![]() She told him that when she looked at the photos from the Ambassador, she saw a brave young man who tried to help someone who’d been hurt, even as others retreated. His buddy Chacon and I told him he had nothing to apologize for, but Romero knelt at the grave, spoke softly and wept.įive years later, Romero emailed me to say he was finally feeling better with the help of a friend he had met on Facebook. He said he wanted to pay his respects, tell Kennedy he had tried to live a life of tolerance and humility, and to apologize. In 2010, I met up with Romero in Washington and went with him to Arlington National Cemetery, where RFK is buried. He got tired of being asked by Ambassador guests to pose for photographs, found work in Wyoming, then made his home in San Jose. That made him uncomfortable, and so did letters from people asking him why he didn’t do something to prevent the assassination. ![]() He still had Kennedy’s blood on his hand and said he chose not to wash it off.Īs if the experience wasn’t traumatic enough, Romero said he got letters from people congratulating him for what he did. Romero was taken to the Rampart police station for questioning, then took a bus to Roosevelt High the next morning. MORE: The assassination of Robert Kennedy, as told 50 years later » Romero said he was carrying rosary beads in his pocket and stuffed them into Kennedy’s hands. Romero thought that the pops were from firecrackers and that Kennedy had fallen in fright, but Romero then saw blood spilling onto his own hand and realized what had happened as Sirhan Sirhan, the man with the gun, was apprehended. He said that just as he shook Kennedy’s hand, the shots were fired. The next night, after Kennedy won California’s Democratic primary and made a victory speech, he retreated through the kitchen pantry area and Romero pushed through the crowd to congratulate him. He became an Ambassador busboy on the advice of his strict stepfather, who worked at the hotel and wanted Romero to be sure to stay out of trouble on the streets of East Los Angeles. “I remember walking out of that room … feeling 10 feet tall, feeling like an American,” said Romero, who had moved to Los Angeles from Mexico seven years earlier. Romero told me he had met Kennedy the night before when the candidate ordered room service, and he felt honored by the way Kennedy shook his hand firmly and looked him in the eye with respect. When I met Romero in 1998, just before the 30th anniversary of the assassination, he fell apart in recalling the fateful night and how he happened to be in the hotel pantry area where Kennedy was shot. In our many conversations over the years, he said he often felt we were moving further politically from what he saw as a Kennedy legacy of tolerance and compassion. Romero was in the habit of leaving flowers at that monument each year to mark RFK’s death. Kennedy and 1968 (Carlos Chavez / Los Angeles Times) In your words: Share your memories of Robert F. “There could be no better memorial to my father than a living memorial that educates the children of this city,” said Max Kennedy, son of RFK, at a groundbreaking ceremony on Nov. ![]() Kennedy’s family had supported the razing of the building to make way for a new public school. ![]() Workers demolish a wing of the 85-year-old Ambassador Hotel, where Robert F. The candidate had spoken there not long before his death and told throngs of supporters that poverty and illiteracy were indecent, and he warned of “an erosion of a sense of national decency.” That day, we met at a downtown San Jose park, near a monument to Kennedy. His marriage had failed many years earlier, but he said he was in regular contact with his children from that marriage, and he was giddy about a new romance with a Modesto woman. When I met with Romero in June, on the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s death, he told me he loved the hard, sweaty work of paving driveways and roads, and he had no intention of retiring. “He passed away on Monday morning.”Ī niece and a brother confirmed Romero’s death, but family members were unavailable for comment. “He had a heart attack several days ago and his brain went too long without oxygen,” said his longtime friend, TV newsman Rigo Chacon of San Jose. That only made the news of Romero’s death this week in Modesto, at age 68, seem all the more tragic. ![]()
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