My Blog
June 5, 1968 -June 5, 2008
Fri, June 6, 2008 - 9:58 AM
Yes, that date is etched in my memory as the other assassinations of the '60s. Earlier on Tuesday on my way home from teaching I had voted for him in the California Primary. I was at home mesmerized in front of my little GE color TV watching the vote counts and the celebrations from around the state, staying up late. It was a little after midnight Wednesday when there was a sudden cut in the regular network feed with that awkwardness when the unexpected happens. It switched to the Ambassador Hotel in L.A. where he had just been shot, with all the noise and confusion imaginable. I stayed up at least another hour, numbed to the core.
My friend Linda remembers:
Amazing how it all comes back to me...40 years ago today, Paul and I were on the Oklahoma Turnpike on our way to California; the news came on that Robert Kennedy had been shot in Los Angeles...then back to music and there was Scott McKenzie singing, "If you're going to San Francisco Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair...and The Mamas and the Papas' California Dreamin...
June 8th, my 40th anniversary landing on the shores of The Bay...and not a regret except I wish I could do it over a million times; an unforgettable 40 years...
Fri, June 6, 2008 - 9:58 AM -
permalink -
4 Comments
4 Comments |
add a comment |
|
Sat, June 7, 2008 - 7:57 PM
Vanity Fair article and new book
For those interested I recently read an article in Vanity Fair excerpted from a new book about RFKs 1968 campaign. (I'm not sure which month of VF, as I've loaned it to a friend, but it's the same issue that has the controversial "topless" picture of Miley Cyrus by Annie Liebowitz, and RFK is on the cover.) The article was not terrific, but will be informative to those not all that familiar with the cascade of events running from Eugene McCarthy's entrance into the 1968 Presidential primary in opposition to the Vietnam war to Robert Kennedy's death in June. According to VF there's also a photo book on the subject about coming out, featuring the image you've posted here.
I was 5 years old when Robert Kennedy, and for that matter Martin Luther King, were assassinated. I have no memory of either of these events. But I *do* clearly remember Hubert Humphrey running against Richard Nixon later in the same year, so some sort of nascent political/news/media consciousness must have dawned in me in that very year. |
|
Tue, June 24, 2008 - 11:05 PM
my birthday....
yeah, my 11th birthday was June 5th 1968. 1969 was better. I remember the day, all of it.
|
|
Wed, August 27, 2008 - 5:01 PM
I was 10-1/2
..and I recall the confusion and sadness, the T.V. news...much like when I was 5, when John Kennedy was killed...something bigger than my own limited understanding was lost on those days... the electric charge in the air fizzled...and there was silence, and a heaviness...and his children, close to my age, I tried to imagine what it felt like to be them.
I love the photo...a more innocent time, piling into a convertible, ready to take on the world, committed to changing our little piece of it. My uncle had a car like that. |
|
Thu, February 12, 2009 - 3:00 AM
I was on the 9:30 PM to 5:30 AM shift at my rent-a-cop job at Garrison Forest School for girls., so I didn't have a TV, but the radio broke into their regular programming with a special news bulletin. It triggered memories from November 1963, and my first thought was, "Well, the mob finally found another fall guy to finish the job." I was deeply saddened, but having been in Washington at the Navy School of Music when President Kennedy was hot, and having been recently called to Active Duty in Reserves when they decided to burn Baltimore, after Dr. King's murder, I was somewhat numbed and didn't get nearly as upset as many people did.
It wasn't until several days later that it came out Sirhan was just a nut, who unwittingly aided in the mob's plan to destroy the Kennedy powers. |
