Dear Editor
Did I ever tell you about the time I taught an astronaut something about space?
I was 15 years old in the spring of 1968, and my civic hero, Robert Kennedy, was running for the Democratic nomination for president. When it was announced that “Bobby” was going to speak at Cape Girardeau, my history teacher, Vernon Bruckerhoff, hired a bus to take PHS students to the event. Bus fare was just three bucks, and you got out of school early, who could resist?
We barely got to Cape in time for the speech, and I was a ballfield away from the stage. However, when RFK finished speaking, he and his entourage headed my way. The candidate was ringed by state troopers and dignitaries locked arm in arm. Bobby reached over his guardians, shaking hands with the manic crowd. Kennedy’s back was to me when the security ring edged alongside, and I made two determined attempts to slide between troopers.
No go.
With my red rover thrusts repulsed, you might say I went back to basics when confronted with the astronaut, John Glenn. I gave the Earth orbiter a poker face just as I dropped to my knees, swiftly crawling between his legs. Yes, he clicked his NASA heels, but my former weightlessness (120 pounds) proved elusive.
You snooze, you lose, John.
Inside the security ring, I shook Kennedy’s hand, ruffled his unruly hair, and then the biggest cop I’ve ever seen lifted me over the badges and into the thrashing crowd.
Two months after the happy handshake, during the first full week of summer vacation, my mother woke me up, imploring, “Jesse. Wake up. They shot Bobby!”
My mom was not a well-educated woman, but she had a knack for summing things up perfectly. It would have been more accurate for her to say, “Somebody shot Bobby,” but she had already connected the dots between the assassinations of JFK and his younger brother. It felt like there was a plot to kill the men we admired, and “they” implied conspiracy.
In the wake of the Charlie Kirk shooting in Utah, I’m sure many conservatives are thinking “they.”
It’s worth remembering that the Kennedy killers, Oswald and Sirhan, were mainly bitter near-do-wells who hoped to escape their sense of nothingness by hurting a successful, purposeful person. Bobby ended all of his campaign speeches with the saying, “Some men see things as they are, and ask ‘Why?’ I dream things that have never been, and ask, ‘Why not?’
Like another SEMO lad, who wrote a book titled, The Way Things Ought to Be, I too have dreamed things that have not come to pass. Now, ironically, my most fervent dream would be for all of us to “see things as they are.”
There is a great mountain standing before us, hidden in the fog that holds the shared goals, dreams, scars and beliefs of hardworking Republicans and Democrats. And there are those who have something to gain by perpetuating the dense gray mist.
Jesse Laurentius, Perryville
