It was supposed to be a week of celebration.
My cousin was getting married. It was going to be a huge affair, with extended family gathering for what undoubtedly would be a major family reunion/party.
But there was something else going on that Tuesday, something that, as usual, captured my mother's attention.
To say my mother was a big Kennedy fan is a bit of an understatement.
Her favorite story was how she joined her brother, my uncle Frank, one Friday afternoon when JFK flew in to open up the new section of I-95 in Elkton, Maryland.
I must have listened to her tell that story a million times. She always told it exactly the same way. She would tell us she was as close to her hero as that wall, as she extended her arm while standing in her large kitchen.
She would mention that his hair appeared much redder in person. And, of course, it did not escape her notice that he was even better looking in person than he appeared on TV.
A few weeks later, she was behind the counter at the little store she ran in the town where I grew up when one of the insurance salesmen who worked in the space on the other side of the store poked his head in and told my mother the news.
"Hey, did you hear your boy's been shot?"
That's how my mother learned her hero had been assassinated.
Five years later, while eagerly anticipating the wedding of her sister's oldest daughter, my mother had one eye on California.
Bobby Kennedy was involved in a pitched battle for the Democratic nomination to be president with Sen. Eugene McCarthy.
It was late on the East Coast, but it did not stop mom from keeping tabs on her new hero.
Imagine, another Irish Catholic seeking the highest office in the land.
My mother had a fairly simple rule when it came to politics.
D = Good.
R = Bad.
No, I didn't always agree with her. For years I tried to persuade her it was not that simple.
She would hear nothing of it. She was a product of the Depression. She saw what it did to her father, and her family. She blamed Republicans, and she would never forget.
FDR was her hero.
But JFK was near to God.
And Bobby Kennedy was the heir apparent, someone who seemed to understand the plight of the downtrodden.
So my mother was ebullient on learning that RFK had been victorious in the California Primary.
It didn't last long.
After accepting victory in that packed ballroom in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, there seemed to be some confusion as Bobby Kennedy left the podium. He was eventually hustled through the kitchen in an attempt to get him to the waiting media throng.
Instead, it was in that kitchen that RFK met Sirhan Sirhan.
I will never forget my mother's reaction.
Not again.
RFK lingered into the early morning hours before the dreaded announcement was made.
Another brother had been struck down.
It was early Wednesday morning, June 5.
My cousin was being married that Saturday, June 8.
I remember my aunt, my mother's sister, arriving from Florida. She was every bit as strident as mom when it came to politics. I wondered how they were going to make it through the week. She announced on her arrival that they simply were not going to talk about it, that they were here to celebrate the wedding.
That Saturday they did just that. My cousin married a guy from Boston and it seemed like the whole town wanted in on the party. After the reception the entire wedding party walked from downtown to my aunt and uncle's home, where the party last deep into the night.
I was just a kid, all of 12 years old.
Fifty years later, I can remember it like it was yesterday.
A little bit of my mom died on Nov. 22, 1963.
Another big chunk died on June 5, 1968.
Ironically, the train that carried RFK's body from New York to Washington went through Elkton, Md., not far from where mom had once gotten up close and personal with her hero. Crowds jammed the tracks all along the route.
I don't think the country has been the same since.
Our innocence was gone. Our ideals had been shattered. The '60's were coming to an end. The tumult of the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon and the '70's lay ahead.
And it all started 50 years ago today.
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