June 6, 1968 another one of those days that will live in infamy. I remember my Mom waking me up to go to work and telling me "they shot Kennedy". I said something like he's been dead for years. She said no, it's Bobby. Anyone remember the train going through towns? It was after that, that I didn't vote for a long time. Between JFK, RFK, MLK, Evers and a few others that took my hope away. Thinking about the Kennedy Brothers, here were 2 rich guys who cared about people. I think Bobby would have been even greater than his brother John (whom I loved). Oh damn, now my mind is going into the "what ifs" again. So much was lost. I'm sorry that so many DU members weren't even around yet to hear Bobby. Bobby was....... Oh well.

And frequently, even to this day, my mind wanders over to the "what ifs."

Two rich guys who cared about the people. Three if you count Teddy Kennedy. They cared about the have-nots. They felt an obligation to serve their country. You got the sense with them that the very wealth and privilege they enjoyed made them feel obligated to work for the greater good of all. That's what I grew up believing, probably because of them. I think if you're fortunate, if you've been blessed, if you're wealthy and can lift more of the load and pay more of the way, then you damn well SHOULD. You're obligated. You just ARE. Much blessed, much obligated.

Or look at it this way. You have a brawny 250-pound muscle man and a scrawny 90-pound weakling both riding in a car. The car overturns and there's no one around to help. WHO of the two of them seems better suited to try to lift the car up and tip it back over? Seems the one-percenters and the haves and have-mores think the scrawny little guy should do the heavy lifting, and not the big muscle-bound bruiser who was built for it. Seems to me it's the other way around.

My husband came into the bedroom and told me. I assumed for a brief instant that I was dreaming, that it couldn't possibly be true. What terrible losses this country suffered in those years!

I was thirteen and I remember clear as day my dream literally being interrupted by "We interrupt this broadcast...Senator Robert Francis Kennedy...is dead." It scared me awake. And I found out he had been shot.

I'm not a big believer in that kind of thing but it did happen.

who left a piece of my heart and hopes back in that day...

I was 12 and a huge piece of hope in me died that day.

the whole family were about giving. The way it should be

6/5/68

RIP RFK

...with a real president in office. America suffered through two lying murderers from November 1963 to August 1974.

Lying Lyndon and Tricky Dickie.

The bicentennial in 1976 would have been great with a President Robert Kennedy.

There are no words.

My parents used to take my brother and me to visit our grandmother (dad's side) for a week or two every summer. One of us would stay with grandmother, while the other stayed at home with mom and dad. Then, we'd switch and the other would stay with grandmother. That way, each of us had our grandmother and our parents to ourselves for a period of time during the summer.

I remember I was with grandmother when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. I had been staying up late watching movies--I remember in particular watching Sorry, Wrong Number with Barbara Stanwyck one night. I got to sleep in, had great meals that grandmother made for me (discovered I liked tomatoes that summer), went shopping with her, played with the kid next door who was about my age. It was a great time.

The summer of 1968 will be one I'll never forget--hanging out with my grandmother, discovering tomatoes, and learning of Bobby Kennedy's assassination. JFK's assassination is another memory I'll never forget, one of my earliest ones. I also knew Bobby Kennedy had something about him, something that made him different. The future, which didn't seem bad to me at all at the time, seemed like it would be even better if he got the chance to do what he wanted to do.

Of course, he didn't. Now 45 years have zipped by blindingly fast, and many more memories have been added. Two I know I'll remember are the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers.

I have the same feeling for Jerry Litton after his plane crashed the night he won his Senate primary in Missouri. So many unanswered questions decades later.

RFK was the last Democrat to get widespread blue collar white votes and minority votes at the same.

After that we got Nixon's Southern strategy and Watergate, the ineffective Carter Presidency, the idiocy of Reganomics and Iran Contra, "Read my lips" G H Bush, Clinton the moderate Republican (NAFTA, Deregulation of the telecommunications Industry, and repeal of Glass Stiegel), the craziness of W Bush and the Neocon war, and currently the timid Obama presidency and the obstructionist, intolerant GOP.

Ir pains me to think how different it all could have been. We missed out on some much potential.

a different nation.....

MLK and Bobby within 2 months.America's last chances at redemption , and they blew both of 'em away the same spring. I will never forget the funeral train.If no one else has posted the video (I'll check in a second, then i will, pretty sure it's still on you tube.)

Brings back all those sad memories. When you look at all the people lining the tracks, they, we, all lost something that I don't think we have ever gotten back. RIP Bobby.

Still hard to watch that all these years later without losing it.

as I sit here bawling. I will never forget that night, as I had a transistor radio 'glued' to my ear at that age, and as a night owl, I was up and broke the news to my family...

Oh, Bobby, we still miss you. What a different place we'd be if you had lived.


The one man who really wanted to address the needs of the poor.

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Juan Romero, 17, was a busboy at the hotel.

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Last year Romero visited Bobby Kennedy's grave for the first time.

These images were from an L.A. Times article last year, sorry didn't keep the link.

The first political speech I ever listened to was his speech that night in California - I was 14. Now I teach my students about the 1960s and try to get them to realize our national shock at having three (four if you count Malcolm X) of the most important Americans of the time get murdered within 5 years...but then I still have trouble wrapping my head around it.

RIP, Bobby, you were our best hope.

I said, well, yeah, that happened years ago....he said, no, this time it was Bobby

I was somewhere in this crowd. I got to shake his hand. And I'll never forget it.

Sid

...if Al Gore had gotten elected.

My first thought was, how would things have been different had Bobby been elected?

I'm convinced that 1968 was the last change to truly right this sinking ship.

right.

if Bobby got his chance, all of us would have had more peace and less MIC .

floor was shown in one of the DU posts. This is the way I want to remember him.