Magazine article signed by Robert Kennedy
In January 1966, former Chattanoogan Diane Siskin was on a plane flying from New York to Washington, D.C.
The then-college student was distraught over the declining health of her grandmother with whom she was very close, but then she ended up meeting someone who at least temporarily gave her some fatherly like support by trying to console her. The person was Robert Kennedy – then a U.S. senator and future presidential candidate.
“He was so kind to me,” she recalled of the happenstance meeting on the plane where, by luck, they were sitting next to each other.
As a result of that encounter, what she thought at the time was a very somber moment for her turned out to be an uplifting one in hindsight and a happening that she still cherishes greatly nearly 60 years later.
The incident has come back to current Florida Panhandle resident Ms. Siskin more vividly in recent weeks because the late senator’s son, Robert Kennedy Jr., is running for president. And in recent weeks, he switched from running as a Democrat to an independent who could take votes away from the presidential nominees in both major parties and possibly affect what is expected to be a close general election in 2024.
A longtime Democrat, Ms. Siskin wanted to emphasize that, despite her great admiration for the late Sen. Kennedy, she does not care for the politics of his son and is definitely not supporting him.
“The son doesn’t hold the same values as his father,” she said in a recent phone interview. “The father was very compassionate and understanding. That is my feeling and I felt like I had to speak up.”
She also points to the fact that many other members of the Kennedy family have also denounced his candidacy.
Robert Kennedy Jr., who as recently as Oct. 15 was a few miles up the road from Chattanooga in Knoxville campaigning at the Relix event center there, has drawn the support of a small number of others, though. That is in part due to his anti-vaccine advocacy work, including coming out against the COVID-19 vaccine.
Only 14 when his father died and a man who struggled with substance abuse issues in his younger years, the younger Kennedy also became known in later years primarily for his work as an attorney fighting to protect the environment. In his 40s, he developed Spasmodic Dysphonia, which has caused his voice to have a quivering sound.
An independent candidacy by him in the general election is expected to draw at least a few votes away from each major party nominee due to his diversity of views, political observers say.
Regarding Ms. Siskin’s more favorable memories of the candidate’s father, she said that she felt she needed to see her grandmother, who was then in her 70s, while her health was failing. So, she came back home to New York for a brief visit from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.
She had transferred there from what is now known as SUNY at New Paltz in New York, where she had a scholarship, to be closer to someone she was dating at the time. Her parents had not overly endorsed the idea of transferring to UT, she recalled, but her grandmother had been supportive.
Ms. Siskin – who was also a longtime lifestyle and travel writer for the Chattanooga Free Press and was profiled in August regarding her memories of writing some pre-inauguration stories in Plains before Jimmy Carter’s 1977 presidential inauguration – remembers the visit as somber.
“My grandmother was dying in New York, and I was very, very close to her,” she recalled. “My parents didn’t want me to see her in that state. But I came up, saw her, and my father wanted to hustle me out of town because he did not want me to be there.”
Amid all the short planning, her ticket that was bought for her return trip back to Knoxville via Washington, D.C., ended up being a first-class one on the left front row on the aisle, due to a nearly full plane. To help her feel better, her father had also bought her a stack of magazines to read going back. He did this without greatly thinking of which ones might be of interest to a college student. One of them ended up being Cosmopolitan.
While the magazines were simply designed to take her mind away from her troubles, they would soon help draw her back to the world in a positive way. In fact, the page turning she was doing would turn into a real-life page turner regarding what happened next.
“I was very upset and in tears, knowing it would be the last time I would see my grandmother,” she said. “I’ve got my magazines and I’m looking down and hope nobody sees that I’m crying.”
She had not bothered to see the person who was sitting next to her in the window seat while looking down, but she soon noticed a briefcase and some official Congressional cuff links he was wearing and realized it might indeed be U.S. Sen. Robert Kennedy.
Suddenly, she was starting to put things together, adding with a chuckle, “I think I’m seeing things.”
As Ms. Siskin recalled, “As I faced him, I asked if he was .... And before I could finish the question, he answered yes and could he do anything to help me. I probably said that my grandmother is dying. That started the conversation.”
The words also continued in a positive manner, she said.
“He talked to me the rest of the way trying to get me consoled, and that he knew death firsthand,” she said, referring to the death of his older brother, President John F. Kennedy, following his assassination in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. “He was so good about bringing me around.”
He also during the conversation noticed that she had an article on him opened in Cosmopolitan magazine, so he took it and signed it, writing, “Thoughtfully with best wishes to Diane. Don’t believe everything you read -- only the good parts. RFK.”
“I think he was aware of the article about him that was open on my lap, shortly after the plane took off,” Ms. Siskin added. “I was not trying to read it, but rather used it to just keep my head down, since I was so upset.
“And he didn't sign the magazine until we were also through talking and asked my permission to see the article. I gave the magazine to him, and he quickly read the page that was open and asked me if I minded if he wrote something on it. I, of course, said he could.”
The year 1966 would end up being a positive one for her in many ways, despite her grandmother’s death. After she returned to Knoxville, she came to Chattanooga to student teach. No longer dating her previous acquaintance, she was living on Missionary Ridge and met Charles Siskin.
“I went back to Knoxville for the summer quarter and graduated in August of 1966,” she said. “Charles and I married on Oct. 9, 1966. 1966 was a big year for me!”
Unfortunately, two years later she heard the devastating news that Sen. Kennedy, who was by then a front-running Democratic candidate for president, was shot and soon died that June of 1968 while in Los Angeles for the California Primary that he won.
While Ms. Siskin was seven months pregnant with her first child, who was named after her grandmother, and she was busy at work, she was still stunned after hearing the news.
“I kept thinking that it had only been a little over two years since my encounter with Robert Kennedy on that special flight,” she said. “He had consoled me on the loss of my grandmother, yet he only lived for a little over two years more, dying at the age of 42.”
Referencing the title of the article about Robert F. Kennedy at 40, she added, “There would be no Robert Kennedy at 45, 50 ...”
As the years passed, she kept up with the Kennedy family from a distance, and once went to Boston and Cape Cod and saw the Kennedy Compound. Unfortunately, it had a high fence around it, so all she could do was get a picture of the fence, she recalled with a laugh.
But her views and positive memories of Robert Kennedy have not been blocked by that or her opposition to his son’s candidacy, despite remembering the son’s good work with River Keepers alongside an acquaintance of Ms. Siskin’s niece in the 1990s.
Nor have nearly 60 years erased such positive memories of encountering Sen. Kennedy on a plane.
“He didn’t have to do that and talk to me, but he did,” she said.
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Jcshearer2@comcast.net