Noon: Assassinated This Date In '68
Born: November 20, 1925
Assassinated: June 5, 1968
Died: June 6, 1968
"Some men see things as they are and say why.
I dream things that never were and say why not."
1968 Robert F. Kennedy shot
"At 12:50 a.m. PDT, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, a presidential candidate, is shot three times in a hail of gunfire in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Five others were wounded. The senator had just completed a speech celebrating his victory in the California presidential primary. The shooter, Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan, had a smoking .22 revolver wrested from his grip and was promptly arrested. Kennedy, critically wounded, was rushed to the hospital, where he fought for his life for the next 24 hours. On the morning of June 6, he died. He was 42 years old. On June 8, Kennedy was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, also the final resting place of his assassinated older brother, President John F. Kennedy." (From The History Channel)
I remember sitting in Al Stadden's 9th Grade history class in Falmouth, Maine on June 6, 1968, reading about the Hapsburgs and Austria and the Ottoman Empire in the sweltering heat, and then learning, either over the school P.A. or from Stadden himself, that Bobby Kennedy had succumbed to his wounds and died. The sixties, in my opinion, began with J.F.K.'s assassination in November '63 and ended with our pulling out of Vietnam in January '73 with the signing of the Paris Peace Accords. During that decade, euphamistically known as the sixties, there were many memorable moments, but many of them were tragic. Just two months earlier, nearly to the day, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, and now came Bobby Kennedy. Woodstock happened in August of '69, but the mixed peace, love and understanding of that chaotic milestone was quickly followed in December '69 by the Stones debacle at Altamont. Four dead in Ohio at Kent State in May of '70 marked the beginning of the end (not even to begin to mention those killed, maimed, missing, and wounded in the Vietnam War). It was a memorable decade, but turbulent; historical and in many ways magical, but also violent, infused with mayhem and loss. Robert F. Kennedy's assassination was another rip in the fabric of a nation that, in many ways, is still healing from those wounds, although there are now newer wounds to heal.
Posted by cronish at June 05, 2002 12:18 PM