Spa City native upholds RFK’s legacy 50 years later
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. » Presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy’s labor adviser, Paul Schrade, had just flown to Los Angeles and was headed home because he didn’t like political victory parties.
But turning on the car radio, he heard RFK was trailing U.S. Sen. Eugene McCarthy, D-Minn., in the California primary and decided
he’d better join Kennedy at campaign headquarters at the Ambassador Hotel.
As results came in, it turned out Kennedy had won and he publicly thanked Schrade, a Saratoga Springs native, while addressing a large crowd of exuberant supporters in the hotel ballroom. Minutes later, both men were gunned down and life began ebbing from Kennedy, who died 50 years ago this week, at 1:44 a.m. on June 6, 1968.
The first shot from Sirhan B. Sirhan’s gun missed Kennedy and glanced off Schrade’s forehead.
“I started shaking violently,” he said. “I thought I was being electrocuted. I fell and was totally unconscious. I didn’t know Bob had been shot for a while.”
Kennedy, lying in a pool of blood, his head cradled by hotel busboy Juan Romero, said, “Is everybody OK? Is Paul all right?”
Schrade, 93, is featured prominently in a new fourpart Netflix documentary, “Bobby Kennedy for President,” in which he discusses the late political icon’s legacy, fight for social justice, tragic death and his own unwavering conviction that a second gunman, not Sirhan, fired the bullet that killed Kennedy.
“Paul is an inspirational and dedicated advocate seeking what is just, right and fair for people,” said Laura Michalchyshyn, the documentary’s executive producer. “We are honored to have him as a key subject in the series and as a leader for social justice and workers’ rights. We support his quest to understand what happened to his friend, Robert Kennedy, and his continued advocacy for justice and truth in the case of Sirhan Sirhan.”
There’s no doubt Sirhan fired eight shots, which wounded Schrade and four other people. But witnesses said Sirhan was a few feet in front of Kennedy, while a coroner’s report said the fatal bullet struck Kennedy behind the right ear, from extremely close range.
An audio recording raises the possibility of 13 shots, also indicating a second gunman. Regardless of the crimes Sirhan committed, Schrade believes he is not guilty of killing Kennedy.
“The record ought to be clear in our history that Robert Kennedy gets justice,” he said. “Justice isn’t convicting a man who didn’t shoot him. There should be a new investigation. I accuse the prosecution. They’re the guilty ones for having evidence of a second gunman and never taking it to a jury; in fact blocking it.”
Until recently, Kennedy’s children have shied away from the case, which has been too painful to deal with. But The Washington Post reported last week that 64-year-old Robert F. Kennedy Jr. visited Sirhan in prison right before Christmas, and now wants a reinvestigation, too.
“The people that were closest to [Sirhan], the people that disarmed him all said he never got near my father,” he told the Post.
Media outlets around the world, from countries such as Germany, Japan and Jordan, have sought Schrade out as the 50th anniversary of RFK’s death approaches.
After leaving Saratoga Springs for the West Coast, Schrade became a high-ranking United Auto Workers official during the 1950s, and was instrumental in delivering California delegates that helped John F. Kennedy secure the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination at the 1960 convention in Los Angeles.
“I worked with Bob for two weeks there,” Schrade said. “He was very effective politically. That sort of cemented my relationship with Bob. We worked together on lots of stuff after that.”
So it was only natural that RFK turned to Schrade as labor advisor during his 1968 bid for the White House.
The documentary highlights Kennedy’s determination to help America’s poor and underprivileged wherever they might be, such as oppressed Latino farm workers in California, poverty-stricken blacks on the Mississippi Delta, and young Native Americans without hope of a better life, on western reservations.
“Through meeting with Paul, we learned about RFK’s deep interest and commitment to working with leaders such as Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta on equality and equity for workers, immigrants, women and support for the working class,” Michalchyshyn said. “We also learned that RFK traveled across America, to small towns and large cities and spent countless hours reaching out to people all over to listen to their issues and share his message of progress and a new positive future. He was not afraid to roll up his sleeves and get to work, interacting and visiting places that were unexpected for politicians at the time. He was an inspiration and believed in equity and justice for all. His words, ‘We can do better’ still resonate today.”
One of the documentary’s most poignant moments is Schrade’s meeting with Romero, the Ambassador Hotel busboy, looking up at a large mural of Latino farm workers at the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools, a complex of six inner-city Los Angeles schools built on the former hotel site.
Every day, hundreds of young students strive to better themselves while utilizing the school’s Paul Schrade Library, which was dedicated in November 2010. Kennedy’s commitment to social justice is evident throughout the more than 4,000-student campus with numerous paintings, quotations and exhibits.
Similarly, Schrade said he was pleased with the documentary’s outcome, which details RFK’s political development, starting as John F. Kennedy’s campaign manager, then U.S. attorney General, U.S. senator from New York and finally his own 83-day presidential campaign.
“It shows that Bob was giving us great leadership at a very difficult time of riots and protests, a war period,” Schrade said. “He had answers that would have changed things for us.”
Michalchyshyn said one of the documentary’s main goals is “to indeed educate a new generation of Americans about RFK’s important legacy, especially in this time of political unrest and discourse.
“We all believe that Robert Kennedy was a leader of much inspiration and conviction and had he lived, we may be living in very different political times,” she said.