#Robert kennedy busboy tv

#Robert kennedy busboy tv

“He had a heart attack several days ago and his brain went too long without oxygen,” said his longtime friend, TV newsman Rigo Chacon of San Jose. That only made the news of Romero’s death last week in Modesto, at age 68, seem all the more tragic. Finally, he said, he was able to mark his birthday after years of refusing to celebrate because it was in the same month as RFK’s assassination. It was only in recent years that Romero began to let go, and in my visits with him three years ago and again this past June, he seemed to have been revived. and by five years the assassination of RFK’s brother, President John F. The photos of that moment, with confusion and despair in Romero’s young, dark eyes, made for searing portraits of 1960s upheaval and followed by two months the assassination of the Rev. attorney general, cradled Kennedy’s head, and tried to help him up before realizing how gravely wounded Kennedy was. Romero, just 17 at the time, squatted next to the fallen U.S. Kennedy, a candidate for president of the United States. That was the night an assassin took aim at Robert F. He left Los Angeles and moved to Wyoming, later came back west and settled in San Jose, raised a family and devoted himself to construction work.īut still he was haunted by what happened just after midnight on June 5, 1968, when he was on duty as a busboy at the Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard near Koreatown. Romero overcame his guilt, thanks in part to the support of Kennedy admirers who told him that he was an example of the type of person Kennedy embraced.Juan Romero struggled for decades with a memory he could not escape. Or he could have pushed him out of the way.’’Įventually Mr. He ‘‘asked him for forgiveness for the fact that he didn’t think he reacted soon enough,’’ Chacon recalled.

Romero wept as he spoke directly to the senator. When he visited Kennedy’s grave at Arlington National Cemetery a few years ago, Mr.

For years he blamed himself for Kennedy’s death - wondering if he could have done something to prevent the shooting or if Kennedy might have survived if he had not stopped to shake his hand. Romero a place in history he never wanted. That’s what has always struck me about those photos.’’ ‘‘But really the heart of it,’’ Kennerly added, ‘‘was this unknown person was there to help Senator Kennedy when he was down. ‘‘It was a really dramatic picture with the light coming in from the side,’’ Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer David Hume Kennerly said Thursday. Romero was misidentified in some early reports as a priest. Kennedy died the next day at 42.īecause of the beads, his white busboy smock, and the beatific look on his face, Mr. Romero pressed a set of rosary beads into the senator’s hand as news photographers frantically took pictures. ‘‘Everything will be OK,’’ the senator replied shortly before losing consciousness.Īs they talked, Mr. Romero jumped at the chance to meet him again.Īfter gunfire rang out and Kennedy fell, Mr. he was looking at me as an American.’’Īfter Kennedy won the primary he thanked supporters in the hotel’s Embassy Room then cut through the kitchen for a meeting with reporters. ‘‘He wasn’t looking at my skin, he wasn’t looking at my age. looking right at you with those piercing eyes that said, ‘I'm one of you. ‘‘I will never forget the handshake and the look. Romero’s hand with both of his and said, ‘‘Thank you.’’ ‘‘All I remember was that I kept staring at him with my mouth open,’’ he would say later.įinally, Kennedy approached, grabbed Mr. He was working at the Ambassador Hotel the day before the June 1968 California primary when Kennedy and his aides ordered room service and he was called on to help deliver it.

As the son of a tough disciplinarian father, however, he said he was too afraid to take part. Romero was a student at Roosevelt High School in 1968, the year Chicano students started organizing walkouts to protest discrimination against Mexican-American students. The family lived in blue-collar East Los Angeles and Mr. Born in the small town of Mazatan, in the Mexican state of Sonora, Juan Romero lived in Baja California until his family received permission to bring him to the United States as a 10-year-old.