The Room Where Bobby Kennedy Died

The memory is almost turned to dream now. I was in high school, but I had a sometime job as an assistant to Donn Reed, a reporter for KMPC radio in LA. It was 1968, and the California primary was nearly over. Donn called that afternoon and asked if I would come along with him to cover the speeches. The First one we went to was Sen. McCarthy, because he was losing and would likely speak first. I was cool with my press badge and made sure that the girls who passed by got a good look at it. The hoopla went on for quite a while, and eventually the girls stopped looking at my press badge, so I was happy when Donn told me that we should head over to the Ambassador Hotel to see if we could get there in time for Bobby Kennedy's victory speech.

We got to the Ambassador Hotel just as Kennedy was about to come on stage. The place was packed with ardent Democrats, trying to wriggle their way around each other in the press. We were too late to get Donn’s microphone up to the podium, so he directed me to take the tape recorder and stand in the middle of a crowd of reporters. I was a big guy and could push my way through the crowd to get up close. They announced Bobby, and the crowd jumped and hollered and whistled, while a pretty brunette near me hopped up and down and wept. I thought then that I should go into politics. The crowd pressed me all around, and in spite of my size I couldn’t move in any direction. Kennedy was unstoppable that year and his momentum was high. The reporters all around me were trying to keep their cool, and their objectivity, but that was hard to do. Bobby waved to everyone, congratulated Senator McCarthy for a great campaign, joked with everyone for a few moments, and then left the podium and started for the kitchen. The crowd of reporters followed after, still shouting questions, and since I was in the middle of the pack, I went along with them whether I wanted to or not.

At this point my memories collide with my dreams, and I can no longer be certain of what I saw that night. The crowd was pushing forward, through the door that led to a narrow hallway on the way to the kitchen pantry. Supposedly, KTLA television had a camera in there, but I didn't see it. All I saw were human heads in front of me and human heads behind me, crushed together in that hallway, inching forward. Suddenly I heard a pop, louder than a champagne cork but not as loud as a rifle. Pop Pop Pop. Suddenly the crowd was swaying back and forth, pressing me like laundry until it was hard to breathe. A short woman standing next to me reached up to me and said "help me kid, I'm going down." So I put my arm around her and pulled her up so that she was hanging around my shoulders. Then I thought I saw the crowd part for just a second and I could see the top of Rosie Grier's head. He was sitting on somebody and he was crying. I heard somebody shout that they'd been hit, and suddenly there was a hand on the collar of my jacket, pulling me out of the kitchen. By that time some security guards were trying to move all the reporters out of there so that they could capture Sirhan Sirhan and attend to Bobby.

Then I was standing in the ballroom where Kennedy gave his last speech and Don ran up to me and said "what happened? What happened?" I told him that Kennedy had been shot, or at least that's what I thought happened, and Don asked for the tape recorder. Then I noticed that I was still holding onto the woman. She was about 40 in a white suit and she was very short but not particularly petite. To this day I don't know who she was. When I set her down, she said "thanks kid, you saved my life." And then she ran off to file her story. The rest of that evening I sat on one of the folding chairs staring blankly into space watching people run back and forth. Some were weeping; others were angry; others still were trying to hold it together and at least look professional. I was trying to keep from crying, but I’m not sure if I succeeded. I didn't care about my press badge and I didn't care about looking cool, because I knew at that point that America was losing its mind.