Unforgettable: Bobby Kennedy Assassination

The assassination of Bobby Kennedy took place just after I finished my junior year of high school. My father, a colonel in the US Army, was in training for his third tour in Vietnam, where he would become a Province Senior Advisor — which meant he had to learn to speak Vietnamese, hence the training. The environment in my home was pro-war, or at least ‘as long as we’re there we might as well do it right’, and Kennedy, like his brother was no hero. But my girlfriend Becky Hersperger was a black armband wearing, acid-rock loving anti-war activist (we were kind of like Jenny and Forrest Gump, come to think of it), and so I got the impact even though my own sentiments about Vietnam, social justice, and the direction the country was headed were ambivalent, to say the least. Still, this event — coming on the heels of the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., resonated with me and I remember the moment clearly.

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