BOSTON (AP) - Teresa Heinz Kerry was somewhat reluctant to see her husband run for president, and she misses the days when she could attend church or walk through a park alone. Not being able to speak her mind, though, isn't a problem.

"I always say what I think," Heinz Kerry told "The Early Show" in an interview aired Tuesday on CBS TV. "I don't go out and say it willy-nilly for its own sake, but if called upon, I do."

Heinz Kerry felt the call on the eve of the Democratic National Convention when she confronted a journalist and told him to "shove it" for asking her to explain further her comments to Pennsylvania delegates.

"If someone is really attacking your honour or trying to really be dishonest, really, to try to get you, I think most Americans, most people would say, you know, defend yourself. And that's what I did," she told CBS.

A first-generation American of Portuguese ancestry, Heinz Kerry grew up in the southeast African country of Mozambique, a former Portuguese colony, a detail that she often mentions on the stump, sometimes referring to herself as an "African American."

Heinz Kerry, who is fluent in five languages, attended college in South Africa and a translator school in Switzerland before marrying her first husband, John Heinz III, heir to the ketchup fortune and a Republican senator from Pennsylvania.

After Heinz died in a 1991 plane crash, Heinz Kerry became chairwoman of the Howard Heinz Endowment and the Heinz Family Philanthropies. In that role, she has helped channel money to organisations focused on health care, early childhood education and the arts.

The couple have three sons, two of whom have been active in their stepfather's campaign.

On Sunday, Heinz Kerry told Pennsylvania delegates,
"We need to turn back some of the creeping, un-Pennsylvanian and sometimes un-American traits that are coming into some of our politics." She criticised the tenor of modern political campaigns without being specific.

The editorial page editor of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review asked her what she meant by the term "un-American."

Heinz Kerry repeatedly denied using the phrase. "You said something I didn't say," she told the journalist. "Now shove it."

On CNN Tuesday, Heinz Kerry said she believed the reporter used the phrase "un-American activities," which she said "has a very different connotation."

"It's a political connotation of McCarthy implications," she added, referring to Senator Joseph McCarthy, who in the 1950s led an anti-communist crusade that many consider a witch hunt.

Mothers can't father

Trousers in Denim

Cream of the 'Crop'