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.
Heinz IV is the quiet one. He makes Judy Dean seem like Janet Jackson. The people around him protect him from curious reporters. He wants nothing to do with this campaign, they say. Greta Garbo-like, he just wants to be left alone.
His lust for privacy is noteworthy at the moment because the other children and stepchildren of national politicians have become omnipresently public -- the Bush twins, the Kerry kids, the other Heinz brothers, for instance.
And because he was born into a political family and has joined still another one.
He is the one you did not see at the Democratic National Convention or on "Larry King Live." He is the one who doesn't want his picture in the newspaper, who won't do interviews, who is fiercely independent and even more fiercely private. A rare photo in a recent People magazine shows a smiling man with dark hair and a well-kept goatee.
He does occasionally return phone calls and e-mails. "This is John Heinz," he says in a crackling voice on the telephone answering machine. "I'm not interested in doing any interviews. So . . . sorry to waste your time. But don't bother. Thank you."
We could fill volumes with what we don't know about Heinz IV. With information available on the Internet and some words with the very few folks who will talk about Heinz, the puzzle pieces of his life begin to fit together.
Henry John Heinz IV was born in November 1966 to John and Teresa Heinz. His two younger brothers are Andre and Christopher. Plenty has been written about them.
His multimillionaire Republican father, Henry John Heinz III, was elected by Pennsylvanians to the House in 1971 and to the Senate in 1976. Heinz III served there until he died in a plane crash in 1991.
Newsday reports that at the funeral of his father, Heinz IV read from the works of Trappist monk Thomas Merton. He also quoted "a wise old friend" who said, "A flower cannot proclaim its beauty until it dies."
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.
The South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo says Heinz IV is a major mover in the World Shim Gum Do Association. The woman who answers the phone at the Boston-based association says she knows Heinz but she does not want to talk about whether he has trained there. And she says she will not answer any questions about Heinz or Shim Gum Do.
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. 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.
