Just
after midnight on this day in 1968, Robert Kennedy was assassinated in
Los Angeles by Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestinian
immigrant. Kennedy had just won California's Democratic presidential
primary, and he was exiting through the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel.
Juan Romero, a 17-year-old busboy, was shaking his hand when Sirhan
began firing. Several of the men with him tackled Sirhan, including
writer George Plimpton, Olympic athlete Rafer Johnson, and football star Rosey Grier. Romero knelt by Kennedy, and put a rosary in his hand.
His brother Edward "Ted" Kennedy delivered the eulogy:
"My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it. Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world. As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him: 'Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.'"
I remember reading a story some years ago -- don't remember which magazine; maybe the New Yorker -- that was a history of Bobby Kennedy's campaign. It described a time when he was campaigning in West Virginia, then a Democratic stronghold, and went up a hollow stopping to talk at every house. Or rather shack. It was raining and they were all leaking.
A few weeks later, a truck came rolling up the same road. Kennedy had paid to put a new roof on every house. He didn't promote it. In fact, no one really knew it had happened until this particular journalist was following the path of his campaign and thought to talk to some of the residents. He did it because it was the right thing to do, and he had the means to do it.
I can't imagine Saint Reagan doing anything remotely like that. And the current guy? He'd try to enroll them in Trump University and swindle them out of their savings.
"My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it. Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world. As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him: 'Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.'"
I remember reading a story some years ago -- don't remember which magazine; maybe the New Yorker -- that was a history of Bobby Kennedy's campaign. It described a time when he was campaigning in West Virginia, then a Democratic stronghold, and went up a hollow stopping to talk at every house. Or rather shack. It was raining and they were all leaking.
A few weeks later, a truck came rolling up the same road. Kennedy had paid to put a new roof on every house. He didn't promote it. In fact, no one really knew it had happened until this particular journalist was following the path of his campaign and thought to talk to some of the residents. He did it because it was the right thing to do, and he had the means to do it.
I can't imagine Saint Reagan doing anything remotely like that. And the current guy? He'd try to enroll them in Trump University and swindle them out of their savings.
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