Thursday, June 7, 2018

Robert Kennedy, and Juan Romero

After Robert Kennedy was shot, fifty years ago this week, a seventeen-year-old busboy who worked at Los Angeles's Ambassador Hotel, Juan Romero, knelt beside Kennedy, and attended to him, comforted him, briefly. Kennedy and Romero had shaken hands, a moment before the shooting.

"Is everybody OK?" Kennedy, who would die the next day, asked. Romero told him yes.  Kennedy then turned his head toward his right, Romero recalled, in a newspaper interview which appeared earlier this week. "Everything will be OK," Romero heard him say.

Shortly after, Romero placed a rosary, which he had in one of his pockets, around one of Kennedy's hands.

Juan Romero with Robert Kennedy (Photo: Boris Yaro/ Los Angeles Times)

















Here is a brief interview with Mr. Romero, now 67, which aired on National Public Radio last week.

https://www.npr.org/2018/06/01/615534723/the-busboy-who-cradled-a-dying-rfk-recalls-those-final-moments

Here, too, is a story from June 2nd's Daily News, in New York:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ny-news-busboy-rfk-assassination-20180602-story.html