Robert F. Kennedy | California hope, L.A. despair
1968, Los Angeles
The busboy
Like many Latinos in Los Angeles in 1968, 17-year-old Juan Romero, a busboy at the Ambassador Hotel, admired Robert F. Kennedy. The night before the California primary he had delivered room service to Kennedy’s hotel suite and had shaken the candidate’s hand.
“He shook my hand as hard as anyone had ever shaken it,” Romero told the Los Angeles Times’ Steve Lopez 35 years later. “I walked out of there 20 feet tall, thinking, ‘I’m not just a busboy, I’m a human being.’ He made me feel that way.”
In your words: Share your memories of Robert F. Kennedy and 1968 (William Dietsch / Los Angeles Times)
Sen. Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign would last only 82 days and would end in violence in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968, just moments after wining the California primary.
June 5, 1968, Los Angeles
Busboy Juan Romero, 17, comforts Robert F. Kennedy moments after Kennedy had been shot in the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel kitchen.
Thirty-five years later, Romero would tell Times columnist Steve Lopez: “He was looking up at the ceiling, and I thought he’d banged his head. I asked, ‘Are you OK? Can you get up?’ ”
In your words: Share your memories of Robert F. Kennedy and 1968 (Boris Yaro / Los Angeles Times)
June 5, 1968, Los Angeles
Robert F. Kennedy, still conscious after the shooting, but mortally wounded.
Describing the scene in the pantry, journalist Jimmy Breslin wrote for the next day’s editions, “Robert Kennedy is on his back. He has this sad look on his face. His lips are open in pain and disgust. His right eye rolls up in his head and his left eye closes but still there is this sadness in his face. You see, he knows so much about this thing.” (Boris Yaro / Los Angeles Times)
June 5, 1968, Los Angeles
“Pray for Bobby”
Lee and Keith Dale, 17 and 15 years old, of Hawthorne, maintain a vigil outside Good Samaritan Hospital, where Kennedy lay gravely wounded.
Describing the scene at the hospital, The Times reported, “A vigil began at Kennedy’s bedside -- a vigil which was observed in the hallways, by newsmen outside, and by thousands of circling cars which passed up and down Wilshire Boulevard, many of them bearing newly printed bumper stickers which read: “Pray for Bobby”
In your words: Share your memories of Robert F. Kennedy and 1968 (R.L. Oliver / Los Angeles Times)
June 8, 1968, New York
St. Patrick’s Cathedral
The last surviving Kennedy brother, 36-year-old Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, eulogized his brother in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York.
“My brother need not be idealized or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life,” the younger brother said, his voice breaking. “He should 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.”
Among the 2,300 mourners who filled the cathedral were President Lyndon B. Johnson, an estimated 200 Catholic priests, and Kennedy’s 77-year-old mother, Rose.
In your words: Share your memories of Robert F. Kennedy and 1968 (AFP/Getty Images)
January 2006, Los Angeles
Ambassador Hotel
Workers demolish a wing of the 85-year-old Ambassador Hotel, where Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated. Kennedy’s family had supported the razing of the building to make way for a new public school.
“There could be no better memorial to my father than a living memorial that educates the children of this city,” said Max Kennedy, son of RFK, at a groundbreaking ceremony on Nov. 20, 2006.
In your words: Share your memories of Robert F. Kennedy and 1968 (Carlos Chavez / Los Angeles Times)
