By Phil McAuliffe
”Robert F. Kennedy has been shot — 40 years ago tonight!”
Those words coming from my car radio two weeks ago instantly took me back to my childhood and a personal memory of this tumultuous event I thought worth sharing. Whenever someone brings up 1968, those same shadowy TV images always come to mind. The protests, the riots, the war in Vietnam, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and RFK.
My mother always told me she would rather see me go to Canada than fight in that “God damn war.” This would usually spark a screaming match between her and my stepfather.
”When you’re old enough for the draft, you sign up,” he would preach. “Do your duty.”
I was only 12 years old and I did not want to go to war. So when I heard the things RFK was saying during his short presidential campaign, I felt something that a lot of people probably felt, people older and more sophisticated than I — hope.
My parents divorced when I was 4 years old, so I grew up spending weekdays with my mother in Pennsylvania and then, like clockwork, my father would pick me up to spend weekends with him in Hamilton.
Friday, June 7, 1968, was no different except for the fact the I, along with entire country, was immersed in the horror of another assassination. It was also my 12th birthday. As I rode in the car, my father was stoically silent. Possibly a case of Irish fatalism. Not a single word about RFK, who was shot after winning the California primary on Tuesday. I didn’t even know how he felt about the man.
As soon as we got to his house, on went the TV. They had just brought his coffin to St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City for public viewing. I was sitting on the floor in my father’s living room, he was on the couch behind me, both of us glued to those shadowy images, humanity in the thousands for blocks. It was about 8 o’clock when the silence was broken.
”Let’s go to New York” he suddenly blurted out.
I couldn’t believe what I heard.
”Really?” I said.
”Yeah, let’s go now.”
Two hours later we were standing on a humid New York street, part of a line as far you see, blocks away from St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
Police and the crowd, alike, which now probably numbered in the hundreds of thousands, were somber and mostly quiet. Conversation could be heard here and there but at hushed tones. I remember thinking if I dared to speak out it might wake somebody up.
Hours later, I could finally see we were getting close. Passing rows of trailers from the networks, stepping over bundles of thick black television cable and walking under towers of scaffolding on each street corner that supported cameramen, themselves illuminated by the bluish glow from the monitor in their cameras.
Eventually we made our way to the front steps of St Patrick’s Cathedral. I saw my father craning his neck trying to see something. The only thing I could see was ornate architecture, marble columns and TV lights. As we passed the threshold of the cathedral, things seemed to move a lot faster. It was probably around 3:30 in the morning when I saw my first view of the flag-draped coffin in the aisle near the front of the church. As we moved forward from the back of the building I could see six candles on stands surrounding the coffin. They rose several feet above the people filing past. The pews on both sides were almost full to capacity with mourners who were praying.
Except for the occasional scuff of someone’s shoe on the marble floor or a cough, the silence persisted. The crowd, once thousands strong, was now reduced to a single-file line. It’s been about six hours.
The coffin was now to my right, as we slowly walked by, my father standing next to me. In what seemed like slow motion, I reached out and put my hand on top of it, which was at eye level to me. I could feel the seams sewn into the material of the American flag covering the casket. The moment was surreal, even to a 12-year-old. Less than 1 foot away this icon of our time was really dead. For the rest of my life whenever I hear the name of RFK, I am always taken back to this moment.
We got back home around sunrise and after a few hours of sleep my father and I found ourselves standing next to a railroad track just a few miles from his house. Again we were part of a large crowd that had gathered to see the train carrying Robert F. Kennedy to Washington for burial.
I didn’t realize at the time how much of a martyr for our country he would become.
But I’ll never forget the faces of the people in the pews, those who waited in line with us and the crowds along the railroad track. Like the man in the coffin, their hopes had also died.
Phil McAuliffe is a staff photographer for Packet Publications. He can be reached at [email protected].