Marking the summer of Robert and Richard
Forty years ago, late in the evening on June 4, I was at home in Indiana watching live television coverage from California, where Sen. Robert F. Kennedy had just claimed victory in the Democratic presidential primary.
A few moments after his speech to a packed ballroom in the Ambassador Hotel, just after midnight early on June 5, TV cameras and photographers captured the chaos that ensured when Kennedy was shot fatally as he and his entourage were passing through the kitchen behind the ballroom.
For millions of Americans of a certain age and above, regardless of party, the image of Kennedy lying on the kitchen floor – and those that followed over the coming days, including the haunting sight of the train that carried his body from New York City to Washington — will never be forgotten.
As a teenager in Indiana, I had followed Kennedy’s travels just weeks before, as he had barnstormed my home state in his pursuit of the White House. The Washington Post featured on its Web site Thursday some of Kennedy’s Indiana ads, his first after his late jump into the contest.
One of Kennedy’s appearances had been just a couple miles from my home, but I hadn’t been able to attend because it a mid-day appearance in the midst of a school week. Our high school principal had announced that any student who skipped school to catch RFK would get an “F” for the day. Since my dad was the basketball coach, I’d gotten a personal order to heed the stay-in-school edict.
Kennedy’s death a few weeks later, less than two months after Dr. Martin Luther King’s murder (RFK announced King’s death to a crowd in Indianapolis in an electrifying off-the-cuff speech), launched a summer like no other.
Bizarre killings that had nothing to do with politics mingled during those hot months with urban riots and the anti-war confrontation in Chicago during the chaotic Democratic presidential convention that eventually nominated Hubert Humphrey.
As that summer turned into fall, the Republican presidential nominee — Richard M. Nixon — made a campaign stop in Indianapolis. And in an event that never could occur today, a certain Indiana teenager, a couple of friends, and the teenager’s mother showed up in the candidate’s hotel that afternoon to inquire where Nixon was appearing.
A campaign advance person spotted the group of fresh, innocent faces in the lobby. The four were invited to meet Nixon at 8 p.m. on the loading dock behind the hotel. The Secret Service would be put on notice of our impending arrival.
We showed up. Perhaps there’s photos somewhere in some White House archives of our brief meeting with the soon-to-be-elected president, filled with hand shakes and smiles all around.
As I said, it was a summer like no other. Unfortunately, it was marked by so much tragedy, including what occurred 40 years ago on June 5.
My one regret: I should have defied my school principal.
Wonderful post, Jo! I, too, was a young teenager the summer of 1968 and watched with great interest the happenings of that political season. Coming from a Missouri newspaper family, politics was the normal topic of conversation around our dinner table, and I was caught up in the excitement generated by RFK’s campaign. Later that summer before the Democratic convention, Hubert Humphrey paid a visit to our small Missouri town to help dedicate a new hospital. I remember seeing sharp shooters on top of that new facility - something that would never have occurred before King and Kennedy’s deaths. I still have a charm bracelet HHH gave to me on that visit. It was, as you said, a summer like no other, and one that left lasting impressions on many of our generation.