A bride and a bridal gown.

The NYT runs a long piece about John Kerry's early political years. I was interested in the material about his first wife, of whom we've heard very little:

Later that spring [in 1970], he married Julia Stimson Thorne in a big Long Island ceremony. The bride wore a gown from a relative's 1786 wedding, at which Alexander Hamilton had been best man and George Washington a guest, and The New York Times's lengthy account declared, "Whether today's wedding becomes a similar footnote to history may depend on the bridegroom."

Ah, but there is nothing more about the elusive Julia. The bridal gown played a more vivid role in the story than the woman who wore it.

UPDATE: Here's a Newsweek article about Thorne from last May. According to Newsweek, she's elusive by choice and she supports Kerry in the race. This is interesting:

Kerry told [biographer Douglas] Brinkley that a big reason he'd volunteered for Swift Boat duty in Vietnam—which is often cited as an example of his heroism—was so he could spend the summer with Thorne before training started. When asked if she'd ever heard that story before, their daughter Vanessa Kerry grew quiet and said, "No, but it wouldn't surprise me."