NY Mag: Pete Hamill: June 5, 1968: The Last Hours of RFK

[babylonsister]

June 5, 1968: The Last Hours of RFK
A remembrance of that awful night—and a brief, powerful friendship.


* By Pete Hamill
* Published May 18, 2008


The Final Triumph
Pierre Salinger watching Robert Kennedy declare victory in the California primary on TV.

Photographs from RFK: A Photographer’s Journal by Harry Benson, published by powerHouse Books. Copyright © 2008 by Harry Benson.


Around 8:30 p.m., we were in Suite 516 of the Ambassador Hotel, whose windows looked down upon Wilshire Boulevard. In memory, there were about 30 men and women in the long windowed suite, talking in knots, most leaning forward, mouths to ears, like conspirators. They were wealthy California Democrats, big-time lawyers, movie executives (but no stars), political professionals, journalists, including my friends Jack Newfield, Budd Schulberg, Jimmy Breslin, and my younger brother Brian. It was June 4, 1968. There were no laptops, or cell phones, or BlackBerrys, or cable-television news either. So telephones rang insistently in the suite, were picked up, and names were called in stage whispers. Or the door would open, someone in shirtsleeves would arrive, whisper the latest news, then turn abruptly and leave. A few people mixed drinks at the bar, clunking ice, nibbling from plates of rolled-up room-service ham and wedges of Cheddar and Swiss cheese. There was no music. This was not, after all, a party. That would be later, after the results were in, at a place called The Factory. This was politics. This was, in fact, the last stop for the campaign of Robert F. Kennedy in California. Downstairs, the ballroom was full, waiting noisily for news of a victory and a chance to roar for their candidate.

While we waited in 516 for the polls to close and the returns to come in, I talked for a while with the movie director John Frankenheimer. The advertising agency Papert, Koenig, Lois, Inc., had hired him in March to work with the Kennedy campaign on shooting promotional material, including some commercials. He and Kennedy had become friends, and the candidate had spent the night before in Frankenheimer’s home in Malibu. On this Tuesday, Frankenheimer had driven Kennedy to the Ambassador, where they arrived around 7:30 p.m. Like me, Frankenheimer was a native New Yorker, and I noticed that he referred to Kennedy as Bob, as I did. Where we came from, people named “Bobby” were either 9 years old or professional ballplayers. We talked a bit about the town that spawned us, and then about Frankenheimer’s great paranoid masterwork from 1962, The Manchurian Candidate, which starred Frank Sinatra and Laurence Harvey. It had been withdrawn from public viewing after the killing of Jack Kennedy in 1963 (it would finally be rereleased in 1988). The story, based on a novel by Richard Condon, was about programming a man to assassinate a presidential candidate.

“Do you think it could happen in what is laughingly called ‘real life’?” I asked him.

Frankenheimer smiled in a nervous way, and glanced at the door of the suite.

“Yeah.”

Across the hall, in Room 511, Robert Kennedy was waiting, too. This was the night of the California primary. A week before, Kennedy had lost the Oregon primary to McCarthy, his first loss in the near-frantic campaign that had started on March 16. If he lost tonight, if California went to McCarthy, it would be impossible to get the nomination at the convention in Chicago in August. His wife, Ethel; a few of his children; close family friends; some of the top professionals in the campaign: All went in and out of 511, some to deliver bulletins, others to provide laughter or diversion. Even Freckles, the homely springer spaniel who had become a star at Kennedy’s side during the campaign, had made it into 511. There, Kennedy sat in shirtsleeves, the cuffs turned up, his tie loose, grinning with a kind of dark Irish fatalism in his eyes.

I didn’t meet Kennedy until Saint Patrick’s Day, 1966. I had been covering the war in Vietnam for the New York Post, and Kennedy had sent me a letter admiring my columns and inviting me to call him. We agreed to meet at a Saint Patrick’s Day breakfast at Charley O’s, a restaurant near Rockefeller Center. The place was full of the usual green ties and green cardboard derbies and people getting ready to march. I saw Kennedy across the room, talking to various people. He was better-looking than he was in most photographs, the hair fashionably long, sometimes falling across his brow to be brushed back with a quick flick. He seemed taller than he actually was (five-foot-nine) and moved athletically, like a good middleweight. He was quick to smile a rueful smile, usually in a self-deprecating manner. But in his eyes, as I came closer to introduce myself, I could see an almost permanent sadness. By all accounts, he’d been wrecked by his brother’s death.

more...

http://nymag.com/news/politics/47041/

[CherokeeDem]

1. Thank you for posting this..

It is an extraordinary article about an amazing man. I was 16 that night...I had stayed up to watch the returns from CA. I saw him give the victory sign and turn toward the curtains. I went to bed. The next morning, my mother made my Dad tell me, she couldn't. I remember sobbing and my Dad holding me; he stayed home that day to keep my Mom and me company because we were devastated. Again, the light the went out. Maybe that's why Obama is so important to so many of us. Clinton was like a spotlight, bright and brash but Obama is more like soft candle glow, comforting and gentle yet full of strength to light our way. The light of hope is back.

I miss you RFK.

Sorry...reminishing about Robert makes me all gooey and idealistic.

[babylonsister]

3. You're sweet, and you're welcome.

I do like your description of Obama; very fitting, and I feel the same way.

[JPZenger]

5. My earliest memory - being woken up for RFK's death

I was a big fan of RFK as a small child. One of the earliest memories is my father waking me up to watch the TV after he was shot. My dad thought it was a historical event that I should see.

Here's video of RFK's famous speech in an African American neighborhood just after he heard that MLK had been killed. The crowd had not yet heard the news. RFK was encouraged to cancel the appearance because of fears of riots. There were no riots in Indianapolis, where RFK spoke.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCg05pTYt0A&feature=related

[gateley]

7. Thanks for this --

[Baby Snooks]

11. The end of Camelot

I have often thought about that night at the Ambassador as representing the end of Camelot. The brother carrying on the legacy. Shot down as well. The dream became a nightmare.

Two malcontents. Or two Manchurian candidates. We will never really know for sure. Even if as rumored Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis revealed the truth with the condition that it not be made public until her grandchildren had died. Even then, someone will counter it.

The sad legacy of it all is that all these years later we are an even more violent society. And once again we wonder. And worry. About someone who has restored the dream.

[gateley]

2. Wow. What an incredible article. Thank you for posting this. nt

[PatSeg]

4. Thanks for the article

It was fascinating and very touching as well.

[JPZenger]

6. RFK's Last Words: "Is Everybody OK?"

http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,988470,00.html

After RFK was shot in the hotel kitchen, a Mexican-American busboy held him and handed him his rosary. That is a famous photo. The link is to an interview with that man. He says RFK's last words were "Is everybody OK?" Many shots had been fired and other people had been wounded. Bobby was severely wounded and lying on the floor, but he still was mainly concerned about others.

That man had met RFK earlier. He had gone up to Bobby's room to pick up dirty dishes. He remembers how RFK shook his hand warmly and treated him like a man instead of a peasant.

[Muttocracy]

12. wow

:cry:

[99th_Monkey]

8. Thanks for sharing this. I would have been at the Ambassador that night ...

...except my wife (at the time) and I had caught a plane back to Oregon that night, where we lived and had worked for Bobby's campaign
and followed him to California as well. We watched his last "on to Chicago" speech at Chuck Paulson's house (he was Bobby's Oregon
campaign chairman); and once we realized what had happened I went into an "altered state" literally, for days. I don't know what happened
for the the next few days, but when I came out of it, back to being able to talk and function "normally" I dedicated my life to helping
realize his dream of a better and more just & equitable world, by various means and methods, including community-based development work.

I love you Bobby. Thanks for being such an inspiration to so many.

[WheelWalker]

9. I was eighteen and a half years old....seems like a lifetime ago.

[The Traveler]

10. After 40 years, this still hurts

Wondering how things might have been different just makes it worse, but those kinds of thoughts are kind of inevitable.