Who Is John Kerry?

Dec. 17 -- In 1971, when 60 Minutes correspondent Morley Safer asked John Kerry, an antiwar movement leader, "Do you want to be president?," the now Democratic White House hopeful replied, "Of the United States? No."

Now, after 19 years in the Senate, Kerry is biting his words as he wages a political battle for the presidency in 2004.

Kerry was born in Colorado, but he learned, as he puts it, to walk and talk in Massachusetts. Raised in a well-off family, he said he never thought of himself as rich or took it for granted.

"I thought of myself as privileged," he told ABCNEWS' Peter Jennings. "I had opportunity, but my parents were really clear about the sense of responsibility that one had to the world around you and that you give back. And we were all raised — all of us were raised — in that sense."

Because his father was in the Foreign Service, Kerry was sent to a series of boarding schools. He said it was sometimes lonely.

"At times, and I think particularly with my parents away, I mean that made me feel a little strange," he said. While other students' parents would visit on weekends, he said, "I don't think my parents ever came to one sporting event that I ever was involved in, or any other event, while I was there. They just weren't there."

The challenges of his youth were coupled with great opportunity. "How many kids get to ride a bike through the Brandenburg Gate and go into East Berlin and see the difference between Communism and the West at age 12?" Kerry observed.

An Unforgettable Encounter

As a young man, Kerry was serious. And excited, he says, by President John F. Kennedy.

Kerry told Jennings how he first met JFK while visiting in Rhode Island. "I happened to wind up at the house where he was staying," said Kerry. "[He] wanted to go sailing and we went out. I had an incredible moment of meeting the president and of having this just down-to-earth conversation with the guy."