John Heinz, Preferring Inner Light To Limelight
By Linton Weeks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 16, 2004; Page C01
There's usually one unusual one.
In the blended Kerry-Heinz family, it's John Heinz IV. He's the iconoclast. He's the Buddhist educator and medieval armor craftsman and the keep-to-himself individualist. He is the eldest stepson of John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, and he is the eldest son of Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz, heiress to the H.J. Heinz ketchup megafortune....
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Heinz IV grew up in Washington and spent summers at Rosemont, the family estate in Fox Chapel, near Pittsburgh. He graduated from Boston College. While there, he became fascinated with Shim Gum Do, a Korean spiritual way that speaks of the mind's sword....
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After graduating from Boston College in 1989, Heinz studied blacksmithing in Colonial Williamsburg. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation employs several blacksmiths and Heinz IV served as an apprentice there for a year. (The article adds that now "Heinz IV uses his knowledge of blacksmithery to fashion exotic objects in the tradition of ancient craftsmen.") In the mid-1990s he lived in Nantucket; in 1996 he moved to a 130-acre piece of land in Bucks County, Pa. He is married and has a daughter....
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Combining his affinities for martial arts and education, Heinz IV is founder and headmaster of Tinicum Art and Science School in Ottsville, Pa., which bills itself as America's First Buddhist Alternative School....The students often come from difficult environments, the Web site says. Many of them "have faced a lot of adversity -- chaotic home life, drug and alcohol problems, and chronic failure in school."...
(John Heinz IV serves on the board of Heinz Endowments, which "oversees" $1.3 billion. The president of the Endowments, Maxwell King, says that Heinz "is a swift, sure voice for working people," who "believes in 'an equitable society,'" and "'has a really sharp, analytical mind.'")
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3738-2004Aug15.html?nav=hcmodule