“It’s — it’s murder in there”
While searching for something else I stumbled on this transcript of a 1968 Letter from America by Alistair Cooke. He was there when Robert F. Kennedy was shot, and his first person account, written awfully close to the shock of the moment, is intense:
“There was a head on the floor, streaming blood and somebody put a Kennedy boater under it and the blood trickled down like chocolate sauce on an ice cake. There were flash lights by now and the button eyes of Ethel Kennedy turned to cinders. She was slapping a young man and he was saying ‘Listen lady, I’m hurt too’ — and down on the greasy floor was a huddle of clothes and staring out of it the face of Bobby Kennedy, like the stone face of a child, lying on a cathedral tomb.”
I was always such a big fan of George Plimpton. I always admired his zest for life with no regard for worry, as I sat reading his books with all of my neuroses. When he died, I read a eulogy for him. I never knew this, but he was the man who wrestled Sirhan Sirhan to the floor after Kennedy was shot.
I didn’t know that, either.
When I was a child my mom had a Bobby Kennedy picture hanging on the upstairs wall, for many years. I have a hard time imagining believing in any politician enough these days to want to put his (or her) picture on the wall.
On a dartboard, however… 😉