Pain, work part of Edwards' rise

WASHINGTON -- Sheer will has taken John Edwards far, but only so far. His is the storybook life, still waiting for the storybook ending.

His drive got him onto the football field at Clemson, an improbable achievement for a walk-on player. But he wasn't big enough or rich enough to stay on the team or at the school.

His will -- if not hubris -- powered his presidential run in 2004 and won him the second slot on a national ticket, a huge stretch for a single-term senator.

Now, four years after a frustrating tour of duty as John Kerry's running mate, Edwards seems weary of the political profile he cultivated in that campaign. The centrist candidate of 2004 is offering himself as the populist advocate for the poor in 2008. He says he is trying to "retrain" himself to avoid saying the cautious, politic thing.

But if Edwards is being careful not to look or sound like a politician, isn't that what every politician tries to do?

Edwards' determination to rely more on his own instincts has energized his campaign, but it also has produced its share of bonehead moves.

He finds himself battling what have become known as the three Hs -- the hair, the house and the hedge fund.

His pricey haircuts, his new 28,000-square-foot estate in North Carolina and his consulting work for a hedge fund that caters to the superrich struck a discordant note in a campaign centered on fighting poverty and looking out for the little guy.

Whatever his new persona on the campaign trail, Edwards' life story remains an extraordinary up-by-the-bootstraps yarn: first in his family to graduate college, wildly successful career as a trial lawyer, meteoric rise in national politics. For all its triumphs, though, the story has a subtext of extraordinary pain -- the death of son Wade, killed in a car accident at age 16, the incurable disease that his wife, Elizabeth, lives with even as her husband runs the presidential campaign gantlet.

"He's lost a son and now he's faced with possibly losing his wife," good friend David Kirby says. "When you've seen your mortality in that way, it calls upon a certain urgency of, 'You only have one chance in life to leave your mark.' "

Wherever it ends, Edwards' story begins in the sandy mill towns of the South.

Edwards' parents did shift work in the mills. Each time the Milliken textile company assigned Wallace to a new mill, the family would strike out for another mill house in another mill town, five of them before Johnny was 12.

For all of that, his was a happy, nurturing childhood.

His youth was a slice of "American Graffiti," with Friday night football games and trips to Sam's burger joint. Good grades came easily for Edwards, but he worked hard, too.

College gave Edwards his first taste of failure and first glimpse of his potential.

He enrolled at Clemson in the fall of 1971, eager to fulfill his father's missed dream of attending school there and maybe even playing football. Edwards made it onto the freshman team as a wide receiver, but then reality hit.

He wasn't good enough for a scholarship, and the tuition was too steep. He had to leave after one semester.

Edwards bounced back at North Carolina State, and later found his calling -- and his wife -- at the University of North Carolina Law School. The boy who had loved watching "The Fugitive" and "Perry Mason" on TV would become a lawyer.

To see how John Edwards connected with juries during his career as a trial lawyer -- coaxing millions out of personal injury and medical malpractice cases -- is to watch the previews for his political career.

Beyond his good looks and smooth delivery, Edwards was known for relentless preparation and an uncanny ability to speak directly to jurors' fears and hopes.

Edwards made his millions by figuring out just the right thing to say to juries, mastering every nuance and inflection. And juries, he likes to say, are a lot like voters.

Edwards' success as a lawyer seemed to know no limits, bringing in more than $150 million in settlements and verdicts in the 1990s alone.

But on April 4, 1996, Wade was killed when the wind blew his Jeep off the road as he drove toward a family vacation at the beach.

Edwards' legal career was put on hold, as was budding talk about a future in politics.

Wearing his scars mostly on the inside, Edwards relit himself and after six months returned to work. He and Elizabeth decided to bring joy back into their lives by having more children, a difficult decision at Elizabeth's age. Against the odds, Emma Claire was born when Elizabeth was 48, and Jack arrived two years later.

Along the way, talk about politics resumed. Edwards decided to take on Republican Sen. Lauch Faircloth in 1998. Against the odds, he won.

Edwards quickly was noticed as a rising star, and within two years found himself on Democrat Al Gore's short list for a running mate in 2000. Gore narrowed his list to Edwards and Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman before settling on Lieberman.

Three years later, on Sept. 16, 2003, the junior senator from North Carolina stood in front of the empty textile mill in his hometown of Robbins and announced he was a candidate for president.

Whatever the reason, it became clear that voters saw Edwards as running-mate material, not presidential.

Kerry was queasy at first but came around to selecting him as his running mate. The happy pictures of the Kerry and Edwards families joshing on the lawn, however, soon gave way to internal tensions. The two broke off contact after the race was lost and their relationship remains strained. Kerry is backing Barack Obama, an Edwards' rival for the nomination.

Edwards managed to deliver his concession speech at Boston's Faneuil Hall without uttering the words concede, defeat or lose. His speech was a small act of defiance that foreshadowed his next run for president.

But first, there was a more pressing matter. Doctors confirmed that a lump Elizabeth had recently found in her breast was cancer. It was fresh confirmation of a painful lesson they had learned when Wade died.

"You don't know what's coming," Edwards says. "You're not in control of it."

After Wade died, Elizabeth Edwards promised herself that John never would have to hear bad news again -- a promise she was powerless to keep. Her first cancer diagnosis came right after the 2004 election, already a wrenching time.

They attacked it with chemotherapy, radiation, surgery, defiance, optimism.

On March 21, 2007, they got the news that the cancer was back, this time incurable.

Speculation that Edwards would drop out of the presidential race was immediate, but Edwards banished it by announcing that he and Elizabeth were determined to press forward.

"You can go cower in the corner and hide, or you can be tough and go out there and stand up for what you believe in," Edwards said.

"We choose to live our lives fully, and with strength and optimism. We get to make that choice."