Sen. Robert F. Kennedy on June 5, 1968.On a hot June night 58 years ago, I stood with a crowd of supporters in the Embassy Ballroom of Los Angeles’s Ambassador Hotel cheering on Robert F. Kennedy as he basked in the California primary victory and shouted – “On to Chicago!” As a volunteer with the advance staff, I and many of us were looking to the next primary in New York and then on to Chicago for the Democratic Convention.
Kennedy had entered the race on March 16 and President Lyndon Johnson was out of the running two weeks later. So began the 82-day final campaign of RFK. The tragedy that night ended two-months of intense effort and hope that the Vietnam War could end quickly and America could be put on a new path of reconciliation. It also put my involvement in politics on hold.
About a month before that night, I walked in the door of the mostly empty Kennedy office on Wilshire Blvd. I had been working for a local LA autobody shop and drove an old Buick. Jerry Bruno, the top advance man for the campaign, was elated. He asked if I had a car, handed me a Joseph P. Kennedy credit card, and said go to the airport and pick up a filmed campaign biography produced by Charles Guggenheim. I didn’t own a credit card and hadn’t been to the LA airport but I was off. It took more than an hour to find the documentary and return. Bruno no doubt thought he’d seen the last of me.
The advance staff mostly traveled ahead of the candidate, who was often motorcading through streets on the way to outside photo ops and speeches. Our job was to hold the crowd for the always-late Kennedy. We mounted a loudspeaker on the Buick and announced he was near and handed out posters in busy locations.
Kennedy campaigns in the Watts section of Los Angeles in 1968.
David Hume Kennerly/Getty ImagesBruno arranged for Kennedy to meet us Monday before what was to be the last election-day effort. At that moment he looked confident and we all thought he would win. Crowds were bigger and more enthusiastic. We worked in Los Angeles on Monday and Tuesday and then we headed to the hotel for the anticipated victory party.
I heard the shots and screams walking down the steps to the main ballroom – I quickly reversed course and joined a group to clear a space for people, some wounded, to exit the kitchen. Later, I stayed in the Kennedy bungalow with staff and others until it was clear the night watch was over.
Johnson’s withdrawal made establishment politics suddenly seem relevant. Senator Eugene McCarthy was an alternative but not a viable choice in my view. I was too pragmatic and wanted someone who could win both the nomination and the election. McCarthy had the educated class. But Kennedy could get most college students and, more importantly, the working class and ethnic voters with the Martin Luther King constituency – a rare talent.
The final shout of the year from Chicago in August was the “whole world’s watching.”
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