Before the shots rang out…
12:15 a.m. (PDT); June 5, 1968: I was waiting in a holding barracks for the order to embark. Several hours earlier as I sat on a bunk bed I began to write a letter to Carole. I wrote to her regarding what I was seeing on the faces of many of my cohorts also waiting for the order – fear, trepidation, concern – and I guess that some didn’t even care.
Shortly after midnight, the word came on the radio that Robert F. Kennedy had been shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after a campaign speech. It shook me hard that night for several reasons. Bobby Kennedy had announced his running for the Office of the Presidency on April 1 of that year. Three days later, April 4 – Martin Luther King was assassinated. This was a tough way for a 20 year old to enter a war.
Minutes after the announcement of Kennedy’s shooting, we were ordered to embark our plane, but I wondered – was I dreaming what I had heard? No one else boarding the plane seemed to have heard a thing about the shooting in the kitchen at the Ambassador. You see – we were on a mission – a mission that no one knew whether one would return or not. Destination: the Republic of South Viet Nam.
While in the air, I asked the flight attendant (we called them ‘stewardesses‘ back then) if she could ask the pilot if there was any word about Kennedy and his condition. She returned moments later in tears as she told me that Bobby had died. I would land in Cam Ranh Bay later that same day – on the 24th anniversary of D-Day. ~ Jeffrey Bennett, Editor
Busboy who cradled dying Robert F. Kennedy reveals the senator’s last words, and admits he is still shaken by the 1968 shooting
The busboy who held Robert F. Kennedy after the senator was shot at the Ambassador Hotel in California has been speaking about the senator’s final moments in 1968.
Juan Romero still struggles with everything that happened 50 years ago.
He had hoped to shake hands with RFK but ended up cradling the mortally-injured politician’s head on the floor of the hotel’s kitchen.
‘I remember extending my hand as far as I could, and then I remember him shaking my hand,’ Romero said on NPR’s Morning Edition. ‘And as he let go, somebody shot him.’
In an instant, he had Kennedy in his arms as both of them fell to the floor.
Photojournalists managed to captured the horrific moment as Kennedy lay dying while 17-year-old Romero searched for help and tried to make the senator more comfortable.
‘I kneeled down to him and I could see his lips moving, so I put my ear next to his lips and I heard him say, ‘Is everybody OK?’ I said, ‘Yes, everybody’s OK,’ Romero said. ‘I put my hand between the cold concrete and his head just to make him comfortable.’
‘I could feel a steady stream of blood coming through my fingers,’ he continued. ‘I remember I had a rosary in my shirt pocket and I took it out, thinking that he would need it a lot more than me.’
He added, ‘I wrapped it around his right hand and then they wheeled him away.’
After the event Romero said letters began to flood into the Ambassador Hotel, many of them addressed to ‘the busboy’ and some of them angry that he hadn’t been able to prevent the assassination.
‘One of them event went as far as to say that, ‘If he hadn’t stopped to shake your hand, the senator would have been alive,’ so I should be ashamed of myself for being so selfish,’ he said.
Romero said that he can’t help but get emotional when he thinks of the late senator, adding he paid he respects to Kennedy in 2010 when he visited his grave at the Arlington National Cemetery.
‘I felt like I needed to ask Kennedy to forgive me for not being able to stop those bullets from harming him,’ Romero said.
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Written by various reporters for The Daily Mail ~ June 2, 2018.
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