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He had never voted for Kerry before 2004, when he did, indeed, vote for the hometown guy. Sigh! I am not one of his biggest fans. IMHO, this article is both a slap and a very grudging compliment. (They must have used hot pokers and the threat of no more expense account lunches to get that much out of McGrory.)
DON'T BOX HIM IN
Boston Globe, THIRD, Sec. Metro/Region, p B1 04-06-2004
By BY BRIAN MCGRORY
Sometimes people surprise you. Sometimes they don't fit neatly into the preconceived little boxes that are built for them, the ones marked funny or aloof or generous or irritable.
Take John Kerry. You know the guy. Junior senator. The sense of humor of a dead horse. Never given the respect he feels he deserves. There's not a person who's met him who hasn't been given the famous Washington handshake: Kerry staring over the person's shoulder in search of the most important person in the room.
Still, a couple of years ago, I found myself on a rainy winter afternoon in a shuttered variety store on the outskirts of downtown Lawrence. Inside, the few shelves were stocked with cans of beans and jars of coffee. The longtime storekeeper, Frank Biongorno, was suffering a broken heart. His wife had recently died, and Bongi, as everyone knew him, wouldn't walk downstairs from his apartment to run the store ever again.
As his nephew showed me around, he casually mentioned that John Kerry used to stop by from time to time to have dinner with Bongi and his wife at their kitchen table upstairs.
John Kerry? The man in the blue tailored suits? From Louisburg Square? Are you sure?
Yeah, he nodded, explaining that Kerry had met Bongi during Kerry's first run for the House many years before and that the two had formed a quiet but enduring friendship.
It didn't sound like the Kerry I know, the one with the love of television cameras and the resort houses and the heiress wife. But when I called to ask about Bongi, Kerry quietly said: "He became my father in Lawrence. They were family."
I bring this up in regard to a little noticed but important scene at a Brighton union training center last week. Kerry was leaving one of those overstaged campaign events with unemployed workers - candidate's message, "I care" - when he happened across a father and daughter in the crowd. His eyes lit up. He hugged her, and they talked intensely for many minutes.
The father was Steven A. Tolman, a state senator and part of the Tolman brothers political team, two good guys fighting on behalf of people who never seem to get as much as they need. Back in 1996, Tolman, then a state representative, worked on Kerry's successful re election campaign against Bill Weld. In the last month of the race, Tolman's 11-year-old daughter, Victoria, fell ill. She first lost use of her legs, then lost all motor control. She ended up in Franciscan Children's Hospital for 2 1/2 months.
The morning after he won the biggest campaign of his career, Kerry showed up in Victoria's room by 9:30. He was dressed casually, accompanied only by his wife. They came unannounced, sat on the edge of Victoria's bed for a long while, and then visited with other patients. The only cameras were held by parents.
Last Wednesday, with the national press corps in tow and a crush of locals vying for a moment's time, Kerry spied Tolman's daughter standing among the pols. He had seen her just one other time since that morning in the hospital seven years ago, when she was a frightened girl unable to move. She's now a fully functioning young woman of 18, having waged a long battle against a disease that doctors still don't understand. She attends college at night.
It took Kerry maybe a fraction of a second, but he exclaimed, "Victoria," a question as well as an answer, and leaned in for a hug. They talked of her recovery and her schoolwork. Tolman, fully aware of the good and the bad of John Kerry, was floored. "It was genuine," he said.
There will always be those who say that Kerry likes you best when he needs you most, and to no small extent they may be right. There will be long days, dark days in the campaign when the worst parts of the man overtake the best.
But keep in mind the Victorias and the Bongis who inhabit a quiet corner of his complex life. The tendency will be to squeeze Kerry into an easily defined box. The fact that it's not that simple is both the bane and the virtue of the man.
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