After winning the California Democratic primary in California and giving his victory speech, Bobby Kennedy was shot as he was leaving the Ambassador Hotel through the kitchen. His convicted assassin was Sirhan Sirhan. There is still a lot of controversy about his guilt or innocence. Sirhan is currently serving a life sentence at the California State Prison, he is eligible to apply for parole every 5 years.
I heard the news the next day. I was eleven and living in Scotland at the time. I was very touched then as we had been doing a school project on the US election and I had always liked Bobby. It wasn't until I moved to Canada and started hanging out in the library, that I really became interested in Bobby. I read every book I could get my hands on and with every passing year I became more and more saddened by his assassination and what it meant. The world lost more than one man that day; a lot of people lost hope. I still can't talk about it without getting tears in my eyes.
Please share your experiences of that day; how you heard, how you reacted, and what it means to you today.
RFK being taken out of the Ambassador Hotel and into an ambulance
1 comment:
I've already shared some of my story. To paraphrase what I posted over at the Huffington Post once, I didn't walk the precinct at 8, though I now wish I had. I did follow my 3 older brothers' footsteps and 4 years later and walked and stuffed envelopes for McGovern. Forty years ago tonight, the eagerness of a 7 year old gave into fatigue at 11:45 pm on June 4, 1968, before RFK's victory speech, and woke up the next morning to find my (3d oldest) brother, sitting on the end of his bed, staring off into space, looking 4 times his 19 years and seeming as though he'd been sitting there for days . . . he flatly said, "he has a bullet in his head" in response to my gleeful "Kennedy really won it, didn't he?" Two of my brothers had been in the Ambassador ballroom, celebrating the night and all things possible when the shots were fired and halted all of it. At almost 60 now, he's a conservative Republican now, as though the part of him that believed in all things being better died that night as well. I think it did for a lot of people. My other brother who worked doggedly for the campaign has never really recovered either. He sank into bitter cynicism in the decade that followed, and really has never spiritually resurfaced.
When I try to think of what might have been, I think of a world with a shortened Vietnam War. Imagine 27,000 fewer American deaths, and probably 150,000 or more Vietnamese who survived the war. I think of a world without a Nixon Presidency, without Watergate, and without the categorical mistrust of the government that followed. I think of, perhaps, getting to the truth about JFK's killing, about real efforts to combat poverty - the type that Bobby so passionately sought. I think of a military industrial complex that is far less powerful and octopus-like than the one we have today. I think of a more moral foreign policy in other areas of the world. I think of my two older brothers and think of one who would not have evolved into a Reagan Democrat, and the other who would have a more positive outlook to go with his other great qualities. I think of a much brighter future than the one currently facing my two sons. And, like you, I can't help but well up, too.
Its a tragically sacred, painfully poignant memory for so many of us.
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