1968: The Year That Shaped Me: Part Three

Fifty years ago yesterday, I arose from my slumber and hurriedly brushed my teeth and combed my hair.  I then rushed to the kitchen to have my regular bowl of cereal, the bowl of cereal that I routinely had before I would normally bolt out of the house to catch the 7:30am bus that would take me to school, the aforementioned Victor Valley Junior High School.  However, on that particular day, I paused a moment to turn on the television to see the results of the cliffhanger California primary election that had still been too close to call when I had gone to sleep the previous night.  To my horror, the newscasters all had very grim faces.  They were talking not about the election but rather about an assassination attempt on Robert Kennedy.  As soon as I heard this, I immediately went to my parents bedroom, knocked on the door and told them what was going on.  We gathered around the television for a few moments in stunned silence before I actually did run out the door to catch my bus. 

Of course, we all know what happened.  Robert Kennedy was shot in the early morning hours of June 5, 1968, and he was pronounced dead on June 6, 1968, fifty years ago today. 

I will not endeavor to tell you how this news impacted me. Others, I am sure, have memories of the time that are more vivid.  Nevertheless, I was indeed impacted to the core.

A few months later, I began my career as a new sophomore at Victor Valley Senior High School.  As a new sophomore with aspirations for college, the courses that I was scheduled for were pretty much set.  Algebra, Spanish, English Composition, Physical Education, Civics, Driver's Education were all pretty much locked in stone.  However, I was allowed one elective and, following up on my oratorical foray of my ninth grade year, I chose Speech.  The Speech class was taught by a man named Larry Bird, a name that would have gain additional notoriety by another individual some eleven years later.  However, my Larry Bird, my Mr. Bird, was an enthusiastic teacher who ran us through all the different speech techniques and disciplines.  In his class, we practiced original oratory, expository speaking, persuasive speaking, demonstrative speaking, dramatic interpretation, humorous interpretation, extemporaneous speaking, impromptu speaking, and oratorical interpretation (what is now known as declamation).  

For oratorical interpretation one usually chooses a great speech from history.  Being African American, the most common choice would have been Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech.  However, there was a speech that seemed to be more befitting my demeanor.  The speech I chose was Ted Kennedy's "Eulogy for Robert Kennedy".  I chose this speech not just because it had been so eloquently given just a few months before, but also because it was actually two speeches (one by Edward and one by Robert) in one.  I also was drawn to the speech because it conveyed not just sorrow in death but also because it conveyed an affirmation of life and how to live it.

I memorized the speech and gave it in class.  After which, I was invited by Mr. Bird to join his Speech Team to compete in the regional Speech Meets.  Of course, I agreed. 

I never won any of the speech meet competitions, but I believe I did win in other ways.  I do not know for others, but for me, to memorize an eight to ten minute speech required hours of practice.  Because I lived in a relatively small house with two younger brothers and one younger sister, finding space to practice the speech out loud proved to be problematic.  I often found myself outside in the side yard of the little pink house practicing my speech by talking into the wind. Hours of such preparation, along with the intense moments of competition, began to have a profound effect on my psyche and my soul.  I came to a point of not just wanting to say the words eloquently but rather to believing the words spiritually.   

Below you will find the text of Edward Kennedy's "Eulogy for Robert Kennedy".  On this day, the fiftieth anniversary of his death, I encourage you to read it for yourself and see if the words, especially those of Robert Kennedy, speak to you.

It is strange.  Both Robert and Edward Kennedy have both been gone for many years now.   However, at times, when I read or hear their words, it can be as though they never left. 

Peace, 

Everett "Skip" Jenkins

Class of 1975

    

The following is the eulogy for Robert Kennedy given by his brother, Sen. Edward Kennedy at the public memorial service held on June 8, 1968, at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City.  

Your Eminences, Your Excellencies, Mr. President:

On behalf of Mrs. Kennedy, her children, the parents and sisters of Robert Kennedy, I want to express what we feel to those who mourn with us today in this Cathedral and around the world.

We loved him as a brother, and as a father, and as a son. From his parents, and from his older brothers and sisters -- Joe and Kathleen and Jack -- he received an inspiration which he passed on to all of us. He gave us strength in time of trouble, wisdom in time of uncertainty, and sharing in time of happiness. He will always be by our side.

Love is not an easy feeling to put into words. Nor is loyalty, or trust, or joy. But he was all of these. He loved life completely and he lived it intensely.

A few years back, Robert Kennedy wrote some words about his own father which expresses [sic] the way we in his family felt about him. He said of what his father meant to him, and I quote: "What it really all adds up to is love -- not love as it is described with such facility in popular magazines, but the kind of love that is affection and respect, order and encouragement, and support. Our awareness of this was an incalculable source of strength, and because real love is something unselfish and involves sacrifice and giving, we could not help but profit from it." And he continued, "Beneath it all, he has tried to engender a social conscience. There were wrongs which needed attention. There were people who were poor and needed help. And we have a responsibility to them and to this country. Through no virtues and accomplishments of our own, we have been fortunate enough to be born in the United States under the most comfortable conditions. We, therefore, have a responsibility to others who are less well off."

That is what Robert Kennedy was given. What he leaves to us is what he said, what he did, and what he stood for. A speech he made to the young people of South Africa on their Day of Affirmation in 1966 sums it up the best, and I would like to read it now:

• "There is discrimination in this world and slavery and slaughter and starvation. Governments repress their people; millions are trapped in poverty while the nation grows rich and wealth is lavished on armaments everywhere. These are differing evils, but they are the common works of man. They reflect the imperfection of human justice, the inadequacy of human compassion, our lack of sensibility towards the suffering of our fellows. But we can perhaps remember -- even if only for a time -- that those who live with us are our brothers; that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek -- as we do -- nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

• Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men. And surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again. The answer is to rely on youth -- not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. The cruelties and obstacles of this swiftly changing planet will not yield to the obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. They cannot be moved by those who cling to a present that is already dying, who prefer the illusion of security to the excitement and danger that come with even the most peaceful progress.

• It is a revolutionary world we live in, and this generation at home and around the world has had thrust upon it a greater burden of responsibility than any generation that has ever lived. Some believe there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills. Yet many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation; a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth; a young woman reclaimed the territory of France; and it was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and the 32 year-old Thomas Jefferson who [pro]claimed that "all men are created equal."

• These men moved the world, and so can we all. Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

• Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change. And I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the moral conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the globe.

• For the fortunate among us, there is the temptation to follow the easy and familiar paths of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before those who enjoy the privilege of education. But that is not the road history has marked out for us. Like it or not, we live in times of danger and uncertainty. But they are also more open to the creative energy of men than any other time in history. All of us will ultimately be judged, and as the years pass we will surely judge ourselves on the effort we have contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which our ideals and goals have shaped that event.

• The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of new ideas and bold projects. Rather it will belong to those who can blend vision, reason and courage in a personal commitment to the ideals and great enterprises of American Society. Our future may lie beyond our vision, but it is not completely beyond our control. It is the shaping impulse of America that neither fate nor nature nor the irresistible tides of history, but the work of our own hands, matched to reason and principle, that will determine our destiny. There is pride in that, even arrogance, but there is also experience and truth. In any event, it is the only way we can live."

That is the way he lived. That is what he leaves us.

My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life. [He need] be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.

Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world.

As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him:

"Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not."