June 05, 1968… I was “out in the field” and when we returned to Base camp we heard the tragic news…
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp=24895974�](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp=24895974�)
No matter what our political views were this was truly a sad day for all of us.
A sad day indeed. I was quite young but remember it well. I never understood was his killer escaped the death penalty.
We had spent 11 bloody days out in the jungle and when we returned and heard the news it just seemed to suck the life right out of us.
I did not agree with his political views but the tragic death of his brother / our President JFK was still fresh in my memory.
Now 40-years later his killer is still being provide with room, board, and medical care!:twisted:
I say that they should have slowly skinned him alive!
{and it is still not too late to do so!}
Not even two months after King…1968 was the most surreal year in our history.
If it were not for the comfort of seeing Richard Nixon on “Laugh In”, I would have been quite nervous about the times…
I saw RFK at Notre Dame on April 4, 1968. He was in the middle of his insurgent campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination. I was standing behind the convertible that he was riding in on Juniper Road on the ND campus. He was standing on the back seat and reaching out to the outstretched hands of an adoring horde of students. When I shook his hand, I noticed that his cuffs no longer sported cuff links which I suspect had been appropriated by an overenthusiastic souvenir hunter. It was the second time that I had shaken RFK’s hand, the first occurring here in 1960.
Later that day, Martin Luther King, Jr. was gunned down in Memphis.
On June 5, 1968, I was closing a bar in North Philadelphia around the time that he was gunned down. The next morning, my brother awakened me with the news.
Two weeks later, I was a ‘slick sleeve’ at Ft. Leonard Wood, MO.
It is odd what you remember, though. I remember a spokesman stating that Dr. Fager, a renowned neurosurgeon, had been called in to handle the case. Dr. Fager had been Ogden Phipps’s neurosurgeon. Ogden Phipps was a quite wealthy horse breeder. He subsequently named a horse after Dr. Fager who went on to become a great champion.
Hard to believe it has been 40 years.
I remember it like it was yesterday, it was all so surreal, hard to describe, one thing I’m sure of though, this one event help to shape my political views to this day.
“Bobby planed a new deal, wraped in gloden chains, and I wonder still I wonder who’ll stop the rain” CCR
“Anybody here seen my old friend, Bobby? Can you tell me where he’s gone. I thought I saw him walking up over the hill with Abraham and Martin and John…”