40 years ago today

Fourty one years ago, John Parks and I were headed to our paper routes. Leaving our junior high school, we walked six of the nine blocks to the newspaper office. As we prepared to cross the main street of Everett, several cars passed in front of us. One was a convertable with two men in the back seat. The cars stopped in front of the high school, two blocks from where we were standing.
A group of students gathered around.
We ran down and saw Bobby Kennedy and our local congressman talking to high school students.
As they drove off, one of the students mentioned that Kennedy was on his way to speak at the community college, where John's dad was a marine biology teacher.
By chance, a city transit bus was stopped in front of the school. John knew the bus route would take us to the college so he yelled to hop on.
We got to the campus and pushed our way to the front. Kennedy was talking about how we had to end the war in Vietnam. About caring for the poor, the elderly. The crowd roared. When he finished, the crowd surged. Everyone wanted to reach and touch him. To touch...a new hope.



Fourty years ago today, I was getting ready for school. Mom and I were talking. Dad came into the room breathing hard. He looked angry.
"They got another one. Another Kennedy's been killed."
I looked to my mom for an emotional response. I could see she was upset but trying not to overreact, probably on my behalf.
We turned on the TV. Video was playing from the night before as Bobby Kennedy won the California election. Moments later, I watched as he was shot and lay mortally wounded. Time and again the video would play. I watched him die many times. My heart and hopes fell to a place deeper than I had ever felt before.

Earlier that year, I watched as Martin Luther King was laid to rest -- dead from an assassin's bullett. Five years earlier, I had seen a nation cast into mourning as its youthful president was killed.
For members of my generation, three promising leaders were dead in their prime.
It was as if hope no longer had a place in America.
It was as if we were learning that any chance of hope would be stopped with violence.

For many of my generation, hope no longer became an external thing. It was not to be sought outside where it could be killed.
Rather, it was something one kept alive inside. It was a time to turn, turn, turn inside. A time to pause, go inside onself. It was the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. It was time to seek a newer world -- one that began with a journey within.

In his book, To Seek a Newer World, Bobby took the title from Tennyson's epic poem, Ulysses.
It was a poem I memorized in Bobby's memory.

Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes:
the slow moon climbs:
the deep Moans round with many voices.

Come, my friends,'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows;
for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.