Forty-seven years ago this evening as he walked through the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, Senator Robert F Kennedy was assassinated. He had just won the California primary, and was likely on his way to winning the Democratic nomination for president.
I was in fact a supporter of another senator, Eugene McCarthy, whom he had just defeated. I found Bobbie a bit too much an opportunist. I was much purer in those days.
But, even then, as I heard the announcement while driving somewhere, I only remember the moment, I had to pull over and weep.
I knew viscerally, history had shifted.
Already I knew political assassinations. His brother, when I was in High School. Not long before this night, the murder of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. (For whom Kennedy’s impromptu speech has been etched on my heart…)
But, somehow it felt an era had definitely ended. And something different was going to happen.
In retrospect it is impossible for me to picture an America without a President Nixon. And the country we became.
But, today, for just a moment, I wonder…
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