The Times Herald (Norristown, PA)
50 years later, memories of RFK’s murder still haunt
She was only 28 years old as she stood on the side of the railroad tracks with her husband and their toddler in Marcus Hook, waiting for the funeral train to pass by.
And despite the passage of 50 years, Fran Hamilton remembers the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy and its aftermath, leading to the train traveling from New York to Washington.
“All the people were lined up at the tracks,” the 77-year-old Concord resident said. “There were people lined up all the way up and down that track.”
Kennedy had just declared victory in the California Democratic presidential primary race at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968. He exited through a kitchen where 24-year-old Sirhan Sirhan shot Kennedy with a .22-caliber gun at pointblank range. Twenty-six hours later, the New York senator died at Good Samaritan Hospital.
His death came at a crucial time in the United States history. His brother, President John F. Kennedy, had been assassinated four and a half years earlier and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered only two months prior.
The country was embroiled in violent racial conflicts and domestic strife and international turmoil surrounding the Vietnam War.
“I think he was one of the first politicians that really saw the unfairness and mistreatment in the plight of the black people in this country,” Hamilton said. “He was for the poor, I knew that.”
Hamilton recalled how turbulent times were.
“Our country is in bad shape now,” said Hamilton, who is white. “Back in 1968, it was bad ... I didn’t realize how bad our country was back then.”
She spoke of AfricanAmerican people who were killed, the practice of hosing and using dogs aggressively.
“My brother served in Vietnam,” Hamilton added. “Believe me, it changed his life. My brother-in-law served in Vietnam. He had his kidney removed and they believed it was from Agent Orange.”
She said racism was a severe problem.
“You didn’t go into the so-called ‘black zones,’” she said. “You barely didn’t speak to them. You were taught to be afraid of them.”
She said remembered a Sun Oil Co. picnic during that era.
“We were on one side,” she said of the white people. “Across the street, there was a park for the black people but it had no pool. These were employees. I thought that was so cruel. After the Civil Rights Act, they were allowed to come into our pool.”
Hamilton remembered getting the call from her mother, Catherine Losak, about Kennedy’s death.
“I was in my house watching the television,” Hamilton said. “I just remember my mother calling. I remember my mother being very upset. She really liked Robert Kennedy. My mother did call me, ‘Oh my God! They killed him! They killed him!’”
She said she also liked Robert Kennedy.
Comparing him to his brother, the president, Hamilton said, “At the time when John Kennedy was elected, I know I liked him. In the years since, I found out that he was such a cheater, that really made my opinion of him drop to the ground ... (Robert Kennedy) too had an affair with Marilyn Monroe. Who knows if it’s true or not? He wasn’t the womanizer like his brother was.”
Hamilton was shocked Sirhan was able to get so close to Kennedy.
“I couldn’t believe that he didn’t have better security,” she said. “How’d they let this happen? Where was the security for this man? I do feel that the Secret Service fell down on that job.”
At the time, the Secret Service was not assigned to presidential candidates.
Hamilton said that when the funeral train did come through Delaware County, she recalled seeing Kennedy’s flag-draped coffin.
“You could see it through the windows,” she said. “(The train) did go slow. It moved slowly. I saw one of the Kennedys come out on the caboose and wave to everybody.”
She said she believes he would have become president had he survived.
“It’s a different world,” Hamilton said. “A lot of things are better, a lot of things are worse. I think he was a good man. Things could be different in our country if he had lived.”