Bobby

"My thanks to all of you, now it's on to Chicago and let's win there."

I still can't recall the words without tearing up.

On June 5th, 1968, I stayed up late to watch the primary election results. I was only 14--certainly not old enough to vote yet. But there were two strong influences in my life at the time--no, three--that motivated me to watch the news, to follow the campaign of the young and charismatic senator. The first was a passionate history teacher. The second was the Civil Rights Movement. And the third was the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. just two months before. The world, it seemed to my young eyes, was a cruel one. (Keep in mind, we were daily seeing images of the war and devastation in Vietnam.) I desperately needed hope. Bobby Kennedy represented that hope of change for me.

It was after midnight when he gave a brief speech in the ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, ending with those words I've quoted above. I remember being tired and thrilled as I got up to turn off the TV and go to bed. This man who ran on a platform of racial justice and social change might just have a chance, might really have a good chance, of becoming President. I went to bed happy.

I woke to the radio alarm at 5:00a.m. The newscaster's words invaded my sleep at first, so I thought I'd been having a nightmare. But no. As my brain came fully awake, the reality of the report sunk in--like a searing iron branding my heart: He'd been shot in the night. All the thoughts and prayers in the country could not save him; he died twenty-six hours after being shot.

Has it really been fifty years since that day? The older I get, the more I see how the events of those days directed my life.

My appreciation for journalism began that day when I retrieved a copy of the L.A. Times from our front porch and realized it was filled with far more information than I was getting on the radio about what happened. I pored over every story, trying to make sense of it all, hoping to find hope in the details. Sadly, there was none.

And I was angry. Or, I should say, angrier. The assassination of Dr. King had rocked my world pretty hard. But then, people thought (and some even whispered) it was only a matter of time. As a strong, brave Black man standing up to the White establishment of the time, he made himself a marked man, and he knew it. Still... I was already seething at the injustice and cowardice of shooting a man down in cold blood because he stands for fairness and equality.

Then Bobby... No one saw that coming. For a long time, I couldn't watch the news any more, didn't care what happened in the world. I was coming down with mononucleosis at the time, so I spent that summer sick in bed, depressed, isolated and absolutely despairing. I hated the world I'd been brought into.

There are times now when glimpses of that despair flash across my memory. We live today in equally perilous times. Occasionally, still, I need to turn away from the headlines and wander off into Nature to reflect, to appreciate, to heal.

What I know now is that stopping a single person--JFK, RFK, Dr. King--does not stop a movement. Progress goes forward in spite of tragedy. Others take up the sword and run headlong toward the battle. We should all be so brave as those men.