Every morning during my ride in to work I travel east on Olympic Boulevard. After crossing Normandie, I look northward, allowing myself a momentary glimpse of the upper portion of the Ambassador Hotel located on Wilshire. This brief sighting did not come about accidentally but rather was quite intentional, for some time back I had calculated that there should be one or more points on Olympic where a person can spot the now aging LA landmark. There are, in fact, two such spots, the second being at the corner of Fedora Street.
So why do I this? Why do I actually take the time to glance from afar at this particular building whenever possible?
For those unmindful of history, it was at the Ambassador Hotel where on June 5, 1968, following victory in the California primary, Senator Robert F. Kennedy was shot multiple times by Sirhan Sirhan. Mortally wounded, Kennedy was rushed to nearby Good Samaritan Hospital, where he died the following day. He was 42 years old.
Somewhat gruesome though it sounds, part of me wishes I had taken the time three years back to determine -- to the day -- when I would have been the exact same age Kennedy was upon his passing. My reason for this is tinged with regret, for if there is a single figure in history to whom I find myself drawn it is Robert Kennedy, and while many – and for good reason -- still mourn the loss of his more famous brother, in my mind, “Bobby” is the more fascinating of the two, if for no other reason than that he showed the glowing promise residing within individual change.
In numerous biographies, a younger Kennedy is frequently portrayed as a ruthless pit bull of a man, both while serving as campaign manager for his older brother and later as U.S. Attorney General. His own father once boasted, “When Bobby hates you, you stay hated."
But time changes things. And people. Tempered by the tragedy of Dallas, the realization of his own culpability in the quagmire that Vietnam was becoming, and perhaps the wisdom that comes with age, Kennedy began to blossom, both as man and politician. This is never more evident than during an extemporaneous speech he gave on April 4, 1968, informing an unknowing Indianapolis audience of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. In a somber voice echoing the pain of his own loss from November of 1963, Kennedy -- in what I believe to be his finest hour -- called anew for "love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country," asking this of a society torn once again by the very same violence that would bring about his own death two months later at, yes, the Ambassador Hotel.
Whenever I see this now sad looking structure, I experience not only the stir of regret over the passing of a man seemingly on the road to greatness, but an undeniable tug deep within, warning me that in many ways we are either losing or, worse, forsaking the understanding and compassion of which Robert Kennedy so eloquently spoke. Perhaps this is the inevitable result of the brave, new post 9/11 world in which we find ourselves, or maybe we've been on this path all along, only too self-absorbed and fearful to recognize it. Either way, I now feel that far too many Americans are losing touch with what Robert Kennedy fundamentally believed in: that we, as individuals and as a nation, are by and large good, and that from that goodness lies the cure to whatever ails us, both at home and abroad.
The Ambassador has thus become my talisman and, though fence-enclosed, it is there for my eyes to see, if only briefly, each weekday morning as I begin my day. In all its near-dilapidated glory, it reminds me of what one man longed for us to become and what I still hope we might one day be.
When eulogized by his brother, Ted Kennedy spoke of this by quoting something Robert F. Kennedy frequently uttered: “Some men see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say why not?”
BILL
