A day to remember<\/strong><\/p>\nAt her home outside Portland, Ore., Lynette Ray, watching the news on television, began to believe Bobby would live. His press secretary, Frank Mankiewicz, had been mildly encouraging, saying his \u201clife signs remain good \u2014 respiration, pulse, blood pressure.”<\/p>\n
After Kennedy underwent\u00a0a four-hour operation, Mankiewicz said the patient\u2019s \u201ccondition is described as extremely critical,”\u00a0but his \u201cvital signs remain about as they were, except that he is now breathing on his own, which he was not prior to the surgery. \u2026 The next 12 to 36 hours will be very critical.”<\/p>\n
That was vague enough to encourage some optimism. \u201cI thank God that he is apparently going to live,”\u00a0blurted Daniel Boyle, chairman of the Johnson County, Iowa, Democratic committee.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs long as he was still alive,”\u00a0Lynnette recalled years later, \u201cI was OK with that.”<\/p>\n
As the TV news played in the background, Lynette and her mother focused on plans for her special day. First, a trip to \u201cthe Coney Island of the West”\u00a0\u2014 Jantzen Beach Amusement Park\u00a0on an island\u00a0in the Columbia River.\u00a0Then\u00a0a stop at Farrell\u2019s Ice Cream Parlour, famous for giving customers a free ice cream sundae on their\u00a0birthday.<\/p>\n
At the amusement park, Lynette and her friends went from ride to ride, including a carousel built for the 1904 St. Louis World\u2019s Fair. They played and lost games to win stuffed animals. They ate cotton candy and hot dogs. The park\u2019s sound system played the Beatles\u2019 Yesterday<\/em>.<\/p>\nRay’s mom and another mother who\u2019d come along sat on a bench and looked worriedly at the afternoon paper, The Oregon Journal.<\/em><\/p>\nThe other presidential candidates had suspended their campaigns (\u201cnone are sure how to proceed anyway,”\u00a0wrote columnist Tom Wicker) and received Secret Service protection, previously not provided as a matter of course.<\/p>\n
Thousands of soldiers and Marines were on alert in case of the kind of rioting that followed King\u2019s death.<\/p>\n
Kennedy\u2019s wife, Ethel, pregnant with their 11th child, received telegrams from men history would list as her husband\u2019s biggest enemies: Lyndon Johnson (\u201cWe grieve and pray with you\u201d) and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.<\/p>\n
In Boston, Cardinal Richard Cushing said a Mass for Kennedy at the palatial archbishop\u2019s residence. In Washington, there was a prayer service in muddy Resurrection City, the shanty town erected by Martin Luther King Jr.\u2019s successors to call attention to poverty.<\/p>\n
‘A violent people\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\nAs Lynnette\u00a0enjoyed\u00a0the amusement park rides, Americans older than she were consumed by anxiety, doubt and confusion.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t weep often,”\u00a0said the Rev. Billy Graham, \u201cbut today, I wept for my country.”<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat madness is afoot?”\u00a0asked Bob Considine, Hearst newspapers\u2019 star columnist. \u201cWe\u2019re sick. The assassin has 200 million heads. One is yours. One is mine.”\u00a0Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a Kennedy adviser, was pessimistic: \u201cWe are a violent people with a violent history, and the instinct for violence has seeped into our national life.”<\/p>\n
There even was shock in the most violent place on the planet. A Marine corporal in Vietnam, Robert Wolfe of Dodge City, Kan., told a reporter,\u00a0\u201cThe guys over here are fighting, and people back there are killing each other. It just ain\u2019t right.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
Who was Sirhan, and what was his motive? If he wanted to kill a supporter of Israel, there were many more likely targets than Kennedy, whose Israel policy was among his least controversial.<\/p>\n
Around the time Lynette Ray got home, Mankiewicz told reporters that Kennedy\u2019s medical team \u201cis concerned over his continuing failure to show improvement.”\u00a0His condition was described as \u201cextremely critical as to life.”<\/p>\n
At the White House that night, waiting to address the nation on television, Johnson kept asking aides, \u201cIs he dead yet?”\u00a0He finally went on shortly after 10, telling Americans he was \u201cas shocked and dismayed as you are”\u00a0and announcing a commission to study \u201cthe causes and preventions of violence.”<\/p>\n
It was still too early for a eulogy. Lynette went to bed happy. It had been a day to remember.<\/p>\n
Two mornings<\/strong><\/p>\nJune 5, 1968, is a day lost to history.<\/p>\n
Major chronicles either mention the time between Kennedy\u2019s shooting and death briefly, such as Schlesinger\u2019s 1,000-page Robert Kennedy and His Times,<\/em> or skip it entirely, as in\u00a0Theodore H. White\u2019s The Making of the President 1968<\/em>.<\/p>\nAlmost nine in 10 people old enough to remember are still alive. Many conflate the mornings when they learned of the shooting and the death. Those with precise memories of the JFK assassination are apt to forget the details of his brother\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Wendy Lee Klenetsky is not unusual in thinking she saw the RFK shooting live on TV, which it was not. She says she recalls it happening after she got home from her high school, even though it was after 3 a.m. in the East, where she lived.<\/p>\n
Sid Litke can tell you the number of students (13) in his one-room school in rural Aulne, Kan., when JFK was shot\u00a0and describe the teacher lowering the flag outside. He has no memory of where he was or what he was doing when he learned about RFK.<\/p>\n
One thing has not changed. If the mystery of Sirhan never became a national obsession, it never was satisfactorily explained. Certainly not by the defendant, who pleaded guilty despite claiming not to recall what happened.<\/p>\n
This year, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., citing long-disputed forensic evidence, said he believed that more shots were fired in the hotel hallway than the eight from Sirhan\u2019s gun,\u00a0that there was a second gunman\u00a0and that Sirhan did not kill his father.<\/p>\n
\u2018He\u2019s gone\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\nMuch of the suspense over Kennedy\u2019s fate was illusory. By the time he arrived at Good Samaritan hospital, he was dying. His heart was beating, but the line on the brain monitor was flat.<\/p>\n
After speaking to the head of the surgical team, a Columbia-Presbyterian hospital neurosurgeon told reporters that, given the brain damage caused by one of the bullets, \u201cI fear \u2026 the outcome may be extremely tragic.”<\/p>\n
Tragic didn\u2019t necessarily mean death. There was also the possibility, as the Associated Press delicately put it, of \u201can indefinite life of limited usefulness.”<\/p>\n
The scene in Kennedy\u2019s room would have dispelled any optimism. His body was covered with tubes and wires; the part of his face not covered with bandages was bruised; his eyes were blackened. One Kennedy biographer described\u00a0Ethel Kennedy lying on the bed next to her husband, \u201cas if she were dying, too.”<\/p>\n
Finally, the family acknowledged the inevitable, and Kennedy was allowed to die. Joseph Kennedy III, his oldest son, went to the ward where his siblings were sleeping. \u201cHe\u2019s gone,”\u00a0he said.<\/p>\n
Mankiewicz decided to break the news with a simple statement. \u201cTo stick around and answer questions would take away from the import of the moment,”\u00a0he explained in a memoir.<\/p>\n
Shortly after 2 a.m., standing at the lectern of the press center across from the hospital, he read these words: \u201cSen.\u00a0Robert Francis Kennedy died at 1:44 a.m., June 6, 1968. With Sen.\u00a0Kennedy at the time of his death were his wife, Ethel;\u00a0his sisters, Mrs. Stephen Smith, Mrs. Patricia Lawford; and his brother-in-law, Mr. Stephen Smith. He was 42 years old. Thank you.”<\/p>\n
Then he walked away.<\/p>\n
Postscript<\/strong><\/p>\nAfter dawn on June 6, Lynette Ray was again awakened by her mother, who again carried the newspaper\u00a0and again laid it on the bed.<\/p>\n
The girl spent the day following events on TV, reading newspapers and researching assassinations in the family\u2019s Encyclopedia Britannica. She would never forget the photo of RFK lying on the floor of the kitchen, his arm outstretched, his face bathed in a halo of light.<\/p>\n
Her reaction to this assassination was less emotional than to JFK\u2019s. She was older, more analytical, more self-centered. She didn\u2019t cry, and neither did the adults around her. There was great sadness, but they all had been hardened.<\/p>\n
Five months later, on the Wednesday morning after Election Day, Lynette and her mother were in their Buick driving through Lake Oswego, Ore., when word came on the radio that the TV networks finally had called the election for Richard Nixon over\u00a0Humphrey.<\/p>\n
Her mother had not mentioned Kennedy in months. Now she slammed her hand on the steering wheel and shouted a question that had no answer then, and has none now: \u201cWhy did we have to lose Bobby?\u201d<\/p>\n
USA Today<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rick Hampson, June 4, 2018 Lynette Ray\u2019s mother enters her sleeping daughter\u2019s bedroom, where last night, they sat in front of the black-and-white TV to watch coverage of the last day of the California Democratic presidential primary, and of their hero\u00a0Robert Kennedy. \u00a0The mother holds\u00a0the morning Oregonian, which she places on the bed. The date […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3256"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3256"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3288,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3256\/revisions\/3288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}