By\u00a0Thomas Farragher, March 16, 2018<\/p>\n
BARNSTABLE \u2014 It was a phone call that would forever alter the course of his life, make him an eyewitness to mournful history, and teach him something about death that even his young career as a funeral director could not.<\/p>\n
It came the day after Robert F. Kennedy announced his anti-war insurgent candidacy for president in March of 1968. There was a St. Patrick\u2019s Day parade in South Boston. A friend was on the phone with a question \u2014 a question that this weekend is precisely a half-century old.<\/p>\n
\u201cBobby\u2019s going to be marching in the parade, and we want some people to walk with him,\u2019\u2019 said Fred Fitzgerald, a Kennedy first cousin. \u201cAre you up for it?\u201d<\/p>\n
Paul Sheehan, the son of a Boston cop and then, like Fitzgerald, a Boston funeral director, did not hesitate.<\/p>\n
\u201cSure,\u2019\u2019 Sheehan replied. \u201cWhy not?\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we decided we were going to meet in front of this gin mill near a church in South Boston, right by the Gillette factory,\u2019\u2019 Sheehan recalled the other day, sitting in the living room of his home here. \u201cAnd he introduced me to Senator Kennedy who says to me: \u2018And who do we have here?\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/p>\n
Who do we have here?<\/p>\n
We have Paul Sheehan, now 81, the fourth of five children of parents who raised their kids in St. Theresa\u2019s Parish in West Roxbury. After he got out of high school in 1954, he spent one year at Stonehill College, abandoning Easton for mortuary college and a career that approached a seminal intersection during Kennedy\u2019s campaign for the presidency in one of the most tumultuous years in US history.<\/p>\n
\u201cI enjoyed directing the funerals and arranging funerals,\u2019\u2019 Sheehan said. \u201cI enjoyed trying to help people through that period in their lives. You understand that life is unfair. You understand that life is a crap shoot.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
It was, as it turned out, critical training for his entry into politics as an aide and advance man that later would lead to Jimmy Carter\u2019s and Bill Clinton\u2019s White House, with stops along the way alongside Democratic presidential hopefuls George McGovern and Edward M. Kennedy.<\/p>\n
But first, there was \u201cBobby,\u2019\u2019 the martyred president\u2019s brother who walked up to Sheehan after that parade in Southie 50 years ago \u2014 a parade attended by what the Globe estimated to be a crowd of 350,000 \u2014 and stuck out his hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was great,\u2019\u2019 Kennedy told Sheehan. \u201cYou\u2019re a big help. Why don\u2019t you come with me?\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
Presently, Sheehan was on a plane to Indianapolis, where he slept on a farmer\u2019s couch, was dispatched to Frankfort, Ind., in Clinton County, and set up shop in an old dentist office, where the furniture was a card table and a folding chair.<\/p>\n
A yellowed newspaper clipping shows him sitting there, himself a Kennedy lookalike, beneath a large campaign poster for the young man who wanted to be president.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was in my glory,\u2019\u2019 he told me. \u201cI loved it. I had no idea what I was doing.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
Sheehan still has a cardboard tally sheet from that, his first Election Night. When the Indiana primary polls closed, Kennedy led the field with 42 percent of the vote. And then it was on to California, where Sheehan met Don Dowd, a longtime aide and confidante of the Kennedy family.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon comes out and says, \u2018I\u2019ve got you staying at the Ambassador Hotel,\u2019\u2009\u201d Sheehan recalled. \u201cAnd I said, \u2018Great.\u2019 And he said, \u2018You\u2019ve got to share it with two other guys. And they don\u2019t know it yet.\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/p>\n
What followed is written in the history books and captured in smaller, intimate vignettes that are enshrined in the memory of Paul Sheehan who saw it all up close.<\/p>\n
When Ken Curtis, who in 1967 became Maine\u2019s 68th governor, arrived at the airport in California, Sheehan picked him up and mistook him for an aide, handed him a map, and asked him to play navigator. Curtis loved it, and the two become longtime friends.<\/p>\n
When 5,000 showed up at the Strawberry Festival grounds in Garden Grove just days before the California primary, political reporters recorded RFK\u2019s mocking reference to Vice President Hubert Humphrey\u2019s \u201cpolitics of joy and happiness.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t talk about joy and happiness in politics until they clean up the situation in Vietnam,\u2019\u2019 Kennedy told the crowd that day.<\/p>\n
Sheehan recalls something else. The throng of supporters who mobbed the senator\u2019s car, threatening to maroon it on the fairground\u2019s track.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe car was hung up and I said, \u2018If 40 of you would get off the goddamned cah<\/i> we can get it out of here,\u2019\u2009\u201d Sheehan said, emphasizing the iconic Boston pronunciation of that word. \u201cBobby turns around and says: \u2018I know that accent!\u2019 They all jump off the car. And Bobby says: \u2018That\u2019s leadership, Paul!\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/p>\n
Two days later, Sheehan was in a room at the Ambassador Hotel on a floor surrounded by Kennedy intimates. Marquee journalists were there and political wise men, too.<\/p>\n
Kennedy, having won the critical California primary with 46 percent of the vote, famously stood on the Ambassador Hotel\u2019s stage that night and set his sights on Chicago and the Democratic National Convention.<\/p>\n
As he walked off the stage and approached the hotel\u2019s kitchen, an assassin lay in wait. Paul Sheehan was 25 feet away.<\/p>\n
Next to him stood CBS newsman Roger Mudd, who interviewed Kennedy in the final minutes of his life.<\/p>\n
\u201cBobby\u2019s in front of me,\u2019\u2019 Sheehan said. \u201cThe hand goes out. The gun goes off. And Bobby goes down. Bang! Bang! Bang! And I\u2019m standing there. And Mrs. Kennedy and Roger Mudd are pushing back. And I\u2019m going, \u2018God, no. God, no. Please, God, no.\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/p>\n
The tumult that ensued is forever preserved on famous TV footage. The tackled assassin. Kennedy being cradled by a white-coated busboy. The hopeless vigil at the hospital, where Sheehan ran into Don Dowd again.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon comes out and he looks like he\u2019s just been hit by a train,\u2019\u2019 Sheehan said. \u201cHe put a hand on my shoulder and I said, \u2018How\u2019s he doing?\u2019 And he said, \u2018It\u2019s over.\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/p>\n
Sheehan would go on to serve two presidents. He traveled the world. He met two popes. But he can never erase the events at the Ambassador Hotel that June night 50 spring seasons ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing a funeral director gives you the greatest appreciation for life,\u2019\u2019 said Sheehan, who held a funeral-directing license for 30 years but never really left politics after meeting Bobby. \u201cAnd this hit me as a horrible waste of a life. A horrible waste of a husband and a father. I guess it made me a little more hardened. I\u2019m a little less liberal than I was that night. I\u2019m a little less accepting than I was that night.<\/p>\n
\u201cCynical? No. Disillusioned? Perhaps. Disappointed? Absolutely.\u201d<\/p>\n
The walls of Sheehan\u2019s home here carry faded-and-cherished mementoes of his life in politics.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a framed thank-you note from President Jimmy Carter. And one from his vice president, Walter Mondale. The program from Robert Kennedy\u2019s funeral Mass, which Sheehan attended on June 8, 1968, in New York\u2019s St. Patrick\u2019s Cathedral, is there.<\/p>\n
And so is this: a black-and-white photo of a contemplative Robert Kennedy atop a slag heap in West Virginia.<\/p>\n
Sheehan remembers handing it to Senator Edward Kennedy several years later while the two men were seated in the back seat of a car. After a long and stoic silence, he inscribed these words on it: \u201cTo Paul, who helped in 1968 make gentle the garish sun.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
The words are inspired by Shakespeare\u2019s \u201cRomeo and Juliet.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
And by Robert Kennedy himself, who used them to memorialize his slain brother during RFK\u2019s unforgettable address to the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen he shall die take him and cut him out into stars and he shall make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun.\u2019\u2019<\/i><\/p>\n