Author Archives: bfialindathieman

Andre Heinz, the thirty-four-year-old step-son of John Kerry came to town on Wednesday night, August 25, at 7:00 p.m., and addressed a crowd of about 100 citizens gathered in the upstairs meeting room of the Bettendorf Public Library. His opening remarks were that his mother always felt “grounded” when she returned to Iowa, and that there was a rainbow outside that matched the building’s color scheme: observant statements, but not particularly political statements. The rainbow was caused by the all-day off-and-on rain the area experienced on this overcast August day.

Andre’s 31-year-old brother, Chris, was not present, and the oldest Heinz son, John IV, has steadfastly refused to have anything to do with the Kerry campaign. He lives a quiet life with his wife and daughter in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, working as a blacksmith and iron worker artisan (he trained, for a while, at Colonial Williamsburg) and as the founder of the private Buddhist Tinicum Art and Science School, in Ottsville, Pennsylvania, which has, among its student enrollment, some troubled youths. John IV is the father of Teresa Kerry’s only grandchild, but Mrs. Kerry has been quoted as saying that it was soon after her grand-daughter’s birth in 1996 that her eldest son “began to hate me.” There is little information available beyond that, and John IV isn’t giving interviews.

Andre Heinz graduated from Georgetown with a degree in English and then studied at Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Science. Therefore, many of his remarks concerned the environment. He works as an environmental consultant in Stockholm for NaturalStep. It had been announced that, upon arrival, Andre, would first tour the assembled crowd, meeting and greeting, but that turned out to be wrong, as he took the podium (after a brief introduction) and, with a combination of insouciance and savoir faire said that his speech would be addressing three basic topics:

1) The Kerry/Edwards plan for jobs for the middle class.

2) The Kerry/Edwards plan for sensible, affordable health care.

3) How our country can better invest in science and technology.

It was probably just as well that young Andre meandered off-topic with humorous asides, as, while certainly important topics, the three outlined above – which he intermittently addressed – can certainly be yawners when voters meet late on a week-night after a long day on the job.

After announcing this three-pronged speech plan, however, he wandered a bit (by his own admission) and became bogged-down in the details of the Kerry/Edwards Health Care plan. (This sort of thing usually does not play well to assembled masses; it reminded me a bit of the O.J. trial, that smothered its audience with facts to the point that they could not absorb any more DNA evidence and acquitted a man the nation still thinks is guilty.)
Continue reading →