I loved America, I loved the political process, and had dreams of one day becoming a Congressman or even a Senator. Since I had been born outside of the United States, I was barred by the Constitution from becoming President.  The mood of campaign headquarters was delirious.  It was a tight race between Bobby Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey, Linden Johnson having pulled out of the race several months earlier..

Four hours after the polls closed, Bobby Kennedy claimed victory in the packed Embassy Room of the Ambassador Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. Bobby was supposed to walk through the throng of well-wishers on his way to another gathering of supporters in another room of the Hotel. However, bowing to news reporters facing tight deadlines, a campaign aide convinced Bobby to skip the second speech and instead go through the kitchen and pantry area behind the ballroom to get to the press area. After he finished talking, Bobby started to exit the room when one of his two security guards took him through the kitchen. A gunshot rang out and Bobby fell to the ground, blood gushing from his head where a .22 bullet had penetrated. It was shortly after midnight, June 5, 1968 that he was mortally wounded.

The mood at the local campaign headquarters I was at immediately turned from one of  ebullient joy to one of utter despair. “How could this happen?” we asked each other. Was Bobby dead? Did they catch the assassin?

Kennedy was rushed to Los Angeles’ Good Samaritan Hospital, where he was pronounced dead the following morning. And with his death went many of the dreams of those of us who loved and supported him, who saw good things happening in the next eight years (for we were sure he would be elected President and reelected for a second term).

Who killed Bobby Kennedy? There was speculation that it was a mob-ordered hit because of how hard Bobby had come down on the mafia during his term as Attorney General under his brother John and then under President Johnson. But as hard as the conspiracy-buffs tried to make this into the result of a vast conspiracy, the fact is Robert F. Kennedy was the victim of a single gunshot by a lone gunman, Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, a 24-year-old  Christian Palestinian-American who felt betrayed by Bobby’s support for Israel in the June 1967 Six-Day War a year earlier.

By his murderous act, Sirhan Sirhan changed the course of American history even more than Lee Harvey Oswald did when he shot and killed President John F. Kennedy on that November day in Dallas in 1963. If Sirhan had not been successful, Bobby most likely would have been elected President and the nation would be proud once again. Instead we had to live through the Nixon years, the Watergate scandal, wars in the middle East, and hundreds—no, thousands—of tragedies that never should have occurred. One can only dream of the State of the Union had Bobby Kennedy been President for eight years.

What brings up this Commentary on Sirhan Sirhan is that prison authorities want to move him from the state prison in Corcoran, which houses high-risk prisoners such as Charles Manson, to Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga. Sirhan had been housed for years in the protective unit at Corcoran, one of the most isolated units in the state prison system. Sirhan’s attorney initially opposed the move of Sirhan from Corcoran state prison on the basis that Pleasant Valley State Prison would not be able to guarantee Sirhan’s safety, but a spokesman for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said Sirhan had requested the transfer and wants to go to Pleasant Valley.

I am not generally a vengeful person, but the news of Sirhan’s move brought back some deep-seated feelings I felt the night of June 4^th and 5^th of 1968  If Sirhan is at risk for his safety at Pleasant Valley State Prison, so be it. I have no sympathy for the man. He stole my hopes and dreams for a better America when he killed Bobby Kennedy in cold blood. He stole my innocence and I can never forgive him for that.

But I will always remember Bobby Kennedy’s words: “Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.”

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