Remembering Robert F. Kennedy's whistle-stop tour across Nebraska 50 years ago

[Omaha Steve]

By David Hendee

LINCOLN — Fifty years ago in a Lincoln living room, Robert F. Kennedy’s campaign for the presidency got on track.

It was late March 1968 and Kennedy, a U.S. senator from New York, had just entered the race for the Democratic nomination for president. The incumbent president, Lyndon Johnson, and a staunch anti-Vietnam War candidate, Minnesota Sen. Eugene McCarthy, were already on the ballot in Nebraska and other early primary states.

Kennedy’s Nebraska campaign organizers — including former Lt. Gov. Phil Sorensen, who returned to his home state from Indiana as a liaison between the national and state organizations — huddled at the Country Club neighborhood home of Edie Van Neste. They had little time to cobble together a statewide campaign. Nebraska’s mid-May primary loomed in about seven weeks.

Mary Ann Hanson of North Platte (now Mary Ann Strasheim of Omaha), the campaign’s Lincoln County chairman, said Sorensen wished aloud that there were a big rodeo or some other event on the state’s spring calendar for Kennedy to visit and meet people.

FULL story & video: http://www.omaha.com/news/plus/remembering-robert-f-kennedy-s-whistle-stop-tour-across-nebraska/article_6118b018-7cf3-5d31-886e-07446f33022a.html

[dpibel]

1. I saw him in Kearney

Big crowd, all across the railroad tracks (kinda strange for a town that had a train passing through about every 10 minutes).

Thanks for the reminder.

Think what coulda been...

[Journeyman]

2. John Stewart: "Clack, Clack" . . .

Clack, clack, clack
As the train is a-rolling down the track
To carry me home
Back where I belong
Clack, clack, clack
As the train is a-rolling down the track
To carry me home
Back where I belong
Dakota sky
Made us feel like a river
Running free, running free
And when I die
Bring the wheels that deliver
Restless me, restless me

Let me hear the clack, clack, clack
As the train goes rolling down the track
To carry me home
Back where I belong
Clack, clack, clack
As the train goes rolling down the track
To carry me home
Back where I belong

It was Bobby's song
That I wrote without trying
Every word, every word
Now that Bobby's gone
This is my way of crying
When I heard, when I heard
Listen to the clack, clack, clack
As the train goes rolling down the track
To carry him home
Back to where he belongs
Clack, clack, clack
As the train goes rolling down the track
To carry me home
Back where I belong

[Sneederbunk]

3. Shook hands with him at NU and Scottsbluff.

[Omaha Steve]

4. I'm jealous

I went door to door for him at age 11, but didn't get to even see him.

OS