I have told this story quite a few times over the years, probably because it has had such a profound impact on me.
It was back in the early nineties while I was working at a famous/ infamous Los Angeles restaurant. It was a Saturday evening and we had just opened at 5pm. A well dressed man in his early sixties walked into the restaurant. He was early and was waiting for five other guests to arrive.
Our General Manager told me to sit him on table four which was a table for six or more guests and looked directly out at Santa Monica Boulevard. He followed me and sat down at the very end of the table. I asked him if he would like a drink and he replied, “Yes please, a Johnny Walter Black on the rocks.”
I brought him the drink and he asked where I was from and I told him from the Bronx but that my father was born and raised in Massachusetts. In the city of Lawrence and during the summer time they lived in the resort city of Salisbury Beach.
He was also from Massachusetts, and when I asked him if he now lived in Los Angles he replied, “God no!” He still lived in Massachusetts but travelled the country quite a lot. He was even quite familiar with the part of the Bronx I was from.
He continued, “That for the longest time he didn’t visit Los Angeles, and it was only lately, after twenty years, that he started to come back to visit friends.”
I asked, “Did you dislike the city that much?”
He simply shook his head and took a sip from his glass and replied, “I was Robert Kennedy’s chief advisor during his 1968 run for president. I was at the Ambassador Hotel, celebrating his California victory in the primary, when he was killed.”
He took another sip from his glass and continued, “I don’t know what you think about President John F. Kennedy or Senator Ted Kennedy, but one thing I can tell you for sure and that is that Robert F. Kennedy is the best human being I have ever known.”
His eyes watered over as he finished the scotch in his glass and looked out at Sant Monica Blvd. I picked up his glass and remarked, “This one is on the house.”
He replied, “You don’t need to do that.”
“Oh yes I do,” as I walked over to the bar with the empty glass and felt tears rolling down my cheeks.
The other guests arrived just as I turned from the bar with the new drink. He stood up and greeted all his guests and then, like a real gentleman, he introduced me to each of his guests and remarked, “He’s been a joy to talk to while I waited.”
Ernest Hemingway remarked, “To be a great writer, one has to write honestly.” I have met and conversed with many politicians, made friends and conversed for hours with many of the Hollywood elite, and talked to Nobel Prize winners in a range of different fields and to this very day the words, ROBERT F. KENNEDY IS THE BEST HUMAN BEING I HAVE EVER KNOWN were to me the most honest statement any one individual said to me while working at that famous/infamous restaurant.
It was after talking to that gentleman that I decided to put aside all innuendos and rumors I have ever heard about the Kennedys and to do my own historical research on the Kennedys and no one individual and historian has been more helpful and knowledgeable to me than the great Doris Kearns Goodwin. First, with her biography “The FItzgeralds and the Kennedys,” followed by “Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream,” and finally with “An Unfinished Love Story. The Personal History of the 1960’s.”
“An Unfinished Love Story,” to me at least, is a tribute to her late husband Richard Goodwin who was a speech writer and advisor to President John Kennedy, President Lyndon Johnson (until he stopped working for him in 1965 over the Viet Nam War, which he did not support. The war took priority over Civil Rights and replaced the great record of accomplishments President Johnson had compiled during his first two years as President), for a short time for Senator Eugene McCarthy, and finally for Senator Robert F. Kennedy when he joined the democratic race for president against McCarthy.
To say that Mr. Goodwin was a man of great moral integrity might be an understatement. He could have made a fortune, not by being one of the great speechwriters of all time and an advisor, but by simply selling his great skills to the highest bidder.
Mr. Goodwin and his wife Doris Kearns, toward the end of his life, decided to go through the attic filled boxes in their home in Concord, Mass. that were titled the 1960’s. What they uncovered was a treasure throve, a first hand account, of the 1960’s through the eyes of her husband, through his many speeches, random ideas, and concrete ideas while working for two Presidents, senator McCarthy, and Robert F. Kennedy.
She also contributed with her written recollections of the 1960’s as a graduate student, an activist, and finally working for President Johnson during the very end of his term as President, and eventually went down to his home in Texas and helped him write his memoirs.
Many of the famous speeches delivered by Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and by Robert F. Kennedy were drafted by Mr. Goodwin who never compromised his belief in equal rights for all, and the hope of a better future for all mankind.
“An Unfinished Love Story,” is a treasure that I highly, highly recommend.
And as for my historical research into the Kennedys I learned that to truly understand history one cannot rely on newspaper articles, or rumors, or partisan insanity and disinformation.
One simply needs to do the research and read actual accounts of what happened and how the individuals, often unheard of heroes, influenced the country and made it the envy of the world…at least until recently when our 45th president, our republican congress, and our corrupt Supreme Court decided to take a wrecking ball to it. I can only hope that more Americans wake up to the fantastic job President Biden has done in restoring America to its once prominent place. “The Shining City on the Hill.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYiOUEjzZNs
And yes, I have no doubt that the customer, the advisor to Robert F. Kennedy, saw the greatest human being he has ever met in Mr. Kennedy. After Robert Kennedy rose from the shadows of his legendary brother, President Kennedy, he represented the very best in a human being and proved it over and over again. First, with his trip to South Africa in support of the anti-apartheid movement and then in his legendary run for president and the promise of a presidency that would fight for the equal rights and opportunities that all Americans deserved and an end to the war in Viet Nam.
A Curious View 