RFK: Share your thoughts and memories

I was 12 when it happened. I don't exactly remember the actual incident, but I must have known about it when I went to sleep that night, because my clearest memory is that of waking up at about 6am the next morning and walking into my parents' bedroom to see my mom still sitting up in bed watching news reports about it. I could tell immediately she had been up all night, which is something my mother never did. I remember asking her sort of a vague "Well??," and she just shook her head and said, "He died." Although I wasn't as involved in the whole presidential election process at the time as I am now (in two days, I will be attending our State Democratic Convention as a state delegate), I still knew this was an important event.

Now currently living in Sydney for last 20 years, I very well remember the fateful day 40 years ago while living in a small town in Jabalpur in India. I came home after writing my last engineering exam and hoped to have a wonderful summer vacation now that the exam worries were over. I switched on the radio and tuned in to BBC to hear some sports news and what I heard in turn was one of the most shocking news of my adult life. Bobby to most Indians was the best thing that happened to US after JFK who was so very much admired and loved in India. The news sent shivers down my spine and till this day I can not forget those horrendous moments.

May we all pay our best respects to Bobby & his ideals by putting in practice what he symbolised.

Vijay Belapurkar
Sydney - Australia

I was privileged to meet RFK (and his rival, Vice-President Humphrey) a few weeks before he was assassinated.

It was quite a shock to wake up the morning after and be told that he had been killed.

When this sad incident took place I was living in Glennallen Alaska... i was a junior in high school and had the distinct honor of participating in the first Alaskan Boy's State.. We were all very proud.. Things were never the same after that... What a sad day..

When this sad incident took place I was living in Glennallen Alaska... i was a junior in high school and had the distinct honor of participating in the first Alaskan Boy's State.. We were all very proud.. Things were never the same after that... What a sad day..

I was 10 years old and will never forget waking up one morning, turning on the TV set, and seeing what had happened. The most unforgettable part is running upstairs and telling my parents. The looks on their faces of horror and disbelief. It had happened again. I will never forget it.

I was 10, in bed that night and listening to RFK's "on to Chicago" speech on my clock radio. I had shaken RFK's hand in 1964 when he was then campaigning for Senator and followed him, his career and his changes during that time. I was more aware of the times as a 10 year old, since I read the newspaper each day and magazines all the time. I stayed up all night listening to the reports and also had my transistor radio the next day. I was convinced back then and still am today that RFK's assassination was one of the most pivotal events of the 20th century and the course of history changed, for the worse, because of it.

I was only 8 years old, but I remember vividly because I was very concerned that my mother was crying - almost hysterically - she had been out running errands and came home with the newspaper and threw it down on the table and screamed "they shot Bobby - just like his brother!".

My grandparents were staying with us and I went into their room to wake my grandfather. He asked me what was wrong and I said "Mom's crying - someone named Bobby has been shot like his brother"...My grandfather got out of bed and he started crying...now I was really scared, because I didn't know, until that moment, that Grandpas could cry.

I watched all the tv coverage the next few days, trying to understand. I remember hundreds of candles outside of a church, and I remember his children on the train. It was the second time that year that I had been affected by the death of someone I didn't know. When Dr. King was killed I was the one who told my mother - she cried then, too. I thought my world was going crazy that year. When I was older I realized that I was right.

I was born in '72 so i wasn't privy to the event. What i offer i can only offer in hindsight. JFK's assassination was a sad time for our nation, but Bobby's death was an absolute tragedy. He was a good man and in my belief would have been one of the best presidents our nation had seen. His determination to do the right thing was legendary, and combined with a will to see it through. He was a visionary and an optimist. Some may even say an idealist, and that is a good thing. We are a country in need of idealism. We was the best of us, and still "everyman". He was what we have been so desperately lacking in our leadership in the last decade. A good man.

There have been many comparison's over the better part of the last year between JFK and Obama. Many people obviously yearn for a return to "camelot". But Obama doesn't remind me of JFK, he reminds me of Bobby, or rather, of everything i've heard and read of Bobby. And that's what i think, Obama is my generation's RFK. He gives hope. He inspires. He believes in the good of the people, and not just the good of the wealthy. He is here to show us how good we can be. He is the better man. He's our Bobby. And it's our time to shine.

I was watching on television and felt like the world was coming to and end that our country was no longer safe and able to protect us from mad men.

I know Robert would roll in his grave if he knew how the "War Pigs" murdered John F. Kennedy Jr. for his speeches on how the Zionist government have destroyed the Constitution. John would have been elected president had he survived. America needs him. We are lost if the "Son of Cane" is elected.

I was 8 when Bobby was assassinated. I remember it because at an early age I was always conscious of Politics. I guess this was because the Vietnam War was the first TV war, and the press was focusing not only on the war, but also on the protestors, and it certainly made an indelible impression in my mind.

I remember seeing the story on the front page of Newsday the next day. Coming shortly after the assassination of MLK, and being another Kennedy, I thought the nation was coming apart at the seams and that there would be a revolution.

A lot of people thought Bobby was a pipsqueak. I think he would've been a good president because he was genuinely concerned about the plight of the poor, racism and fighting crime as evidenced by his actions.

It's truly a wonder when people of such fabulous wealth earnestly consider the condition of their fellow man in altruistic fashion. There weren't many people like him then, and I think there are even less of those people now, and that's a real shame.

I remember standing with my soon to be wife by the train that took him to Washington for the service. We both felt he had changed so much in the four one half years since his brothers death in 1963.

His statments in Indiana on the death of Dr. King were coragious and hartflet. His statements on collage campuses around the country about the draft were also very appealing to us as we were both in the Army at that time.

He seemed to resinate with people in a way that no one has since. We cant help but wonder "What if?".

I can clearly remember my teacher, Ms. Jonas, crying and holding her head saying, "They killed him!!!" Needless to say I was only 12 at the time and didn't quite grasp what she was talking about. After I got home from school that afternoon, my mother, aunt and uncle were watching it on TV and my mother was horribly upset. We watched the funeral and I can remember being so sad, especially after John-John saluted his father's casket. This was definitely a very sad time for people all over the world.

I was a 14 year old 8th grader in NYC, just starting to understand the implications of the Vietnam War, poverty, the civil rights movement, and other significant issues of the time. The election of 1968 was the first one in which I was really vested, and Bobby was my guy - though I knew that Gene McCarthy was a good man, too. I went to sleep the night of the California primary, optimistic that Bobby would win and become the Democratic candidate. When my radio woke me up the next morning, I heard a strangely somber news report rather than the Top 40 songs on WABC that I expected. The report of the shooting in the LA hotel shocked me fully awake immediately.

I remember sharing the shock and sadness with my parents as we got ready that morning, and with my classmates when I got to school. As young teens, my friends and I were trying to make sense of an increasingly violent and scary world. We had already experienced JFK's assassination about 5 years earlier, and Dr. King's just 2 months before. This one was slightly different, in that some early news reports seemed to suggest a chance for recovery from the shooting - but of course that was not to be.

I recall my sadness and tears while watching the funeral service - particularly while watching Teddy eulogize his second brother to be gunned down. And I remember the grief in the faces of the thousands of people watching the slow, sad train procession afterwards.

Years later, I relocated to LA, where I still live. The Ambassador Hotel, where Bobby was shot, had closed, but still stood - albeit behind a chain link fence. More than once, I stopped my car as I drove by, and thought sadly of what might have been had Bobby not been shot there after his primary victory on that June evening.

I was on vacation in Washington D.C. on June 5th. I heard that Senator Kennedy had won the primary, but it had been a long, enjoyable day of seeing the sights, so when I got back to the hotel, just "called it a night" and made plans for what to do the next day.

When I turned the tv on the next morning, I remember the feeling of total disbelief. And sadness for our country. The challenges of the late 60's would not be met easily under the best of circumstances, and now in a short period of time we had lost two persons who inspired, encouraged us, and who had passionately committed their lives to making a difference.

Those problems did not lend themselves easily to solutions, so a "President" Robert Kennedy would have almost certainly accomplished a lot less than what our "if only he had lived" thoughts imagine.

Still, for many in my generation, Senator Kennedy's transformation from being mostly a loyal and protective brother in 1960 to a man deeply committed to bringing about positive change for groups of persons who were on the outside looking in at the majority of us enjoying the "American Dream," suggested that if an individual could change and grow, maybe a nation could also.

I don't think the essence of the hope, inspiration and challenge of Dr. King and Senator Kennedy left us, even though the events of 1968 caused us to despair for a time. I hope a new generation of young people will find their versions of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, a few special people in religion and government that can inspire and challenge them.

I was a 22-year old recent college graduate and a Kennedy volunteer in 1968. He seemed to be the last best hope for our country at that time. I was devastated when he died and have often wondered how different we would be had he lived to become president.

I was born in 1968, so I know little as far as a direct influence regarding Senator Robert Kennedy, but I do know of the residual effect of his work. In many African American homes in Maryland in the early 70's there was a decorating staple. Alongside the picture of a serene Jesus, there was a picture of JFK, MLK, and RFK, many can attest to this.

One day I asked my aunt who was very anti-establishment activist in the community, who those three men were. I recognized the pic of Jesus. She said to me, and this is unique, she said, "those men are the reason I became a democrat." I was seven; I had no clue of what she was talking about, but remembered it.

About seven years later I needed some help with a report I was doing in my government class and I went back to my aunt. I asked her what she could tell me about Robert Kennedy. She told me to sit down. She started by listing a litany of reasons why she didn't like him in the early sixties. Most of the reasons had to do with what she perceived as slowness on the part of JFK's administration to engage in the civil rights movement. Then she paused…took a deep breath and said… "I was in Indiana the night Dr. King was killed," and she added, "I became a democrat that night." She appeared to be comforted, as with a warm blanket, as she explained the speech RFK gave that night. She said that when he related his own personal pain that he felt when he lost his brother, to the very raw emotional pain that the predominantly black crowd was feeling that night, she believed for the first time that a white person in America could truly care about how blacks felt.

She then told me about the list of community rebuilding projects he initiated in the Bedford Stuyvesant community in New York and how he was unafraid to be near the people, especially poor people.

This was a core belief of hers. She vehemently rejected in later years the historians assertions that Lyndon Johnson's signing of the Voting Rights Act was the reason blacks committed overwhelmingly to the Democratic Party. She believed it had more to do with Robert Kennedy's heart to heart impromptu eulogy in 1968, than with any other event of the 60's. I think history may bear her point of view out as accurate.

i was 19 years old that summer night and when i went to bed he was still alive. i live in ny and when he ran for the us senate from ny my father was chief of the levittown fire dept and as a chief's wife my mother was invited to their estate in glen cove in 1964 to met ethel and the kids and see a short film on his campaign for senator. my mother was thrilled and spoke of that meeting for years. when bobby was shot that awful night in 1968 i could not believe this was happening in america. first his brother, then the war, then martin luther king, then bobby. what was going on?? what could i do to make a difference in this world?? i was heartsick at what was happening. i think bobby would have been elected president had he lived. i think this would be a different world today had bobby lived. i do think that obama is the right man at the right time and america needs him.

It was & is still the saddest day of my life & in the life of this country. May he rest in peace for eternity.

As Senator from New York state, RFK spoke at our high school in 1966. What a charismatic gentleman! It was truly a sad day for all of America when he was assassinated.

There is a good possibility that the riots at the DNC would never have occurred if Kennedy were alive, and there is no doubt that he would have soundly defeated Nixon for the presidency. Like his brother, RFK provided us with a refreshing sense of change from old school politics. His assassination left the Democrats with Hubert Humphrey (LBJ Jr.) as front-runner by default, a man with such little persona that he was incorrectly perceived as spineless.

It's unfortunate that we have self-proclaimed "experts" who weren't even there (see phinmar) distort history to conform to their misguided political beliefs. Even novice historians know that we became involved in Viet Nam during the Republican administration of Dwight Eisenhower.

Isn't it sad to realize that 50+ years ago an ineffective Republican administration led us into recession, while getting us involved in an unnecessary war? Sound familiar to anybody?

Yes, it was indeed a tragedy and the present democratic nomination culminating in today's last two primaries is a sheer coincidence. In the light of recent comments of Hillary Clinton, it is immensely important that extra security measures are taken to protect Obama as the final primary results are released and the remaining super-delegates make known their preferences to the public, followed in all likelihood a declaration of Obama's nomination as the democratic candidate for the November general elections.

I met Bobby Kennedy in 1966 when I was 12 and I was transformed into an ardent admirer. When he was killed in 1968, when I was 14, I thought the world had ended and in my tender teenage years, thought nothing would ever be the same. But he animated me to be politically active, to be socially conscious and to try to serve the poor. His influence on my life story is immeasurable. And I am one of millions who experienced the charism of this leader. I am hopeful that Barack Obama will have the same impact on my five sons; we have been missing this type of leadership for 40 years.