June 6, 1968, The Day Robert Kennedy’s Assassination Altered My Life
I saw Robert Kennedy just days before he was assassinated
The recent tragic assassination of Shinzo Abe in Japan brought back unhappy memories for me.
I saw Bobby Kennedy days before Sirhan Sirhan shot him. Like those who witnessed Abe’s death, their lives, much like mine, will never be the same. The assassination of Robert F. Kennedy was one of many horrifying events in 1968, which even at the age of twelve I witnessed as unrest engulfed our nation.
June 6, 1968. I awoke to my mother crying. Puzzled, I looked at the television screen. Just days after I saw him on the back of his campaign train, Kennedy was dead.
After winning the California democratic presidential primary a man in the crowd walked up to him. He held out a small .22-caliber revolver. Before anyone could react, he shot Kennedy three times and unloaded the other five rounds while others wrestled him to the ground, injuring others.
Images flashed across the TV screen as I watched with my mother. Kennedy had just finished his victory speech at the Ambassador Hotel ballroom. The crowd was cheering. Moments later, on his way to meet with supporters he lay sprawled across a concrete floor. The now famous picture of a young man in a white kitchen jacket knelt beside him. The young man cradled Kennedy’s bleeding head. Except for newsreels of combat in Viet Nam, I don’t think I’d ever really seen so much blood. His shiny silver hair I admired days earlier as it glistened in the sun was now dark in the grainy picture.
On a hot dusty Memorial Day in Modesto, CA, Kennedy was late arriving from Stockton. No one seemed to mind waiting in the scorching sun. I stood next to my mother clutching a small American flag on a stick waiting for his arrival. Thousands of these same flags rippled through the crowd in anticipation.
When we finally heard the train whistle announcing the arrival of his “RFK San Joaquin Daylight Special,” the crowd erupted waving their arms. As the train came to a stop at the small depot, Kennedy stepped out on the back platform of the last car, smiling, and waving back to the crowd. His white dress shirt sleeves were rolled up due to the California heat. His wife, Ethel, stood close to his side. Somehow, she looked cooler than anyone else in her sleeveless dress. My mother positioned us perfectly in the throng of people. He stood right above me. Like so many others, I tried to reach up to him and shake his hand. I thought he looked at me and smiled, but it could have been someone else he saw.
He apologized for being late and told us he lost a shoe earlier at one of his rallies and had to find new ones. Luckily, someone in the crowd had heard about his mishap and made a large papier Mache shoe. Outstretched arms passed the homemade shoe person by person up to him. Laughing he accepted his token shoe and thanked whoever made it, commenting that it would better fit his brother Teddy who he wished was there. He also mentioned his brother Jack “never got such a gift” when he also travelled through the Central Valley as he ran for president in 1960.
Eight years to the day Bobby Kennedy now retraced his brother’s route. The conservative San Juaquin agricultural towns were pivotal to his election, especially since he entered the presidential race late. His message was one of social justice, support for farmworkers and the end of the Viet Nam war. I witnessed an enthusiastic, diverse crowd chanting the same words for him that they once shouted out for his brother in 1960.
“Viva Kennedy!”
Concentrating on the poorest regions of the United States, Bobby Kennedy’s message worked. Newspapers reported that he was the only politician in America who could walk in both white and Black neighborhoods. His presence helped calm a Black audience in Indianapolis after the assassination of Martin Luther King with These words:
“For those of you who are Black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling,” I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man.”
I remember being angry and confused the morning after Sirhan Sirhan shot him. I didn’t understand his politics prompting his actions. All I knew is that I felt grief. Grief about all the violence I’d witnessed at my age that year including the shooting of Martin Luther King and the war in Viet Nam.
The pictures continued that morning from inside the Ambassador Hotel ballroom. Mostly I noticed the pictures of a seventeen-year-old busboy, not much older than me kneeling next to Kennedy. He shielded him while others fled. I cried for Bobby Kennedy. He no longer smiled back or shook anyone’s hand. He only stared up in pain, his last words asking, “if everyone was OK.”
Kennedy’s final train ride brought him back to the people. His body travelled once again on a train. But, instead of cheering crowds, thousands lined the tracks mourning and grieving not just for the man but for his ideals.
In the United States, we don’t allow heroes anymore. We pick everyone apart through social media until there is nothing left to admire. Our nation’s rhetoric is one of anger, not inspiration. There were critics of Robert Kennedy in his time too. There still are. Many continue to dig into his past for his mistakes. But, on a bright summer day, May 30, 1968, he brought at least to me a glimpse of hope. Hope that wasn’t based on creating enemies to make us feel better.
My small American flag is long gone, but I still believe in a better world even if it seems like I witnessed the last campaign train for it.
“Truly as the sun, truly as the rain
Truly I believe, it was the last campaign”
- John Stewart, from “The Last Campaign Trilogy,” 1970
