Busboy haunted by terrible ‘popping’

IT’S BEEN 50 years, but Juan Romero still hesitates before talking about that night in the narrow pantry of the Ambassador Hotel.

He was the immigrant busboy who was shaking Robert F. Kennedy’s hand when an assassin pumped three bullets into the dynastic politician shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968.

“I remember shaking his hand, and as soon as he let go, we heard those terrible popping sounds,” Romero told the Daily News as his easy conversation turned heavy and hushed.

“I turned to my left, and all I could see was a small group of people, maybe 10 feet away, just struggling, pushing, fighting, wrestling,” he said, describing the pandemonium after gunman Sirhan Sirhan opened fire in the Los Angeles hotel.

When Romero looked back at Kennedy, he saw the man who had just won California’s Democratic presidential primary splayed on the floor near an ice machine.

“My immediate reaction was maybe his friends pushed him down to keep him from getting hurt. I thought he might need help to get up, so I ran to him,” Romero, 67, recalled.

“He had this faraway look in his eyes. I kneeled down next to him and put my hand between his head and the cold concrete,” he said.

Romero could see Kennedy’s lips were moving and got close to the face of the U.S. senator from New York.

“Is everybody OK?" Kennedy asked him, he said.

“Yes, everybody is OK,” Romero replied.

“He was looking straight at me, and he relaxed his head and turned toward his right and I heard him say, ‘Everything is going to be OK,’ ” Romero recalled.

“I thought, OK, he’s conscious, and I tried to put my hand a little lower to open up his windpipe so he could be a little more relaxed.”

Romero was 17 at the time, still in high school, but he soon understood the situation was dire.

“I felt a warm stream of blood coming down between my hands. That’s when I started calling for help,” he said.

“I remember I was trying to encourage him, telling him, ‘Just hang in there. Everything is going to be OK. You said everything is going to be OK,’ ” he recalled.

Romero said Kennedy’s wife, Ethel, “gently” pushed him back as he grabbed a rosary out of his pocket and showed it to her.

“She released me, and I went to the senator and cupped the rosary in his hands and tried to close them, but his hands wouldn’t close. Every time I put the rosary in, it popped out again. So I wrapped it around his thumb and a couple of his fingers and went away,” he said.

Kennedy was pronounced dead nearly 26 hours later.

A black-and-white photo of Romero kneeling beside the mortally wounded senator quickly became the most iconic image of the American tragedy.

The grainy picture shows Kennedy lying on the floor with his arm outstretched. Romero is gently cradling Kennedy’s head while dressed in a stark white uniform jacket.

The haunting image was compared to both a crucifixion and a Pieta. Like famous photos depicting President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in April 1968, it became a shorthand symbol for the shattering of American idealism.

For Romero, the photo was shattering on a very personal level. He spent decades averting his eyes when confronted by the snapshot. To him, it was a grotesque reminder of the shocking slaying — one that stoked a confusing mix of anger, guilt and unwanted attention.

“For a long time, I was so angry. Angry at myself for not being able to do anything. Angry at the police for not protecting him. Angry at God for letting it happen. I was so miserable. I didn’t want to talk about it,” he told The News.

It wasn’t until he reached his 60s that Romero finally saw something in the image that helped him accept its place in the history books, he said.

“About five years ago, I finally looked at the picture and really studied it. I could finally see what a lot of other people saw. Here was a senator who tried to help minorities, people who couldn’t help themselves, and in the moment when he needed help, here was a Mexican-American busboy trying to comfort him,” Romero told The News.

Romero, now a father and grandfather working in the construction industry in San Jose, Calif., recalled immigrating to the U.S. from Nayarit, Mexico, when he was 10.

“It felt so great to be in America. But as I grew older, I heard grownups say all we were good for was selling tacos,” he recalled.

“At 15 to 16 years old, you start to feel the hate, and you start to internalize it,” he said.

Romero said it was a big deal when he heard how Kennedy’s brother John F. Kennedy praised Mexican people as hardworking and family-oriented.

“All those words really meant something to me,” he said.

Romero said Robert Kennedy’s friendship with labor leader Cesar Chavez also made a big impression on him.

“I remember looking at the news, and it was Robert Kennedy with his white shirt, shirt sleeves rolled up, walking with Cesar Chavez on one side and a migrant worker on the other. You knew he could be rubbing elbows with royalty and here he was next to a farmworker, proud and smiling,” Romero said.

When Romero first heard Kennedy was at the Ambassador, he bribed another busboy for the chance to deliver room service to the senator, he said.

“I wanted to go and help serve that night because I really wanted to see if what I had heard and seen and felt in my heart was true. And it was beyond real for me. When he looked at you, he looked at you,” Romero said.

He recalled Kennedy giving him a “strong two-handed shake” during their first interaction on June 4.

“I was like, ‘Wow,’ ” he said of the encounter. “I really felt like I was 10 feet tall.”

He was in the pantry at the time of the shooting hoping for another opportunity to meet his idol.

Romero said that by sharing his memories on the anniversary of Kennedy’s death, he hopes to reach at least one young person today who might be feeling the same way he did as a teen.

He said in the era of President Trump’s crackdown on immigration, it’s especially important to honor Kennedy’s legacy.

“Trump right now, he’s using immigrants, whether Muslims or Latin Americans, as scapegoats. He has brought a lot of hate toward immigrants and minorities,” Romero said.

“My hope is that my talking about (Kennedy) causes a young person to look back in history and listen to his words and pick up his way of thinking,” he said.

“I realized the best way to honor Bobby was to talk about what I saw in him.”