![]() ![]() The next steps, for him and for us, grew a bit clearer when in spring 1968 he finally campaigned for president-for a short 85 days. He seemed at times liberal, at others conservative, but mostly he seemed to share our uncertainty about what should be done. He showed us a way, if not the way, his heart touched by suffering and injustice and his love poured out to children, to peacemakers and justice-seekers like Cesar Chavez and Albert Luthuli. Robert Kennedy moved through those days with us, sharing our anger and anxiety. There were hard days for Americans and for Robert Kennedy in the years that followed: cruel violence aimed at justice-seeking African-Americans and at Mexican-American farm workers, summer riots in major cities, an unjust and seemingly never-ending Vietnam war. Then he stood, broken it seemed, with his parents and Jackie, as the Kennedy we all loved best, murdered, was laid to rest. ![]() Bobby was there, beside our first Catholic president, at each dramatic event of Jack’s not-quite-three-year presidency. Along the way his brother Jack won the hearts of my Notre Dame class of 1960. He was chasing Communists with a family friend, Joe McCarthy, and then, with other senators, chasing mobsters and, at enormous cost, the Teamster boss, Jimmy Hoffa. When he was assassinated in 1968, he was a young man who had been with us for a long time, or so it seemed. ![]() Robert Kennedy, if he had lived, would now be 91. ![]()
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