50 Years

Robert F. Kennedy died 50 years ago today. He had just won the Democratic California Presidential Primary before being shot three times on June 5.

I heard the news of his shooting that morning. I was getting ready to go to school when my sister came down from her attic bedroom. Joanna was a huge Bobby Kennedy fan and was in shock.

I was just old enough to remember his brother's assassination. (In fact, I believe I saw Jack Ruby kill Lee Harvey Oswald on live TV.) Two months before Bobby's death, Martin Luther King had been assassinated. It was hard to process; the only other assassination I had heard about was Lincoln's. A century is ancient history when you're young.

No one can know what would have happened if RFK had avoided the assassin that night. Maybe the Democratic convention in Chicago wouldn't have been so violent. Maybe RFK could have won the  nomination and beat Nixon. Maybe RFK would have ended the Viet Nam War quickly as he had promised.

Maybe people wouldn't have lost hope.