It is RFK's birthday. RIP

[Racenut20]

1968 seems like yesterday, today.

[Suzette]

1. If only...if only...Bobby, we REALLY hardly knew ye...RIP

Born at Boston, Massachusetts, November 20, 1925, he served as a Seaman Second Class (SN2) in the United States Navy during World War II. He was campaign manager for John F. Kennedy when he sought the Presidency in 1960. He served as Attorney General in his brother's administration from January 1961 until his resignation on September 3, 1964, to become a candidate for the United States Senate from New York. He was elected as a Democrat and served from January 3, 1965 until his death.

He died from the effects of an assassin's bullets on June 6, 1968 at Los Angeles, California while campaigning for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States. He was buried in Section 45 of Arlington National Cemetery, just steps from his brother's gravesite, in a very rare night burial.

On June 8th, 1968, the day of Bobby's funeral, another Kennedy brother, U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy, eulogized:

"My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered simply as a good decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it. Those of us, who loved him and who take him to his rest today pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will someday come to pass for all the world. As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him: 'Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.'"


http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/rfk.htm

[Bridget Burke]

2. The night that Martin Luther King died, he gave a speech

"For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times.

"My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: 'In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.'"

www.jfklibrary.org/r040468.htm

The killing & the pain have not ended, but who has gained wisdom? Which of the current crew in power can quote the words of Aeschylus?

Indeed, which of them can understand the words of Martin Luther King? Or Bobby or his brother John?

[Suzette]

4. That speech always brings me to tears.

I felt anger in the crowd, tension at least; but as Bobby spoke those words, I felt a coming together that I don't think I've felt since. I don't mean it seem as if I was there; these were/are my feelings throughout watching the clips special after special, year after year ...

[Screaming Lord Byron]

3. How different things would have been with Bobby here.

Man, it's heartbreaking.