[2][4] The "Kerry" name, widely misinterpreted as indicative of Irish heritage, was reputedly selected arbitrarily: "According to family legend, Fritz and another family member opened an atlas at random and dropped a pencil on a map.

The suicide was front-page news in all of the Boston newspapers, reporting at the time that the motive was severe asthma and related health problems, but family members stated that the motive was financial trouble: "He had made three fortunes and when he had lost the third fortune, he couldn't face it anymore", according to Eric's daughter Nancy.

[1] John Kerry has said that although he knew his paternal grandfather had come from Austria, he did not know until informed by The Boston Globe in January 2003 on the basis of their genealogical research that Fred Kerry had changed his name from "Fritz Kohn" and converted from Judaism to Catholicism[3] nor that Ida's brother Otto and sister Jenni had died in Nazi concentration camps.

[5] Kerry joined the United States Army Air Corps in World War II and volunteered to become a test pilot.

He moved to Washington, D.C., in 1949, where he worked in the office of the General Counsel for the Navy Department.

[10][11] Kerry died in at Massachusetts General Hospital on July 29, 2000, from prostate cancer complications, one day after his 85th birthday.