Reassured his hero Robert Kennedy after shooting
Busboy who aided wounded RFK
WHEN Robert F. Kennedy decided to duck through the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after declaring victory in the 1968 Democratic presidential primary, Juan Romero revelled at his good fortune.
It meant the 18yearold busboy might get to shake hands with his hero — the man he’d assured himself would be the next president of the United States — for the second time in two days.
Romero had just grasped Kennedy’s hand when gunshots rang out, one of them striking the senator in the head.
Kennedy would die the next day and the teenage Mexican immigrant who had idolised him would carry the emotional burden of that encounter for most of his life.
Romero died on October 2 in a Modesto, California, hospital following a heart attack. He was 68.
Romero, who moved from Los Angeles decades ago, spent most of his life in the Northern California cities of San Jose and Modesto.
He worked in construction, including concrete and asphalt paving, enjoying the oftengruelling physical labour with no intention of retiring any time soon.
For decades, each time Romero saw blackandwhite news photos of himself (a babyfaced busboy gently cradling Kennedy as he lay sprawled on the hotel’s concrete kitchen floor), he would wonder what more he should have done to save Kennedy.
Only recently, he said during rare interviews this year, did he finally come to terms with that struggle.
He said he still carried the example Kennedy had set as he campaigned for equality and civil rights.
‘‘I still have the fire burning inside of me,’’ Romero said.
He was working at the Ambassador Hotel the day before the June 1968
California primary when Kennedy and his aides ordered room service and he was called on to help deliver it.
‘‘All I remember was that I kept staring at him with my mouth open,’’ he would say later.
Finally, Kennedy approached, grabbed Romero’s hand with both of his and said, ‘‘Thank you’’.
‘‘I will never forget the handshake and the look . . . looking right at you with those piercing eyes that said, ‘I’m one of you. We’re good,’’’ Romero said.
After Kennedy won the primary, he thanked supporters in the hotel’s Embassy Room then walked through the kitchen for a meeting with reporters.
Romero jumped at the chance to meet him again.
After gunfire rang out and Kennedy fell, Romero cradled his bleeding head.
‘‘Is everybody OK?’’, Kennedy asked. Romero said yes.
‘‘Everything will be OK,’’ the senator replied shortly before losing consciousness.
As they talked, Romero pressed a set of Rosary beads into the senator’s hand as news photographers frantically took pictures. Kennedy died the next day, aged 42.
When he visited Kennedy’s grave at Arlington National Cemetery a few years ago, Romero wept as he spoke directly to the senator.
Romero is survived by daughters Elda Romero, Josefina Guerra and Cynthia Medina; a son, Greg Romero; and grandson, Chris Ortiz.