NOTE: Enjoy this excerpt from The American Daily Reader, by CatholicVote president Brian Burch and Emily Stimpson Chapman. To order the complete volume, visit the CatholicVote store today!
At 12:30 p.m. on June 8, 1968, a train left New -York’s Grand Central Station. On board were the friends and family of Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
Earlier that morning, thousands filled St. Patrick’s Cathedral for Kennedy’s Requiem Mass. Black and white, rich and poor, Congressmen and migrant -laborers-all came to pay tribute to the slain presidential candidate who, as a U.S. attorney general and senator, fought against organized crime, championed civil rights, and advocated for the fair treatment of workers.
Kennedy, like his older brother John, was assassinated in his prime. Shortly after midnight on June 5, he finished celebrating his victory in the California presidential primary and headed off to meet the press. As he passed through the hotel’s kitchen the assassin fired. Kennedy died the following day.
By the time the funeral train left Grand Central Station on June 8, tens of thousands had paid tribute to Kennedy while he lay in state at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. As his body made its way to Washington, D.C., perhaps a million more people lined the tracks to do the same.
Inside the train, Kennedy’s wife Ethel, pregnant with the couple’s 11th child, held her rosary tightly and slowly made her way through the long line of 20 cars, thanking the mourners for their support. As for the mourners, journalist Frank Mankiewicz recalled that the Catholics drank and told stories, the Protestants sat in silence (scandalized by the Catholics drinking and telling stories), and the Jews wept.
“They’d have torn their clothes if they’d thought of it,” he wrote.
Although the journey should have taken four hours, it took more than eight, with the crowds of mourners along the way slowing them down. Not until 9 p.m. did the train pull into Union Station and Bobby Kennedy’s funeral procession begin.
Wending its way through the capital’s dark streets, the procession moved -toward Arlington National Cemetery. And there, with Washington’s Archbishop Patrick Cardinal O’Boyle officiating, they laid Kennedy to rest beside the brother he served so well.
