The busboy who cradled a dying RFK has finally stepped out of the past
*Thanks to Taquista Ito Romo for sending us this link. It’s taken a lifetime for a young immigrant busboy to reconcile his part in the assassination of Robert Kennedy. The Senator stopped to shake his hand … VL
By Steve Lopez, The Los Angeles Times
In June, Juan Romero did something he hadn’t done in decades. He celebrated his birthday, going out to dinner with his family in San Jose.
“I always dreaded when June was coming up,” said Romero, 65, who has struggled for most of his adult life to let go of his crippling memory of an American tragedy.
[pullquote]”I wanted to protect his head from the cold concrete.”[/pullquote]It happened just after midnight on June 5, 1968. Robert F. Kennedy had won the California presidential primary and made his victory speech at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, where Romero was a 17-year-old busboy.
A Roosevelt High School student who had moved north from Mexico at the age of 10, Romero recalled the photos of President John F. Kennedy that hung alongside those of Pope John XXIII in the homes of Mexican families.
[pullquote]On far too many nights he lay awake wondering if Kennedy would still be alive if he hadn’t paused to shake a busboy’s hand.[/pullquote]He worked at the hotel after school and had delivered room service to Kennedy earlier in the week. He knew he’d never forget the way Kennedy treated him and the pride he felt, and now he wanted to congratulate him as the candidate made his way through a kitchen service area. Romero reached out, took Kennedy’s hand, and watched him slump to the floor as gun blasts echoed.
Click HERE to read the full story.
[Photo courtesy of Los Angeles Times]
