The Making Of John Kerry

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Two pieces of writing from that time reveal the divide. One was an essay Kerry wrote for the school magazine, Horae Scholasticae, titled, "In Support of Federal Aid to Education." The 800 words read like glue, right up to the conclusion: "The problem stretches far and wide and wherever it goes it draws in trying circumstances and more problems." The other piece was a poem Kerry wrote for the same magazine in May 1962 about, of all things, France's President Charles de Gaulle, and the decline of the French empire. "A poem? I wrote a poem?" he asked TIME, upon being reminded of that effort, at once pretentious and subtle.

The fifth Republic stands weak
and dismayed
By her failure; she lives devoid of
love
Except by the men whose debt has
been paid ..."

The poem ends:

Beyond all terror, destiny in hand,
Over rack and ruin, over black peaks
Of rebellion, blood and communist
brand,
Rules a man whom no Algerian dares
Blaspheme or murder — except in his
prayers.

It is hard to imagine one boy writing both pieces: the education essay is pinched, passive and overloaded with empty phrases meant to lend it gravitas. The poem, while overwrought, is vivid and compelling, much like Kerry's letters and journals from Vietnam. It's as if there is a person inside Kerry with real, not calculated passion who has been buried by his cautious, public self.

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It's 1962, and Kerry is finally in his element. "He loved Yale from the first day we were there," says Barbiero, who also enrolled at Yale. Barbiero recalls walking around campus the first week and listening to Kerry identify the buildings and statues, the lore, the campus legends. "He knew the history of the place already. He just seemed to know where he was, where he was in history, and he wanted to be a part of it." Most important, says Barbiero, Yale was liberating for Kerry. "He became more comfortable with who he was," says his friend.

And he was fresh off a once-in-a-lifetime kind of summer. He had been volunteering on Edward Kennedy's Senate campaign and dating a girl named Janet Auchincloss, who happened to be the half sister of First Lady Jackie Kennedy. It was on a visit to see Auchincloss at Hammersmith Farm in Newport, R.I., that Kerry got to meet President Kennedy, his idol, first at a house party, and later out sailing together to watch the America's Cup.

When Kennedy came to the Yale campus that spring to give a speech, Kerry urged his buddies to go. "That was my first experience with how important all this stuff was to John," says David Thorne, who would become Kerry's close friend, his soccer teammate and eventually his brother-in-law. "He said, 'We have to go. We have to go cheer the President.'" People from that era at Yale say that even before Kerry became president of the political union and a champion college debater, they knew he would run for President one day. A classmate who would not count himself a fan goes so far as to say he remembers attending a party Kerry threw in his freshman dorm and seeing a sign on the door: JFK IN 64; JFK IN 96.