June 5, 2008
The 40th anniversary of Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination may be a fitting time to recall how young Americans in an earlier generation ended up alienated from their parents, much as this year’s battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton has created its own generational divide.
Before June 5, 1968, it seemed possible that RFK’s anti-war candidacy might overcome the Democratic establishment’s choice of Vice President Hubert Humphrey, thus opening a path for ending the Vietnam War and rekindling the embers of American idealism.
1 comment:
It was Bobby Kennedy that got me into following politics at the young age of 14.
His passion, his desire to end the Vietnam War and all he did to help the needy, made me want him to be the next President.
Then, that fateful day came and it all that came to a brutal end. It happened so late at night in California, that the Connecticut newspapers did not have it in the front section, and I had to hear about it from Walter Cronkite.
The eulogy was so moving that Ted Kennedy gave, to the point that I can vividly remember the end of it and the quivering voice of Ted.
"My brother need not be idolized, or enlarged what he was in life. Be remembered simply as a good and 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 for us, and what he wished for others, may some day come to pass for all the world.
As he said in many parts of this nation, to those he touched, and to those 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."
Rest in peace, John and Bobby. Rest in peace.
Post a Comment