You see those Facebook questions once in a while: "What was the first major news story you remember?"
I recall space launches, big snow storms, the riots after the King assassination, and the assassination of Robert Kennedy. He was shot 55 years ago today, after winning the California primary. Kennedy died the next morning.
The "CBS Morning News" was always on in my house as I readied for elementary school. Partly because it was a good program, because you actually received some news. The other part was because it came on before one of my favorites, "Captain Kangaroo."
When you are a kid, you often see things through the eyes of your parents, and I vividly remember how upset my mother and father were. President John Kennedy was publicly murdered five years prior, and his brother met the same fate. Like much of America, the family was caught up in Camelot, and its tragic end.
RFK had some strikes on his record, as history shows, when he was attorney general. But, I will give him credit for giving a lot of people "hope," and that can be exceptionally elusive. Few politicians inspired on the RFK level. There was something about him that connected with people. Being very young at the time, I was unable to recognize it. There are times as an adult when I find the reasons behind his popularity to be difficult to grasp.
America was going through a tough time before Kennedy's murder and the scene in a Los Angeles hotel made it worse-- a lot worse. You wonder how things would have been different, especially Vietnam, had RFK lived-- and won.
We were just dealing with the shooting of Dr. Martin Luther King, and a horrible summer was about to unfold.
