50 YEARS AGO TODAY

50 years ago today.

I was 9 1/2 years old, and had just finished up 4th grade.

Earlier in the day, I walked from the Shop to

the American Fork Public Library.

The Library was the first of 3 that I remember.

This was was next to Robinson Park on Main Street.

The library has since been torn down, and

replaced by the Senior Citizen's building.

(It's amazing that I always remembered this!)

Two months earlier, Martin Luther King was assassinated.

The country, in 1968, was out of control!

Riots everywhere, about everything . . . especially the Viet Nam War!

Senator Robert F. Kennedy (RFK) was the brother of

President John F. Kennedy and Senator Ted Kennedy.

(There were 9 siblings in total)

He had been his brother's Attorney General when he was president.

President Kennedy was assassinated 5 years earlier, in 1963.

Kennedy was running for president.

He was campaigning in LA, and won the state of California.

He won, and the celebration began.

Thanking his campaign workers.

And I still remember his remarks:

"Now, it's on to Chicago, and let's win there!"

I was really interested in US history at a very young age.

I loved reading about the US Presidents.

I was watching this on tv.

Right after he finished, he was taken through the hotel's

kitchen to exit.

In this photo, the big black man, Rosie Greer,

was a professional football player.

Sirhan Sirhan was in the kitchen and shot Kennedy.

He died the next morning.

Rosie Greer is credited with wrestling Sirhan Sirhan's

gun out of his hand.

I had just barely turned off the tv.

After that, all hell broke loose!

I was soooo stunned the next morning!!!

Kennedy was shot just after midnight on June 5, 1968.
He had surgery, but was in extremely critical condition.
He passed away 26 hours later on June 6, 1968.

Ethel Kennedy was pregnant with her 11th child!

(Rory Kennedy was born in December.  

Her cousin, John F. Kennedy, Jr. was flying a

private plane to Rory's wedding with his wife and her sister.

He crashed the plane, killing all three aboard.

The wedding tent that was set up became headquarters

while the searched for the wreckage.)

She was trying to keep the cameras away from her husband.

I watched the historic funeral.
His brother, Ted, gave the eulogy.
I will never forget the words he spoke  at the end:

My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.

Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world.

As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and
 who sought to touch him:

"Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never
were and say why not."