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John Kerry Biography & Facts

John Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is an American attorney, politician and diplomat who served as the 68th United States secretary of state from 2013 to 2017 in the administration of Barack Obama. A member of the Forbes family and of the Democratic Party, he previously represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1985 to 2013 and later served as the first U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate from 2021 to 2024. Kerry was the Democratic nominee for president of the United States in the 2004 election, losing to then-incumbent president George W. Bush. Kerry grew up in Massachusetts and Washington, D.C.. In 1966, after graduating from Yale University, he enlisted in the United States Naval Reserve, ultimately attaining the rank of lieutenant. From 1968 to 1969, during the Vietnam War, Kerry served an abbreviated four-month tour of duty in South Vietnam. While commanding a Swift boat, he sustained three wounds in combat with the Viet Cong, for which he earned three Purple Heart Medals. Kerry was awarded the Silver Star Medal and the Bronze Star Medal for valorous conduct in separate military engagements. After completing his active military service, Kerry returned to the United States and became an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War. He gained national recognition as an anti-war activist, serving as a spokesperson for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War organization. Kerry testified in the Fulbright Hearings before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, where he described the United States government's policy in Vietnam as the cause of war crimes. In 1972, Kerry entered electoral politics as a Democratic candidate for the United States House of Representatives in Massachusetts's 5th congressional district. He won the Democratic nomination but was defeated in the general election by his Republican opponent. He subsequently worked as a radio talk show host and as the executive director of an advocacy organization while attending the Boston College School of Law. After obtaining his juris doctor in 1976, Kerry served from 1977 to 1979 as the first assistant district attorney of Middlesex County. After a period in private legal practice, he was elected the 66th lieutenant governor of Massachusetts in 1982. In 1984, Kerry was elected to the United States Senate. As a member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, he led a series of hearings investigating narcotics trafficking in Latin America, which exposed aspects of the Iran–Contra affair. Kerry won the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004, alongside vice presidential nominee and North Carolina Senator John Edwards. He lost the Electoral College and the popular vote by slim margins, winning 251 electors to Bush's 286 and 48.3% of the popular vote to Bush's 50.7%. Kerry remained in the Senate and chaired the Committee on Foreign Relations from 2009 to 2013. In January 2013, Kerry was nominated by President Obama to succeed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and was subsequently confirmed by his Senate colleagues. He was U.S. secretary of state throughout the second term of the Obama administration from 2013 to 2017. During his tenure, he initiated the 2013–2014 Israeli–Palestinian peace talks and negotiated agreements restricting the nuclear program of Iran, including the 2013 Joint Plan of Action and the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. In 2015, Kerry signed the Paris Agreement on climate change on behalf of the United States. In January 2021, Kerry returned to government, becoming the first person to hold the position of U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, under President Joe Biden. On March 6, Kerry left this position to work on Biden's 2024 presidential campaign. Kerry was awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom by Biden in May 2024. Early life and education (1943–1966) John Forbes Kerry was born on December 11, 1943, at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Aurora, Colorado. He is the second of four children born to Richard John Kerry, a U.S. diplomat and lawyer, and Rosemary Forbes, a nurse and social activist. His father was raised Catholic (John's paternal grandparents were Austro-Hungarian Jewish immigrants who converted to Catholicism) and his mother was Episcopalian. He was raised with an elder sister Margaret, a younger sister Diana, and a younger brother Cameron. The children were raised in their father's Catholic faith, and John served as an altar boy. Kerry was originally considered a military brat, until his father was discharged from the Army Air Corps. Kerry lived in Groton, Massachusetts his first year and Millis, Massachusetts afterwards before moving to the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. at age seven, when his father took a spot in the Department of the Navy's Office of General Counsel and soon became a diplomat in the State Department's Bureau of United Nations Affairs. As members of the Forbes and Dudley–Winthrop families, his maternal extended family enjoyed great wealth. Kerry's parents themselves were upper-middle class, and a wealthy grand-aunt paid for him to attend elite boarding schools such as Institut Montana Zugerberg in Switzerland. Through his maternal ancestry, Kerry also descends from Rev. James McGregor who was among the first 500 Scots-Irish immigrants to Boston Harbor in the 18th century. At the age of ten, Kerry's father took a position as the U.S. Attorney for Berlin. When Kerry was twelve, he crossed into the Soviet Occupation Zone to visit Hitler's bunker and ride through the Brandenburg Gate. If Kerry had been captured, it would have caused an international incident. In 1957, his father was stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Oslo, Norway, and Kerry was sent back to the United States to attend boarding school. He first attended the Fessenden School in Newton, Massachusetts, and later St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, where he learned skills in public speaking and began developing an interest in politics. Kerry founded the John Winant Society at St. Paul's to debate the issues of the day; the Society still exists there. In 1960, while at St. Paul's, he played bass in a minor rock band called The Electras with six of his classmates. The band had about five hundred copies of one album printed in 1961, which they sold some of at dances at the school; it was made available on streaming platforms many years later. In 1962, Kerry attended Yale University, majoring in political science and residing in Jonathan Edwards College. By that year, his parents returned to Groton. While at Yale, Kerry briefly dated Janet Auchincloss, the younger half-sister of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. Through Auchincloss, Kerry was invited to a day of sailing with then-President John F. Kennedy and his family. Kerry played on the varsity Yale Bulldogs men's soccer team, earning his only letter in his senior year. He also played freshman and junior varsity hockey and, in his senior year, junior varsity lacrosse. In addi.... Discover the John Kerry popular books. Find the top 100 most popular John Kerry books.