Today’s date is 4 June, 2025. The following was originally published 4 June, 2018.
50 years ago, the 4th of June fell on a Tuesday.
In consecutive shifts my mother and then my father divided the day by driving small groups of voters from nursing homes to the polls where Robert F. Kennedy’s fight to win the California democratic primary was being waged. During my mother’s shift, squeezing as many as 5 elderly but determined Kennedy supporters at a time into our Dodge station wagon, my father took me into the Ambassador Hotel’s Embassy Ballroom where I hoped I would see Senator Kennedy, but instead, experienced only the incredibly blinding heat and glare of television lights. I had met Senator Kennedy two years earlier in New Albany, Indiana. I know I was excited at the prospect of meeting him again. He was alive when I fell asleep in a room upstairs before the results of the election were known.
He was still alive, but mortally wounded, when I awoke early the next morning and found, to my surprise, my father was awake and in front of the television, sitting with his hands clasped in his lap, leaning forward, watching the screen. I had never known my dad, a full-time professional musician, to be awake before late, late morning or noon. He hadn’t slept. Only I. Nobody else had slept. I may have asked what was going on. What I remember my father saying was this:
“Somebody should take the guy who did this and machine gun him against a wall.”
That’s how I learned what had happened. Senator Kennedy lived 25 and a half hours after being shot. He died at 1:44 am, 6 June, 1968. He was 42 years old.
Be glad you weren’t there.
ADDENDUM
Portrait by Jim Bama from a photograph by D. Gorton.
6 June, 2020
There are times when experience disrupts and displaces whatever “normal” might have been. Today we are living through a daily assault on the continuities upon which we have always relied; continuities that unite rather than divide and explain rather than bewilder; continuities that help us to define where and who “we” are, so that participation, without fear, is possible.
Fifty-two years ago, my personal life and the continuities that I, as an eight-year-old, associated with “normal” were disrupted, irrevocably.
Many of my Facebook friends will be aware of something I wrote on this anniversary date two years ago regarding what I remember about 4 June, 1968.
For most of my life I was unwilling and unable to discuss, analyze, or even admit that I had been there, at the Ambassador Hotel, with my parents on that devastating occasion. Although I was asleep at the time of the shooting, my parents were not. A few years ago, because of something that had been artfully crafted by my friend, Phil Dragoo, which pertained to the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy for posting on a now defunct JFK forum, I publicly admitted what I had never told anyone: “I was there.”
That single admission was the first in a series of necessary steps for me to examine, deeply and honestly, the meaning and consequences of Senator Kennedy’s murder in relation to myself and my family. The short version is this: His death ended my childhood and destroyed the continuity of everything I had known and taken for granted while traveling across this country with my mother and father. It also set the course of my intellectual and emotional paths, alternatives to which I will never be able to consider.
It was not until that first acknowledgement, inspired and made possible by my friend’s creative posting on profound loss for which 1963 and 1968 are indelibly linked, I began to see that my parent’s lives were altered; their alcoholism was a direct result of disheartened grief; and I was traumatized my entire life by the effects of being in relatively close proximity to such an immense tragedy.
Until the period of the last five weeks of my father’s life, neither of my parents ever discussed the assassination with me. I understand now that they were not neglectful towards me about such a life changing experience; I see now and have come to accept that they could not have helped me, their only child, because they truly didn’t know how to help themselves. They had no solutions; they simply drank.
I will say this, sincerely: I did not realize how damaged I was until a small number of cherished friends and mentors involved themselves, meaningfully, to influence the necessity of dealing with this issue by talking about it.
Among those beautiful friends and teachers who have helped me, I include Malcolm Blunt, Dr. John Newman, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Professor Peter Dale Scott, Bill Simpich, Dan Hardway, Jefferson Morley, Heather Tarver Fear, Stu Wexler, Larry Hancock, Charles Drago, Pat Speer, Debra Conway, Sherry Fiester, Jay Harvey, Bart Kamp, Greg R. Parker, Jay Miles, Dr. Josiah Thompson, Dan Alcorn, Jim Lesar, and one other without whom I would be elsewhere in this process and this post would not be possible, my dearest friend, Darlene. This is what she said to me:
“I was thinking about our last conversation, and your feeling as a small child that you could have done something to save RFK– I am sure this is not news to you, but I keep thinking that you have, of course, spent a good part of your adult life saving him, or at least his legacy. Not many people can say that they have turned tragic events of their childhoods into something positive.”
It is she whose clarity and insight has been directly impactful, speaking from her heart in such a way as to expand my emotional awareness, which has allowed me to see, objectively, that it was possible for a young child to be exposed to tragedy, to the violent deaths of his heroes and, despite internalizing the trauma, to have chosen a path of positive engagement, deep commitment to principle, and appreciation of the constructive benefits of doing more with your suffering than just grieve. I am privileged and forever thankful to those who allow me to participate in a cause which I find meaningful and gratifying.
So, 52 years ago the 4th of June fell on a Tuesday. Sitting with my father during the final days of his life in late January of 2015, I decided that I should ask him about that night. His first sentence was the end of the conversation. He said, “I heard the shots coming from the kitchen pantry.”
Be glad you weren’t there.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
AARC