Remembering Robert Kennedy at His Resting Place, June 4, 2020
Yesterday was the 52nd anniversary of Robert Kennedy’s death. On a muggy morning, his eldest child Kathleen, accompanied by family and friends, visited the gravesites of the four Kennedy brothers at Arlington National Cemetery, to pray and reflect. It was a private time, but the remarks by Kathleen and her daughter Kat, and RFK’s nephew Tim Shriver (all entirely extemporaneous) were so moving to me that I’ve asked them if I could paraphrase parts of what they said and share them with you.
At her father’s grave, Kathleen focused principally on RFK’s remarks the day after Dr. King’s murder, given in Cleveland (the context and an excerpt are here: https://bit.ly/2YbhgX1; the full audio of the speech, with a separate partial video, is here: https://bit.ly/374AamK; and the full text is in RFK: His Words for Our Times). Involved in the drafting with Senator for that day, and accompanying his daughter today, was Peter Edelman, RFK’s Legislative Assistant and friend. Kathleen read her father’s words:
“…we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.
Surely this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again.”
And she quoted the conclusion of her father’s favorite poem, Tennyson’s Ulysses:
that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Tim Shriver put the day into a broader context: “We gather today and in years past to say the name of Robert Francis Kennedy, but this year, we also say the names of George and Breonna, of Emmett and Martin, of Michael and Tamir, and of Trayvon. We say their names and commit ourselves to their memories and to ending the injustice that took their lives.” Then Tim also quoted from the Cleveland speech:
“…When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation but with conquest; to be subjugated and mastered.
We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city but not a community; men bound to us in common dwelling but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. …
Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land.”
Tim led us in prayer and then noted that RFK’s work tracked his faith, and Jesus’ admonition “to hunger and thirst for righteousness”. “It seems particularly hurtful not to have him [RFK] with us today,” Tim said, “but we have each other. And the work is now ours to do.”
At President Kennedy’s grave, Kathleen reminded us of three speeches JFK delivered in the summer of 1963. First, on June 11, the President addressed the nation having sent in National Guardsmen to the University of Alabama, to make possible the registration of its first two black students. JFK did something no President before him had done: clearly position civil rights as “primarily a moral issue”. And he asked Americans to put themselves in the shoes of their fellow citizens who, because of their race, faced dramatically harder lives in terms of education, jobs, life expectancy and other dimensions. The President called for understanding and empathy, for while “every American ought to have the right to be treated as he would wish to be treated, as one would wish his children to be treated… this is not the case.” (You can read the entire speech here: https://bit.ly/30huQL9.)
Kathleen noted that two weeks later, on June 26, her uncle famously delivered his “Ich bin ein Berliner” (I am a Berliner) speech, cheered in that free city, but criticized around Europe for identifying with a country that in JFK’s adulthood had terrorized the continent. Again, the President sought to connect across divisions on the basis of shared humanity.
The next day, JFK was in New Ross Ireland, a four-day trip which Kathleen remembered her uncle had called the happiest of his life. He joked to the crowd that it was a matter of luck and circumstance that his relatives had come to America while theirs stayed in the home country, or one of them would then be President, and Kennedy would be working in a local pub or factory.
In all three speeches, Kathleen said, the message was the same: every person has the capacity for greatness; each of us should viscerally identify with the unique realities of others, particularly those less fortunate; and each of us must celebrate and spread our good fortune — a message, she said, especially resonant today.
At the grave of Senator Edward Kennedy, Kathleen noted with admiration that the youngest of the four “wasn’t intimidated by the exalted memories the world had of his brothers. He proved that you could use your own gifts and make your own contribution.”
At our last prayer point, in front of the headstone of the eldest brother, Joseph Kennedy Jr., killed on an experimental bombing mission over Europe during WWII, Tim noted that contributions continued even after death. “The foundation my grandfather [Joseph P. Kennedy Sr.] created in [Joe Jr’s] name is dedicated to the cause of the rights and gifts of people with intellectual disabilities — those who like his sister Rosemary, struggle mightily for an end to discrimination and oppression.”
The recognition that our heroes were also human was eloquently carried forward by Kathleen’s daughter Kat, at Joe Jr’s grave. For Joe’s cousins, represented by her mother, by Tim and his brother Mark Shriver (also with us), Kat said, the Joe Jr. they never met was a larger-than-life martyr, as the President and her own grandfather were for her, due to the same tyranny of timing. And in the wake of “Teddy’s” passing, the young children with us, representing yet another generation, would not have known the Uncle whom Kat praised as an accessible life force who called on every birthday, and would have loved nothing better than to talk sports with Maeve and David’s late son Gideon.
It is essential for both their family and the wider world to admire fallen Kennedys for what they accomplished, Kat said, but also for the full richness of who they were to those around them. And we mourn them, she noted, because we wish them to be with us today, not just for public leadership but for private advice about the swirling challenges of our own times. Readying herself to join the marchers massing in the distance across the Memorial Bridge, Kat closed by wishing that all of those for whom we prayed could be at our sides, to march with us or simply hold our hands.
Behind the graves, up a steep and impossibly verdant grassy hill, stands Arlington House, the former mansion of the family of Robert E. Lee, seized by the federal government after the Civil War. Returning to our cars, one of Kathleen’s friends observed that at the start of each of the stops this morning, the metal standards on the lone flag atop the hill banged in the breeze like a heavenly clap-back, and then fell silent. Before leaving, we looked out across the nation’s most sacred burial ground at the numberless headstones, down a direct line that runs through the National Mall from the Lincoln Memorial, to the Washington Monument, and finally to the Capitol. Crowds of protestors were already gathering for the day’s marches. Aspiration, passion and hot hard work: it seemed a perfect final tribute on a sad but hopeful morning.
