Columnist Maureen Dowd’s sister, Peggy, was at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles the night Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, on June 5, 1968. Pictured is Bobby Kennedy at the burial of President John F. Kennedy at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia on Nov. 25, 1963.
By MAUREEN DOWD
I always watch Donald Trump rallies if I can. I was watching the one Saturday night in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Fox News, waiting for the former president to come on. But after an hour of waiting, I had to leave to meet my sister, Peggy, for dinner.
As soon as we sat down, we heard the shocking news about the assassination attempt on Trump, and we ran out of the restaurant and went back to see that horrific, bloody 2 minutes and 30 seconds being replayed over and over on every cable channel.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
My sister heard that sound before, on June 5, 1968, but it was louder, because she heard it inside a ballroom. She was at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles the night Bobby Kennedy was assassinated.
She had just moved from Washington to California that May for a job at the American Hospital Supply Corp. A woman she worked with had befriended her because Peggy knew no one in Los Angeles. The woman’s husband was an electrician at the Ambassador Hotel.
He had called his wife to say, “Bobby Kennedy is going to make a speech at the hotel tonight. A lot of people are coming to see him. Why don’t you both drive down here, and we can have a drink after?”
Kennedy had challenged President Lyndon Johnson, running on a platform critical of the Vietnam War. Then in March, Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection. Kennedy was left competing against Gene McCarthy and Hubert Humphrey. When Kennedy went to the Ambassador that night, he was on a high. A few hours before, he won the California and South Dakota primaries.
Peggy loved John F. Kennedy — she was in the crowd at his inaugural — and was devastated when he was assassinated in 1963. She was excited as she squeezed into the back of the ballroom to hear her hero’s brother Bobby Kennedy, who wrapped up his speech at about midnight, happily saying, “So my thanks to all of you, and on to Chicago, and let’s win there.”
A few minutes later, she heard the same firecracker noise: Pop. Pop. Pop.
“After we heard the gunshots, there was total chaos, people screaming and crying,” Peggy recalled. The crowd pushed toward the kitchen hallway, where Kennedy had been shot by Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian.
Kennedy was leaving through the kitchen; he was felled next to a tray stacker and an ice machine.
“People were screaming, ‘He’s dead, he’s dead, just like his brother!’” Peggy said. “We saw them take the body away. I was thinking, ‘How could this happen to one family, the same thing?’ It was surreal.”
Kennedy died at Good Samaritan Hospital 25 hours later.
His only security had consisted of a former FBI agent, William Barry, and two unofficial bodyguards, his friends Rosey Grier, a retired football player, and Rafer Johnson, an Olympic decathlon gold medalist.
Grier and another friend of Kennedy’s, writer George Plimpton, were the ones who tried to wrestle the gun from Sirhan as he kept shooting and wounding people. Ethel Kennedy, visibly pregnant, was leaning over her husband, asking bystanders to give him air.
This was the tragic event that caused the Secret Service to provide protection for presidential candidates. Agents of the service were there Saturday evening surrounding Trump after a sniper climbed a roof and shot a rifle at him Saturday evening.
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