by John Shearer
posted June 6, 2008
June 6 marks the 40th anniversary of the assassination of presidential candidate Robert F. “Bobby” Kennedy.
For retired Criminal Court Judge Doug Meyer, the anniversary is a reminder of a disheartening time in his life.
“I couldn't believe it,” he recalled this week. “I couldn't comprehend it. I was shattered.”
Although the mostly conservative Chattanooga area was certainly not a Kennedy stronghold in 1968, Judge Meyer was one local supporter.
Now living in Florida, he said he became an admirer of the Kennedy family in 1956 while he was in law school and watching the Democratic national convention on television.
He recalled that Democratic presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson had opened up the nomination for vice president, and that Tennessee was receiving national attention because it had three worthy candidates - U.S. Sens. Estes Kefauver and Albert Gore and Gov. Frank Clement.
The Tennessee delegation was divided between the three, but soon Sen. Kefauver emerged as the top candidate for vice president along with Sen. John F. Kennedy from Massachusetts.
Although Sen. Kefauver ended up barely being selected on the unsuccessful ticket with Adlai Stevenson to face President Dwight Eisenhower, Judge Meyer wanted John F. Kennedy to be chosen.
”I became a Kennedy supporter at that time,” recalled Judge Meyer, who kept a picture of a young John, Robert and Ted Kennedy in his courtroom office for years. “And I supported him in 1960. I was caught up in the Kennedy mystique. When he was assassinated, my world crashed. I did not do anything except watch TV.“
When Bobby Kennedy announced his candidacy for president before the 1968 election, Judge Meyer decided he would support him, even before President Lyndon Johnson told a national television audience he would not be running for re-election and after Sen. Eugene McCarthy announced his candidacy.
By chance, Judge Meyer had an opportunity to see Bobby Kennedy in person at a campaign event.
“I happened to be in the Nashville airport, when Bobby stopped there,” Judge Meyer remembered. “He climbed up on something and addressed the gathering crowd.
“He would make a statement, and then punctuate it by saying: ‘And that's why I want to be president of the United States!’ I was sold.”
When the assassination occurred, Judge Meyer was watching on television. Like many people who admired the senator’s charisma and vision, he was devastated, just as when John F. Kennedy was killed.
At the time of the shooting shortly after midnight Pacific time on June 5, Sen. Kennedy – who fathered 11 children with his wife, Ethel – had just celebrated his victory in the California Primary with a speech in the Embassy Room at the now-razed Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
Although he had planned to go greet other supporters in another part of the hotel, he and his entourage decided instead to go through a kitchen pantry area to meet the press. However, he had to change his route again to avoid a crowd.
As he was making his way through the new backroom route, 24-year-old Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, a Jerusalem native then living in Pasadena, shot him, reportedly after hearing of Sen. Kennedy’s support of Israel. Several others were injured. Track star Rafer Johnson, football player Rosey Grier and writer George Plimpton were near Sen. Kennedy when the shooting occurred.
Sen. Kennedy died in a Los Angeles hospital 25 hours later, during the early morning hours of June 6.
Although some feared rioting might again break out as had happened across the United States following Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s death on April 4, 1968, disillusion was more rampant this time.
Many wondered what was happening to the United States, where two national leaders had been assassinated just two months apart.
As the Chattanooga Times wrote on June 6 in an editorial shortly before word of Sen. Kennedy’s death was received, “A nation, itself badly wounded, hopes for the miracle of his full recovery. And for the sanity in its life; for a better understanding of what has become the pathology of its politics; for an end to violence which, with its incredible accuracy, had struck down such public figures as Martin Luther King exactly two months before.”
Then Republican U.S. Rep. Bill Brock, whose conservative viewpoints often differed with the Times’ editorial page, echoed similar comments.
“His loss offers each of us an opportunity and a responsibility to reaffirm our faith in law and order, in the spiritual essence of our nation, and in the inherent worth and dignity of every human life,” Rep. Brock said.
Chattanooga News-Free Press reporter Irby Park Jr. interviewed Chattanoogans on the street after the tragedy and found that most people favored restricting the sale of guns but not banning their sale entirely.
Sen. Kennedy’s body lay in state at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City on Friday, June 7, and a requiem mass celebrating his life was held the next day. The body was then transported to Washington, D.C., where it was taken past both the Senate Office Building and Department of Justice headquarters where he had worked.
Burial was in Arlington National Cemetery near his slain brother’s grave.
Sunday, June 9, was a national day of mourning.
In Chattanooga, his tragic death was met mostly with prayer at a number of churches.
Because Sen. Kennedy had been a Roman Catholic, a special mass took place at Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Church, with Times managing editor John Popham delivering the eulogy.
All the local Jewish congregations came together for a memorial service at B’nai Zion Synagogue, and many of the Christian churches mentioned him in their prayers.
Historians and others were later forced to wonder what kind of impact he could have made on the world either as president or in some other capacity.
This occasionally confrontational man revered and loved by his supporters as few politicians have been, even before the assassination, had already managed to serve as U.S. attorney general and U.S. senator when death came at the relatively young age of 42.
His brother, Ted, who is now facing brain cancer, was left to fill the void for many Democrats. While never becoming president, he did grow into a respected elder statesman among liberals and others after overcoming some early stumbles dealing primarily with alcohol abuse.
Judge Meyer said he never admired Ted Kennedy the way he did John and Robert and did not support him for president.
However, in recent years, he said he has come to appreciate his contributions as well.
“In retrospect, he has been an excellent senator, well respected on both sides of the aisle,” he said.
Jcshearer2@comcast.net
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