The other day I was reading an article that mentioned in passing that Andy Williams had been staying in the Kennedy suite at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles when Robert Kennedy had been assassinated in the ballroom below. It occurred to me that I had, at very different times, encountered several people who had been present at that event. I was not. I was starting my summer job that week. I was not at the site until close to twenty years after the assassination.
I am sure it was sometime in the 1980s that, sitting at a conference dinner in the ballroom at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, I became amazed that, although it was just a ballroom like dozens of others where I sat through after-dinner speeches, it had been the scene of a major event in the history of America in the 1960s. If there was a historical marker, I didn't see it.
I was simply sitting at another business event when I looked up and wondered if the lighting fixtures - not fancy enough to call chandeliers - were covered with the same dust on June 5, 1968 when Sirhan Sirhan waited to shoot the winner of the Democratic California primary in the pantry for the kitchen behind the ballroom where I assume our meals had been prepared. When Robert Kennedy said his last public words, "On to Chicago and let's win there," on the same stage where conference speakers discussed the world's information needs. When Americans had a few moments left before they would need to clarify which Kennedy assassination they meant.
I am not being ridiculous. There was a lot of dust. The room is no longer, torn down along with the hotel although the lobby lives on in many TV shows and movies.
I never saw Bobby Kennedy. On the day word went around the school cafeteria that he was coming to speak in Broomall, I was interested in cutting class to go. The only problem was none of us from the other side of Philadelphia had any idea where Broomall was. I wasn't upset. I figured I'd have another chance. Of course, I didn't.
I thought about how many people I had run into who were somehow connected to the RFK assassination. The first I recalled was Roosevelt Grier, NFL legend and Kennedy supporter. I stepped into a hotel elevator in New York - I think it was the New York Hilton - and found him leaning against the back wall. He was smiling. I think Rosey Greer was almost always smiling.
I never speak to celebrities but Rosey spoke to me. For the entire ride. He said what a great day every day was and he hoped I felt the same. He said he felt blessed. He gave off a contented vibe. At the time, I don't think I put him together with the assassination. The encounter was so upbeat that I forgot this was the man who was said to have wrestled the murder weapon away from Sirhan Sirhan.
It wasn't until the movie Mank came out in 2020 that I put Frank Mankiewicz together with the Hollywood Mankiewiczes and with the Robert Kennedy assassination. Memories can get a bit muddled as the years go on and mine did. I know that Frank Mankiewicz, at the time a middle-aged, Caucasian, political advisor, was not often confused with Julian Bond, at the time a dashing, young, African-American civil rights activist. It isn't that I can't keep the two individuals straight. I can't quite get a handle on our interactions. A friend and I were charged with escorting both of them to an event at our college, picking them up at the airport, dining with them, getting them to the lecture on time. I clearly remember Julian Bond in the car. I clearly remember Frank Mankiewicz at dinner. The rest all jumbles together. At far as I know, Julian Bond was not in LA at the time of the assassination, but Frank Mankiewicz announced the death of Robert Kennedy on June 6, 1968.
Of course, Ethel Kennedy was there with her husband. I ran into her with Andy Williams whose presence in LA got me thinking about this "theme." The circumstances were the opposite of the assassination and require some context. My brother used to work in Nassau, a frequent docking locale for the Christina, a yacht owned by Aristotle Onassis who married Jacqueline Kennedy only months after Robert Kennedy's assassination. One evening a friend and I were on the dock when a group of bicyclers swarmed off the boat. Among them were Ethel Kennedy and Andy Williams. (For the record, the others I recall were Williams’ wife Claudine Longet, Christina Onassis, Mountaineer Jim Whittaker and his wife.) Not exactly meaningful contact. Actually no contact at all.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis did not come out to ride bikes that night but I ran into her on other occasions around New York when I lived there. She was present when RFK died.
Even more tenuous connections are two Kennedy children. Robert Kennedy Jr. was in LA with his father. Rory Kennedy was present in the sense that she was expected at the time and born almost six months after his death. I've heard Rory speak. I only ever ran into RFK Jr. in the Stamford train station with his family. The surprising thing about him to me was that he has incredible blue eyes.
There is nothing significant about these encounters. These coincidences are more like an unpleasant game of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. There is nothing magical. If there were, I would have run into George Plimpton and I have no recollection of ever seeing him. The number of brushes with people who were connected just strikes me as odd.
NOTE TO YOURSELF: In fact-checking Julian Bond, you discovered you and he share a birthday.
NOTE TO YOURSELF: You were exhausted from your second day at your summer job at Home Life on June 5 and went to bed shortly after dinner. You had no idea that there even was a California primary that day. When you woke up you remembered a dream. Robert and Ethel Kennedy were running an ice cream shop in a building that was shaped like a coffin. A windowless brown box on top of a chrome base. The ice cream store was inside the base. The shop was on a hillside without other buildings around. At the time you figured someone had a television on that you could hear and that put thoughts of the Kennedys in your mind. For proof that you were not psychic, see your story about Christopher Reeve.
© 2021 Jane Kelly
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