Veterans' Bond Is Boost for Kerry in Iowa.

Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News, January, 2004

By Peter Canellos, The Boston Globe Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

Jan. 18--DES MOINES, Iowa -- The call came into the Kerry headquarters in Washington on Friday. A retired police officer wanted to help the campaign. He had a special reason: John F. Kerry saved his life on the Bay Hap river, pulling him to safety while the banks erupted with gunfire.

James Rassman had retired to Oregon and devoted himself to growing orchids. A news junkie, he followed Kerry's Senate career and the launch of his drive for the White House. He was unaware that journalists and historians were eager to talk to him, that he, Rassman, was a missing piece of the biographical puzzle of a man who wants to be president.

But when Rassman heard that the Iowa...