Remembering RFK

I was am a huge fan of the Kennedy family. John F. Kennedy inspired me to have an interest in politics -- when I was just 7 years old. Like many, I was devastated when JFK was killed. It was Bobby Kennedy, in 1968, who gave many of us a reason to continue our love of politics.

And I have written in the past about the important role Bobby played in Indianapolis on the night Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed. It was Bobby's compassion and understanding that kept peace in our city that night.

It's hard to believe it's been 40 years since his death.

“My brother need not be idealized or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered 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.”
- Sen. Edward Kennedy, June 8, 1968

"... [S]uddenly, my father entered. He looked haunted and started talking to me, shaking his head in distress as he described the people he’d met in the [Mississippi] Delta. “I was with a family who live in a shack the size of this dining room,” he told me. “The children’s stomachs were distended and had sores all over them. They were starving.” He was outraged that this could happen in the world’s richest country.

“Do you know how lucky you are?” he asked me, and then repeated, “Do you know how lucky you are? You have a great responsibility. Do something for these children. Do something for our country.”

I can’t remember what I said. ... I wanted to think about how I might act on his advice, but for the moment felt only the importance of his giving it."
-Kathleen Kennedy Townsend

"... Robert Kennedy had a wonderful way of allowing others to tell him how the world looked through their eyes. Indeed, so many people across this nation were grateful for his belief in their worth — they knew his faith in the humanity of his fellow Americans.

He lived by a moral compass that others, less certain of their direction, looked to for guidance. Even if what he asked was hard to hear and heed, he gave others the strength to believe not just in his guidance but in themselves.

The truth is, we all just plain loved him."
- Joseph P. Kennedy II

"As an adult, I recognize that the lessons my father taught us children mirrored the beliefs he wanted the nation to embrace — that we must build a system of justice which enjoys the confidence of all sides; that peace is not something to pray for, but something everyone has the responsibility to create every day; and that we must muster the courage to face the truth about ourselves as well as those we consider our enemies. [...]

You may wonder why a father would ask his expanding brood of what would become 11 children to memorize a poem (Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade”) about slaughter and war. I think there were three reasons. He wanted us to share his love of literature and he wanted us to embrace challenges that appear daunting. But most of all, he believed it imperative to question authority, and those who failed that lesson did so at their peril.

Forty years after Robert Kennedy’s last campaign, I think those are also the lessons he would have liked to impart to all Americans. Facing daunting challenges both nationally and globally, we must rise to meet them armed with courage, love and an abiding commitment to justice, yet girded with a healthy sense of skepticism."
- Kerry Kennedy

SEE:

Robert Francis Kennedy
Remembering Our Father
Sneaking Into History

RFK Remembered

What would the country be like today if Bobby Kennedy were alive? For an idea we need only remember what he said:

"Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly."

"The problem of power is how to achieve its responsible use, rather than its irresponsible and indulgent use- how to make people of power live for the public, rather than off the public."

"Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital, quality for those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change."

"There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were and ask why not."

"Few will have the greatness to bend history; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation ... It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is thus shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."

"Fear not the path of truth for the lack of people walking on it." From his last speech, June 6, 1968

"Laws can embody standards; governments can enforce laws--but the final task is not a task for government. It is a task for each and every one of us. Every time we turn our heads the other way when we see the law flouted--when we tolerate what we know to be wrong--when we close our eyes and ears to the corrupt because we are too busy, or too frightened--when we fail to speak up and speak out--we strike a blow against freedom and decency and justice."

Wouldn't it be wonderful if even ONE of the people seeking the presidency would make these comments today.