RFK - 50 years ago

[gindie]

I was a 9-year-old, captured by the excitement about this man running for the presidency. My father took me to a rally in northern Indiana just a month earlier, as he was trying to win the state's primary.

Then, the morning after the tragic event in Los Angeles my parents told me to come into their room and listen to the radio with them. I couldn't believe it, and cried and cried! We had just gone though the MLK assassination 2 months (almost to the day) earlier.

My politics has evolved as I've aged, and I'm not so sure I still would have voted for him today. But, certainly at that time in my life, he was my guy!

 

[marko]

Mom listened to the local radio in the morning.
I was 15 and just about right now (6:45 AM) 50 years ago I woke to my mom running around the house screaming 'They shot him! They shot him!!'.
My dad was saying "who? who?"
"Kennedy!"
...and most telling for that period, my dad said: "Which one?"

 

[aja8888]

Mom listened to the local radio in the morning.
I was 15 and just about right now (6:45 AM) 50 years ago I woke to my mom running around the house screaming 'They shot him! They shot him!!'.
My dad was saying "who? who?"
"Kennedy!"
...and most telling for that period, my dad said: "Which one?"

Yeah, there were 9 children, three of which were boys. One tried to drive his car on water. Guess he thought the Kennedy clan had special powers!

 

[ncbill]

Didn't know until I read today's Wall Street Journal about how John Glenn was the one to break the news to RFK's children...

 

[Sunset]

My friends parents pulled their kid out of school and packed the car, ready to head to a bomb shelter, in case it was the Russians that had done it as a prelude to war.

My parents did nothing, we were expendable..

 

[GrayHare]

1968 was one tumultuous year. If I saw that now I'd think The System was about to collapse.

 

[easysurfer]

I was too young in 1968 to understand what all was happening. I have no memory of JFK's assassination years earlier. Only a very faint memory of that of MLK and RFK. Do have a clear memory of what I was doing when hearing about the assassination attempt on Reagan.

 

[Scrapr]

1968 was one tumultuous year. If I saw that now I'd think The System was about to collapse.

Yeah. Can you imagine social media now in that time? "Long hot summers" meant something entirely different. And Sirhan Sirhan killed him? Why we would probably bomb Eastern Blogovastan.* I was 13 and delivered papers in the morning. I probably found out about MLK & JFK before most of our small town

*no EB were harmed in this post

 

[kgtest]

You mean it wasn't the CIA? I wonder how Mr Market reacts to a literal political assassination in modern day. I'll never forget when I dressed up as JFK for an elementary project. This was like 25 years after the tragedy. Its funny how influenced young kids even under 10 can be to national politics.

 

[calmloki]

I was a college freshman upstairs in a big old house with beer and a group of people including real live girls. Most lights were off and the tv was going. Serious mood change. Lot of stuff went down in the sixties/early seventies.

 

[MRG]

I was 11 and remember staying up listening to AM radio the night he passed.

Yeah 68-69 were some scary times. To me the Stones "Gimme Shelter"(69) was very close to reality.

https://genius.com/The-rolling-stones-gimme-shelter-lyrics

 

[Mdlerth]

Prioritizing the news

I was in 5th grade and oblivious to everything other than the girls at school were developing bosoms.

 

[JoeWras]

I was almost 6. I didn't understand, and it was more complex than that. I lived in Chicago, and had older siblings. I learned the word "curfew" and "riot" at this time. My siblings and cousins were routinely picked up by "paddy wagons" and someone had to get them. (Edit: it is what it is. That's what they were called. No offense meant.)

To me, it seemed like there was a war outside. You know what? There was.

Mom and Dad kept me close.

 

[razztazz]

I was in 5th grade and oblivious to everything other than the girls at school were developing bosoms.

Why did I have to be one or the other? I was very much noticing the hulaballoo and the world going crazy, and the bosoms too. I was also in the 5th grade. Funny. I mentally assume most of the people here are "much" older than I am. But they cannot be "much" old than I am, ha ha

 

[friar1610]

I was home on leave from the Philippines. I had been telling friends about how wild and wooly things were there. There had just been a couple of political assassinations in which candidates for office were killed, presumably by factions trying to eliminate the competition. So after RFK's assassination i wasn't nearly so smug about how much more "civilized" our country was compared to others. This, of course, was long before school shootings.

 

[Marita40]

I was 12. In the Chicago area. I remember the horrors of that year well. In fact, I think they really shaped me.
I was too young to care too much about JFK and Martin Luther King wasn't on my suburb-girl radar at the time. But Bobby...

 

[travelover]

Yeah, there were 9 children, three of which were boys. One tried to drive his car on water. Guess he thought the Kennedy clan had special powers!

Kind of shabby to remember a man who was murdered by bringing up a misdeed by his brother. Don't you think?

 

[Car-Guy]

What might the world be like today if he had lived (and probably became president). Vietnam ending years sooner, no tricky Dick/Watergate (maybe), etc. ?

 

[dtbach]

Kind of shabby to remember a man who was murdered by bringing up a misdeed by his brother. Don't you think?

+1

 

[mamadogmamacat]

What might the world be like today if he had lived (and probably became president). Vietnam ending years sooner, no tricky Dick/Watergate (maybe), etc. ?

I was only 7 at the time, but a fan I guess because of how serious and committed to ideas he seemed to be (I was too as a kid, insufferably so), and his having all those kids was a plus to me then, seemed like fun to have enough to field your own football team

my politics have changed immensely since then, and from what i have read recently, the smoke filled room politics of the time had the nomination all locked up for Humphrey, regardless of all the publicity generated by Kennedy and the other antiwar candidate

 

[Gumby]

I was 9 years old, but I really don't remember it. We lived on the Navy base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and my dad was in Vietnam for the third time. So we knew and cared a lot about the war, but not so much about all the goings on back on the Mainland.

 

[googily]

CNN's four part documentary on 1968 was very well done. It was done by Tom Hanks's crew, such has done a lot of look-back docs for CNN. I recommend trying to catch a repeat viewing or look for it on demand.