of Yale's secret Skull and Bones society is 322.

According to the book, Kerry did not know the details of the suicide or his grandfather's Jewish background and name change until last year. Some of his closest associates and family members assumed he was Irish on his father's side, certainly a plus in Massachusetts politics.

Fritz Kohn, a factory manager who had married a Jewish woman, changed his name while still in Austria in 1900, hoping to advance his business career or chances in the military. The following year he and his wife converted to Catholicism. They arrived at Ellis Island in New York in 1905, moved to Chicago and then to the Boston area in 1915.

Six years later, he was dead. One of his sons, Richard, then six, "would become a foreign service officer," the authors note, and "one day would have a son of his own, John Forbes Kerry."