Teresa Heinz Kerry, the wife of Secretary of State John Kerry, became ill with a serious medical condition during a vacation on Nantucket on Sunday and was flown to a hospital in Boston for emergency treatment, the State Department said. Heinz Kerry, 74, grew sick while staying at the family’s vacation home on the Massachusetts island and was in critical condition, according to a person close to the family, but no information was released about the nature of her ailment. 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 determined that her condition was too serious for the small facility on Nantucket and transported her to Massachusetts General Hospital on the mainland. Kerry, who had arrived on the island a few days earlier after a long overseas trip, accompanied her to Boston. Another person familiar with the situation said her condition was not a result of an accident but would not elaborate. “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 Kerry. 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 Sen. John Heinz, R-Pa., who died in an airplane crash in 1991, and married Kerry, then a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, in 1995. In September 2009, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and she later disclosed it publicly and urged women to have regular mammograms, which caught her condition early.
