By David Margolick, June 3, 2018<\/p>\n
Robert F. Kennedy\u2019s body was loaded onto the front of the Air Force jet early in the afternoon of June 6, 1968. His family, holding hands, surrounded the coffin while it was hoisted up. Meanwhile, the various Kennedy friends, relatives and aides who had assembled at Los Angeles International Airport boarded from the stairs at the rear. At one point, D. Paul Sweeney, the Secret Service agent standing by the back door as people filed in, peeked to his right, and spotted something quite extraordinary: Midway down the aisle, America\u2019s three most famous widows were conversing. They spoke only briefly, maybe five or 10 minutes. But they were there, together. Then, for the next 4\u00bd hours, Ethel Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy and Coretta Scott King shared a flight over their grieving, wounded, troubled country.<\/p>\n
Robert Kennedy\u2019s final flight is less famous than his final train ride<\/a>, the one that took him from New York to Washington before the final leg to Arlington National Cemetery. But what Sweeney witnessed that day appears to be the only time throughout the aftermath of Kennedy\u2019s death when the three women actually talked to one another. What they said can only be surmised: None of them wrote about it afterward. Nor did any photographer preserve the moment; there were none aboard the plane.<\/p>\n Little about the flight was ever preserved. In America\u2019s minutely recorded assassination chronicles, it remains a black hole. Only three reporters were aboard that day, and they had been invited as friends, not chroniclers. Two of them, the columnists Joseph Kraft and Rowland Evans, said next to nothing about it afterward. But fortunately for history, the third, Sander Vanocur of NBC News, didn\u2019t feel so constrained, or couldn\u2019t keep a good story to himself. Minutes after the plane landed in New York, Vanocur was on the air, describing what he had just seen.<\/p>\n Up until the moment he boarded the plane in California, Vanocur had been working. He had been tracking down rumors that the family patriarch, Joseph P. Kennedy, had died upon learning about his third son. Then, shortly after Air Force One had arrived from Washington to fetch everyone, Vanocur had stood in front of the empty aircraft and reflected on the journey to come.<\/p>\n \u201cIt somehow seems ironic that on afternoons very much like this, Air Force jets bear the bodies of male Kennedys out of the West back to their resting place in the East,\u201d he had said. \u201cAlso on board today will be another widow, Mrs. Martin Luther King Jr., whose husband went to his grave on a mule train. And it really doesn\u2019t make any difference, I suppose, by mule train or by jet, the fact that somehow and in some way, we seem to be sending a great many of our young leaders to their early graves.\u201d<\/p>\n There were key aides from Kennedy\u2019s campaign \u2014 his press secretary, Frank Mankiewicz, and the speechwriter Richard Goodwin \u2014 and from Kennedy\u2019s days as attorney general, Burke Marshall and John Seigenthaler. Joining them were old Kennedy friends such as Andy Williams, Rosey Grier and Rafer Johnson. Also on hand was yet another person touched by assassination: Charles Evers, whose brother Medgar, an NAACP official in Mississippi, had been gunned down five months before John F. Kennedy. Supervised by a veteran agent named Darwin Horn, a five-man crew from the Secret Service, Paul Sweeney among them, was also present, protecting someone already past protecting.<\/p>\n When Robert Kennedy was shot in the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel just after midnight on June 5, 1968, Jacqueline Kennedy was in London and Coretta King was in Washington. But both instantly knew where they wanted, and needed, to be. \u201cWhen I walked in, Mrs. King was sitting before the television set, weeping copiously,\u201d Stanley Levison, a key adviser to Martin Luther King who\u2019d seen her a few hours after Bobby Kennedy had been shot, remembered. \u201cShe said, \u2018You know, I have almost never been able to cry about Martin because I couldn\u2019t permit myself to .\u2009.\u2009. but now, I don\u2019t have to restrain myself, and I can\u2019t control my feelings.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n Robert Kennedy had played a crucial role following the death of her husband: He had arranged to have Coretta flown from Atlanta to Memphis to retrieve King\u2019s body, and then been a conspicuous and comforting presence at his funeral. She and Ethel Kennedy had even gotten together in the interim, for a \u201cPoor People\u2019s March\u201d in Washington. She wanted to reciprocate. \u201cIt was a very easy decision for me to make,\u201d she later said.<\/p>\n [1968: The year America unraveled<\/a>]<\/i><\/p>\n Jacqueline Kennedy, meanwhile, flew from London to New York. From there, the private jet of IBM chief Thomas Watson carried her to California. The FBI, which had tracked death threats against King (and, to a much lesser but still significant degree, against Bobby Kennedy) for years, now monitored and transmitted the uniquely American reunion to ensue.<\/p>\n \u201cPIERRE SALINGER advised that Mrs. JOHN F. KENNEDY is to arrive Los Angeles International Airport by private plane 5:30 PM today,\u201d went a memo to the Los Angeles office on June 5. \u201cLos Angeles Police Department is to meet Mrs. KENNEDY and bring her to Good Samaritan Hospital.\u201d The same memo reported that, also according to Salinger, Coretta King would arrive a half-hour earlier from Washington, to be met by one of Kennedy\u2019s black aides, Earl Graves. \u201cFurther plans of Mrs. King unknown,\u201d it stated.<\/p>\n King\u2019s widow reached the hospital first. \u201c\u2009\u2018Mrs. King!\u2019 several women in the crowd said, but not that much in amazement, for little these days amazes,\u201d the New York Post reported. An hour and a half later, the former first lady arrived \u2014 \u201cwearing dark brown, or black \u2014 no one could tell for sure because she rushed by \u00a0so quickly.<\/p>\n Slowly but inexorably, Robert Kennedy\u2019s life receded. As his condition changed from \u201ccritical\u201d to \u201cextremely critical\u201d to \u201cextremely critical as to life,\u201d there was little to do but wait. Ethel Kennedy stayed by his bedside. Meanwhile, Jacqueline Kennedy and Coretta King, along with Pierre Salinger\u2019s wife, Nicole, remained in a room nearby. She watched the two widows converse and, recognizing their unique bond, left them alone. What struck her most that night was how dark and silent the room was: For all the two widows shared, what was there, really, for them to say? At one point, all three were summoned for a last look at Robert Kennedy. \u201cI don\u2019t think he was totally dead yet, but not far,\u201d she recalled.<\/p>\n At 1:44 on the morning of June 6, Kennedy died. Fifteen minutes later Mankiewicz, still wearing a Kennedy pin on his lapel, announced it to the world. He did not waste words, adding only that Robert Kennedy was 42 years old. Standing outside the hospital, Roger Mudd of CBS News speculated that the funeral would be held in Washington, and that to get there, the Kennedys might favor a smaller, private plane, the better to keep off reporters clamoring for places on Robert Kennedy\u2019s last journey. But by Ethel Kennedy\u2019s decree, the funeral would in fact be in New York, where his constituents and parish church \u2014 the Church of the Holy Family on East 47th Street \u2014 were.<\/p>\n The requiem Mass would be held at St. Patrick\u2019s Cathedral. The force behind that choice, Vanocur speculated to his NBC colleagues, was Stephen Smith, Kennedy\u2019s brother-in-law, money man and protector. \u201cHe felt that Senator Kennedy ought to be a figure in his own right,\u201d Vanocur explained, commemorated somewhere besides Boston or Washington, as prior Kennedys had been. It would also address an image problem Bobby Kennedy had never fully shed. \u201cThere was a good deal of talk about Senator Kennedy being a carpetbagger in New York,\u201d Vanocur said. A Manhattan funeral might help settle that once and for all.<\/p>\n One of Kennedy\u2019s most dogged detractors, President Lyndon B. Johnson, furnished the plane. With UNITED STATES OF AMERICA emblazoned on it, it was one of three jets designated \u201cAir Force One.\u201d It was the same plane that had been ferrying Dean Rusk, Salinger and others to Japan on Nov. 22, 1963, only to turn back over the Pacific once the news from Dallas of John F. Kennedy\u2019s assassination reached it.<\/p>\n \u201cWill Mrs. Martin Luther King be considered one of the friends who will travel with the family?\u201d Salinger was asked at a briefing shortly after Kennedy died. He said she would. Coretta King spent part of that night attempting uplifting thoughts: that the legacies of both Robert Kennedy and her husband would be strengthened by their premature, unnatural deaths. When day broke, she issued a statement. \u201cWe must put an end to violence or violence will put an end to us,\u201d she said. \u201cSurely the tragic and untimely death of this brilliant and dedicated leader must cause each one of us to ponder our sense of responsibility in bringing an end to this kind of insanity.\u201d<\/p>\n Another wait ensued: Superfluous as it seemed, the coroner conducted an autopsy. Meanwhile, Jacqueline Kennedy spoke to Mankiewicz. \u201cShe commiserated with me as to what a tough job I had, which is an odd thing to say,\u201d Mankiewicz later recalled. \u201cAnd then she said, \u2018Well, now you know about death.\u2019 She said, \u2018The Church is a marvelous thing at a time like this. It\u2019s really at its best only at the time of death. The rest of the time it\u2019s often rather silly \u2014 little men running around in their black suits. But the Catholic Church understands death.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll tell you who else understands death are the black churches,\u201d she went on, according to Mankiewicz. \u201cI remember at the funeral of Martin Luther King I was looking at those faces and I realized that they know death. They see it all the time and they\u2019re ready for it. They\u2019re prepared for it in the way in which a good Catholic is.\u201d And then, Mankiewicz continued, \u201cShe said a thing which just absolutely chilled me. She said, \u2018Well, now we know death, don\u2019t we, you and I? As a matter of fact, if it weren\u2019t for the children, we\u2019d welcome it.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n On television, Mudd provided a partial list of passengers released by the campaign. The autopsy was completed, and the embalmers went to work. Robert Kennedy would be buried in the dark blue suit and white shirt that John Glenn had retrieved from Kennedy\u2019s room at the Ambassador Hotel. But Glenn had not found a necktie, so Andy Williams removed his \u2014 the one he had been putting on for the post-election party when Kennedy had been shot. Kennedy was placed in a casket made of African mahogany that Ted Kennedy had selected, which was then covered with a maroon cloth.<\/p>\n At 12:37 that afternoon, the blue hearse, with Ethel in the front and Ted behind her, headed down Wilshire Boulevard, accompanied by motorcyclists from a suddenly solicitous Los Angeles Police Department. Motorists on the freeway recognized the procession; no sirens were necessary.<\/p>\n [RFK\u2019s 1968 bid sparked hope, then despair<\/a>]<\/i><\/p>\n Some Kennedy associates, such as speechwriter Milton Gwirtzman and his wife, got to the airport early. As Lisa Gwirtzman stood on the tarmac, another Kennedy aide, K. Dun Gifford, handed her a large paper bag to hold until they were airborne. It was filled with cash \u2014 \u201cwalking around money\u201d left over from Election Day. Murray Richtel\u2019s fellow advance man, Larry Nagin, arrived with the $50 worth of liquor John Seigenthaler had dispatched him to buy for the flight.<\/p>\n Of the close relatives, only Jacqueline Kennedy boarded from the rear, and only once she had been assured that this wasn\u2019t the jet that had carried her and the body of her husband back from Dallas. She was first in line, making her way down a red carpet strewn with roses and carnations. Linda Deutsch of the Associated Press never forgot the image. \u201cWhether it was a statement about her special position as JFK\u2019s widow or whether she was afraid of hydraulic lifts we will never know,\u201d she said. \u201cBut it was dramatic.\u201d<\/p>\n The other passengers followed. When Coretta King boarded, CBS reminded its audience how Robert Kennedy had not just attended Martin Luther King\u2019s funeral but, nearly eight years earlier, had helped spring King from a Georgia jail, a move that had electrified black voters and thereby helped send John F. Kennedy to the White House. Two other black passengers \u2014 the Olympic athlete Rafer Johnson and Charles Evers \u2014 wept as they boarded. \u201cYou are forced to think .\u2009.\u2009. of what a burden of tragedy this plane carries, what a burden of death and sadness and sorrow,\u201d George Herman of CBS declared. Commentators sometimes stumbled over Bobby Kennedy\u2019s title, calling him \u201cpresident\u201d rather than \u201csenator.\u201d<\/p>\n Like so many others, Vanocur had not liked Robert Kennedy when they met. During the Wisconsin primary in 1960, he had even griped to John Kennedy about how obnoxious his kid brother was. Nor had he been much impressed with his oratorical skills: In fact, Bobby had given the worst speech he had ever heard. \u201cIt was just disastrous. He couldn\u2019t speak and he was faltering and sweating and rubbing his palms,\u201d Vanocur later said.<\/p>\n But since Dallas, he, too, had come to see Bobby\u2019s more sensitive, introspective side. \u201cThe most vulnerable man I\u2019ve ever known,\u201d was how Vanocur now described him. He had traveled with him in Africa, sailed with him off the coast of Maine, joined him for lousy dinners and bad movies at Hickory Hill. Vanocur remained upstairs in Kennedy\u2019s suite when Kennedy had been shot. He was later asked why he hadn\u2019t followed the senator to the ballroom. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to get bruised or anything,\u201d he explained. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to fight the mob.\u201d<\/p>\n After climbing the steps to the jet, Jerry Bruno, the veteran advance man who had been with John Kennedy in Dallas \u2014 and, after that, with Robert Kennedy when he had spoken in Indianapolis following King\u2019s death \u2014 surveyed the 2,000 or so people gathered behind the fence. \u201cHe would have liked this crowd,\u201d he said. Nearby, Paul Sweeney was checking in the passengers. He had been a last-minute recruit, pulled off a counterfeiting investigation to cover Robert Kennedy \u2014 or \u201cwhat was left of him\u201d \u2014 at the hospital.<\/p>\n [What is it like to be the brother of Robert Kennedy\u2019s assassin? The life of the other Sirhan.<\/a>]<\/i><\/p>\n At one point Sweeney sneaked a glance to his right, and saw the three widows. Two of them \u2014 Ethel and Jackie, he thinks \u2014 were seated, and the third standing alongside them. \u201cThey were consoling one another, I guess, but I don\u2019t know that, because it was at the back of the plane,\u201d he recalled. \u201cI wasn\u2019t concentrating on them.\u201d The doors closed at 1:20. Edward Kennedy briefly reemerged at the front to retrieve a wreath, then placed it atop his brother\u2019s casket. By 1:38 they were airborne.<\/p>\n \u201cThe body left here today with a planeload of family, friends, staff, including Mrs. John Kennedy and Mrs. Martin Luther King,\u201d David Brinkley said on \u201cThe Hunt\u00adley-Brinkley Report\u201d that night. \u201cSo, in one airplane, three widows of three American public figures murdered by assassins.\u201d<\/p>\n Oddly enough, the atmosphere aboard the plane wasn\u2019t especially funereal. \u201cI remember Jack Kennedy telling me once that he never worried about a situation over which he had absolutely no control,\u201d Rowland Evans later said. \u201cThis is a philosophy that really, I think, goes to all of them. Bobby was shot. Bobby was dead. Nothing could possibly change that fact, and it immediately became an accepted fact and they dealt with it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere was grief to begin with,\u201d the writer George Plimpton, another passenger on the flight, recalled. \u201cI remember looking back down the aisle just after the plane had left the Los Angeles airport. One of the Kennedy aides in back of us was crying.\u201d But as the plane banked over the Pacific and rose above the clouds, something else seemed to lift. \u201cI think as the earth fell away, so in a sense did that cloaking sense of depression and gloom,\u201d Plimpton said. \u201cAfter we got 10 or 15 minutes up in the air, the natural esprit of those people who surround Ethel and the senator began to break\u00a0out.\u201d<\/p>\n Jacqueline Kennedy, Vanocur reported, had spent most of the flight talking with Prince Radziwill and Burke Marshall. But \u201cfor a long while,\u201d he said, she spoke to Coretta King as well. Jackie and Ethel also talked, for a half-hour or so. \u201cAnd then, after that was over, Mrs. Robert F. Kennedy walked down the aisle, stopping with various people along the way,\u201d Vanocur said. \u201cI used the word \u2018joking\u2019 with them, because that\u2019s what she did. She was in remarkably good spirits. I suspect she\u2019s been under sedation for the last 24 or 25 hours. I suppose everybody was trying to keep her mind off what had happened.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt wasn\u2019t that [she was joking],\u201d he later elaborated. \u201cShe was trying to make people feel better. She was the one who was trying to psych people out of their gloom.\u201d Plimpton noticed the same thing. \u201cEveryone saw that she was trying to put a face on all of this, and it gave them a release, I think, and they were able to start functioning,\u201d he said. Good cheer, or at least stoicism, was the thing. \u201cListen,\u201d a Kennedy friend snapped at someone crying by Kennedy\u2019s casket. \u201cIf the family can take it and the kids can take it, then you shape up!\u201d<\/p>\n [The busboy who held a dying Robert F. Kennedy speaks of lingering pain<\/a>]<\/i><\/p>\n Coretta King remembered going up to Ethel Kennedy and then how, after a time, Ethel had come back to visit her. \u201cShe seemed very strong and really bearing up very well, I thought,\u201d she recalled. The two, she said, spoke \u201cwoman to woman.\u201d \u201cThere are a lot of things you can\u2019t put into words; you sort of communicate,\u201d she said. \u201cI hope that I was able to give, in part, some strength to her because I was far enough removed from my own situation that I felt that I could be, in that situation, stronger.\u201d<\/p>\n But for her, there was no getting around the all-pervasive gloom. \u201cYou know, everybody was .\u2009.\u2009. well, depressed \u2014 the same kind of feeling that people around my husband had at the time of his death, the kind of feeling of, \u2018What do we do now? We\u2019ve lost our leader.\u2019 \u201d But at no time during the flight, at least from the fragmentary reports available, did the three widows ever regroup.<\/p>\n Under such circumstances, something concrete \u2014 such as planning Kennedy\u2019s funeral \u2014 provided a blessed distraction. Ethel wanted to use the phrase from Aeschylus that her husband had quoted in Indianapolis on the Mass card, but wasn\u2019t sure where it could be found; Jacqueline Kennedy told Mankiewicz she might have it somewhere in her library in New York. Dave Hackett walked up and down the aisle with a yellow pad, asking passengers to suggest those people close enough to Kennedy to stand vigil by the casket in the cathedral.<\/p>\n ‘Enough is enough’<\/p>\n Edward Kennedy remained by his brother throughout the flight. Vanocur watched him oscillate between grief and anger. \u201cI might as well say it: He\u2019s mad,\u201d he said. \u201cHe\u2019s mad at what happens in this country. He does not know whether this is the act of a single person or if this is the act of a conspiracy. .\u2009.\u2009. But from him, from others in the plane, one got the impression \u2014 it\u2019s no more than that \u2014 that there\u2019s kind of a pattern .\u2009.\u2009. faceless men \u2014 that\u2019s the phrase I heard.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd I suppose if you were a Kennedy or a Kennedy employee or if you were a Kennedy supporter you would wonder, too,\u201d he went on. \u201cIt\u2019s this faceless thing. I\u2019m not trying to suggest something more than exists but I\u2019m telling you as faithfully as I can kind of a feeling aboard that\u00a0plane.\u201d<\/p>\n Talk of conspiracies kept popping up in the television commentaries. On CBS, Daniel Schorr and Dan Rather discussed how black leaders assumed King had been the victim of one, though nothing supported that claim. For all the grim sameness of the two Kennedy assassinations, there was this distinction: John\u2019s was greeted with sadness and shock; Bobby\u2019s, with sadness, resignation, doubt and fury.<\/p>\n [\u2018That stain of bloodshed\u2019: After King\u2019s assassination, RFK calmed an angry crowd with an unforgettable speech<\/a>]<\/i><\/p>\n To Vanocur, the scene on the plane had the \u201cfeeling of an O\u2019Neill tragedy.\u201d People aboard suddenly realized, he said, that were Ted Kennedy ever to run for president, \u201che, too, would get killed.\u201d \u201cThe feeling was, \u2018Enough is enough: We can\u2019t go through this more than twice in a lifetime,\u2019\u2009\u201d he added. \u201cNobody was in much of a mood to talk about the future because it didn\u2019t seem like there was any future.\u201d<\/p>\n About an hour out of New York, Edward Kennedy fell asleep beside his brother\u2019s coffin. Ethel came in and followed suit. Jim Whittaker, the mountaineer who\u2019d climbed Mount Kennedy with Bobby, put a pillow beneath her, and brought her rosaries.<\/p>\n Once the descent began, the protective cloud cover evaporated. \u201cWe were all insulated .\u2009.\u2009. I mean with the sky outside,\u201d Plimpton recalled. \u201cBut then the insulation began to collapse as soon as the plane started down. We went through the clouds and at the first glimpse of the lights of New York .\u2009.\u2009. well, that was the end of the conversation. It became so quiet you could hear the plane creak.\u201d The captain asked that Kennedy\u2019s coffin be placed against the bulkhead so that it wouldn\u2019t slide forward as the plane landed at LaGuardia Airport. The weather there was different from what it had been in Washington in November 1963, steamy rather than cold, but the scene, of a grieving Kennedy widow looking on in the dark as her husband\u2019s remains went from plane to hoist to hearse, was eerily familiar.<\/p>\n A newsman’s instincts<\/p>\n Then the motorcade carrying the three widows \u2014 all 26 cars of it \u2014 headed for Manhattan. Once at St. Patrick\u2019s, Vanocur, with his newsman\u2019s instincts, rushed from the limousine to the NBC booth nearby, where he joined John Chancellor and Edwin Newman to describe the scene. His rage was no easier to camouflage than his fatigue. \u201cThat\u2019s Mrs. John F. Kennedy,\u201d he said at one point. \u201cShe\u2019s seen all this before. Not at this cathedral, but she brought dead Kennedys back from the West before.\u201d<\/p>\n He offered additional tidbits from the flight: that the California Democratic kingpin Jesse Unruh had deliberately chosen to fly commercial, in an effort for it to be said that no politicians had been on board; that the three most roundly disparaged entities on the flight were Mayor Sam Yorty of Los Angeles (with whom RFK had long fought); the columnist Drew Pearson (ditto); and the New York Times (ditto: Kennedy was convinced it was anti-Catholic).<\/p>\n Once Robert Kennedy was installed at St. Pat\u2019s, where he would lie in state the next day, his entourage dispersed. \u201cSander Vanocur, how long has it been since you\u2019ve had any sleep?\u201d Chancellor asked. \u201cTwo nights,\u201d Vanocur said quietly. \u201cI\u2019m going to say good night.\u201d \u201cTwo nights: too long,\u201d Chancellor replied. \u201cI\u2019m glad you were aboard for us and for the audience, Sander. Get some sleep.\u201d Vanocur departed. \u201cSander Vanocur, who flew back with Senator Kennedy\u2019s body, on his way to bed,\u201d Chancellor remarked as he did. Now 90 years old, with dementia, Vanocur has no more recollections to impart.<\/p>\n Vanocur\u2019s scoop that night evidently came at some cost. \u201cEveryone on the plane was there on the basis of friendship,\u201d an aggrieved Mankiewicz said afterward. \u201cNobody was there as a reporter. The plane was private.\u201d At least one, and possibly two, of the widows were displeased. \u201cThe grieving Kennedy clan is said to be very bitter,\u201d wrote Herb Lyon of the Chicago Tribune. \u201cVanocur may be persona non grata with the Kennedys from now on.\u201d<\/p>\n