An RFK Memory

Just finished reading Larry Tye's new bio of Robert F. Kennedy. Really enjoyed it and it brought back a particular memory, as you'll read below.

I was a Specialist 4th Class in the U.S. Army and trying to get through Jump School at Fort Benning, Georgia.

It was the hot, humid late Spring of 1968, and the red clay of that deep southern state stuck to your boots like glue and, the sweat coursed down your back like a river bound by the banks of your spine.

They would give us a break every hour and we'd roll on the ground on concrete slabs through pipe showers in our fatigues, getting thoroughly soaked only to feel the fabric dry up in minutes in the hot Georgia sun. "Take two salt tablets and drive on!" was the shouted advice that followed.

We all expected to be assigned to airborne infantry units in Vietnam when our three weeks of training were completed.

About halfway through the course, I had problems receiving my pay. I tried to get it fixed but the Army bureaucracy was bullet-proof. I had expenses to cover but no income. I couldn't even pick up my laundry. Frustration mounted. I remember complaining to one of our NCO's at a formation, who suggested that I not "show my ass in public."

Good point...but I was pretty pissed off.

And here is the point of this little parable: I remember standing there in that sunbaked formation and thinking: "Senator Kennedy can help me."

I had never thought that way about a political figure in my life. And I haven't since.

But at that moment, I saw myself as one of the forgotten ones, serving the big green machine and likely headed for the shredder. The only person I could think of that might be capable of helping - or even caring - was my home state Senator, RFK. He seemed to me at the time a true champion of the underdog. And I was feeling every inch the dog.

I cannot tell you how vividly that memory returned as I read Larry Tye's book.

My epiphany took place only days before we completed Jump School and were assigned to our units. I was sent - not to Vietnam - but to the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. (I was stupid enough to be disappointed. But our Operations Sergeant, Joe Carroll, told me: "Don't worry. You'll be in 'Nam before the summer's over.")

It was only a few days later when we were leaving the holding company at Bragg to be distributed to our units, that we heard that Senator Kennedy had been shot. "Not again" was the response of more than one trooper to the news. It had only been three and a half years since JFK's assassination. The Senator would linger for 26 hours but finally passed away on June 6th.

The closeness of those two moments - my epiphany and his assassination - is the reason the memory has remained so green.

Bobby Kennedy has fascinated me ever since because of the apparent transformation of his mentality and spirit between 1961 and 1968. He had broken onto the scene as an aggressive young counsel for the notorious Senator Joe McCarthy in the 1950's and was considered brash, ruthless, and rude.

But he proved capable of change and growth. And the trauma of his brother's murder was the tempering fire that forged the Bobby of 1968.

Today, at 77, I no longer believe that a single politician can make a difference.

Of course, it should be theoretically possible, but not in the American political system as it has evolved.

And I see no new Robert Kennedys on the horizon to challenge that system and its obvious shortcomings.