Bobby Kennedy Funeral Train… One Woman Spoke For Us All Without Saying One Word.

Out of all the millions that lined the route from New York to Washington. It was this one woman that epitomized what all of us felt that day. The deep deep solemn sorrow. Her crying and reaching out in pain was all of us reaching out to the loss of Bobby and his whole family.

It didn’t get any more poignant than this. She spoke for the whole nation and those throughout the world who also mourned with us.

 

 

June 8, 1968. Train passing through Baltimore, MD.

 

 

 

 

I watched every single moment of that day. From the funeral service at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in NY, then this entire funeral train route into Washington, then finally into Arlington National Cemetery…

It was night when they laid Bobby to rest.

I went to bed that night at 11 years old and wondered why.

Fifty years later now at 61, I’m still asking it.

It is a pain that has never healed and I don’t think it ever will.

 

 

Bobby Kennedy… The Best President We Never Had.

 

“Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.”

Robert Francis Kennedy

44 years ago today we lost my hero.

I had just turned 11 a month before and I will never forget the night he was shot just after midnight after a victorious speech June 5th or the wee hours of the morning he had died on June 6th.

My 5th grade teacher had brought a TV into our classroom that Wednesday and we did nothing that day in school but watch the news coverage. It was just a few days before school had let out for the summer.

I will never forget sitting in front of the TV for the next three days, watching Frank Mankiewicz cry as he made the announcement that Bobby Kennedy had died. Then watching the entire news coverage as long as it was on, as young as I was I never felt so solemn.