Mrs. Heinz Kerry, 74, grew sick while staying at the family’s vacation home on the Massachusetts island and was in critical condition. She appeared to have a seizure of some kind, according to one person informed about the situation. An ambulance was summoned to the house around 3:30 p.m. and left shortly afterward for Nantucket Cottage Hospital.
By Sunday evening, doctors had stabilized her but her condition was judged too serious for the small facility on Nantucket. She was flown along with medical personnel on her own private plane to Boston and transported to Massachusetts General Hospital. Mr. Kerry, who had arrived on the island a few days earlier after a long overseas trip, accompanied her to Boston.
“The family is grateful for the outpouring of support it has received and aware of the interest in her condition, but they ask for privacy at this time,” said Glen Johnson, a spokesman for Mr. Kerry.
Mrs. Heinz Kerry, an heiress to the H. J. Heinz ketchup fortune, became well known to many Americans during her husband’s unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2004. She was previously married to former Senator John Heinz, a Pennsylvania Republican who died in an airplane crash in 1991, and married Mr. Kerry, then a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, in 1995.
Her sometimes bracing candor on the campaign trail at times made Mr. Kerry’s aides uncomfortable. At one point, she suggested that the first lady, Laura Bush, a former teacher and librarian, had never “had a real job.” She later apologized, saying she had forgotten Mrs. Bush’s work history.
Born in Mozambique, educated in South Africa and Switzerland, and fluent in five languages, Mrs. Heinz Kerry has served for years as the board chairwoman of the Heinz Family Foundation and is a patron of environmental causes. Among other things, the foundation awards $250,000 grants each year to individuals who have made significant contributions in areas like arts, technology and public policy.
In September 2009, she was found to have breast cancer and she later disclosed it publicly and urged women to have regular mammograms. After treatment, she was deemed cancer free.
Mr. Kerry spent a long Fourth of July weekend at Nantucket with his wife and came under criticism when he went boating on the day that President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt was ousted by the military. The State Department flatly denied that he had been on a boat that day, only to retract that two days later.