By
Maggie Kazel
(Maggie Kazel grew up in McLean, Va. and went to high school with Bobby Kennedy’s children. She is currently living in the Central Hillside.)
My daughter knew but wouldn’t tell me they’d made a movie about Robert Kennedy. She watched me closely as I viewed the movie’s first TV advertisement. I suppressed my emotional reaction and instead merely said, “I hope they don’t blow it.” This is when she decided to ventured forth, telling me of an interview she saw with the film’s director. “He seemed to really want to make a good movie, he really did care about him.”
Of course, I’m older and somewhat jaded. I’m tempted to tell her a director’s career may well rest on his ability to schmooze like this, but I hold in my cynicism. At least I think I did.
Days later, I learn who the director is: Emilio Estevez, son of Martin Sheen, one of Robert Kennedy’s friends. Once I knew, I breathed a sigh of relief and told my daughter, yes, he probably did care very much. She then told me Emilio’s father knew the exact spot where he stood in the hotel kitchen where Robert Kennedy was shot. She was impressed by the fact that he could remember this, and I explained how much he meant to so many of us. She’s heard this many times before and yet I persist, adding new information, things she was too young to know before, things she now understands, whether I want her to or not.
I tell her about the United Farm Workers campaigning ceaselessly, door-to-door, across the entire state of California. 14,000 members strong, the UFW was an army of a union. And wanting to be eminently clear, they’d knock and say only these words: ”Vote Bobby”, ”Vote Bobby”, ”Vote Bobby.” Their miraculous foot patrol turned the election. My daughter knows about the migrant farm workers, and how they came to my church. Bobby brought them. He brought everyone to our church because the priests happily let him. He and his wife Ethel faithfully brought their enormous brood of children and nannies every week, being dyed-in-the-wool Irish Catholic. Our pastor had a much easier job, thanks to Bobby’s desire to awaken our consciences, our sense of outrage and empathy.
I remember the UFW visits, and the Oreo cookies their nanny passed out amongst the ten kids to keep them quiet through the entire mass, no small feat. And I remember always schlepping along with my youngest siblings to one of their events: in and out the Hickory Hill backyard for holiday parties, Art Buchwald’s annual pet show, and trips through the kitchen, where Ethel managed brilliantly from a long couch in the middle of it. I remember thinking, my mom has lots of kids, she should get a couch like that. Ethel handled everything deftly: if your kid cried, she invited you in, gave the child treats, or a dog to pet, or whatever was needed to bring the child to peace. And most of all I recall that I was always longing for one thing: the hand of this allegedly 'ruthless' man to touch my head, yet again. He’d do that, pat my head, my shoulder, in church or wherever I saw him. Bobby had an affinity for children. This is why I studied his career, years later, and found what it was I trusted in him, politically. A man who clearly appreciates the wonders and vulnerabilities of children, this is someone I want to see in office. Mainly, though, I wasn’t thinking politically back then, I simply wanted him as my surrogate father. I had a father already, but an extra wouldn’t hurt. Bobby’s eyes conveyed an acute sense of understanding, and his words came out gently, as he'd be trying to make you laugh.
Two moments in the movie ”Bobby” that show the man I knew best: first, he appears to be working a crowd, when he stops for a moment to tussle a little boy’s hair. A friendly, normal gesture, but then – he surprises the boy by running his hand up and down over the boy’s face, making the child peal out in giggles. The second involves the kind of action Bobby could inspire. A young Chicano, one of the hotel kitchen employees, was cradling Bobby’s head as he lay on the kitchen floor. The young man presses a rosary into one of Bobby’s hands. It is this gesture, small and simple, that makes me think of how he affected us. He inspired us to care for one another, in whatever ways we knew. This is the man I knew, this is the man I miss. The film is about, more than anything else, his powerful affect on many, many different types of people across the globe, but mostly the invisible amongst us, those in poverty, and those de colores.
It all ended in a jarring way – seeing Andy Williams, my mother’s favorite performer, singing at our church’s memorial mass, the gym packed, getting hotter and hotter by the minute … and then all of us, trudging up a hill in Arlington Cemetery, past his brother’s eternal flame. I stood in front of his grave, trying not to cry in front of what sounded like hundreds of cameras clicking and popping. It was as awful as the day before in school, every class a TV turned on, watching my special surrogate father murdered again, and again, and again. I was 12. I was learning yet again that violence works, emphatically, to congeal hatred and love in a single shot. My heart became strangely seared open and shut within that first televised moment when I saw him murdered … seared open to loving and working for others, seared shut to cope with the unbearable loss and the unremitting presence that is violence in my world.
He was a father to me and many others. He helped me see the world as it is, and see what I could do in it. What others saw as ruthless, I saw as deeply strategic. What others saw as privileged, I saw as privilege being used to the common good’s advantage. Perhaps the murder of his brother made all the suffering around him that much more difficult to bear: perhaps this is why he was a most unusual white man of privilege in America. To this day, very few politicians can claim his level of understanding and commitment to those amongst us who have nothing, less than nothing, who are being abused their every waking moment. He taught me well, on those Sundays, with pats on my head, and with the entourage of different speakers at Sunday Mass. He taught me most inventively, at his home’s gatherings for children each Halloween, Easter, and summer pet show. And finally, as for the bearing of unspeakable burden, with his murder he taught me to practice what I witnessed him doing for many years, which is the very meaning of endurance. Truly I owe this to him, because while he was amongst us I witnessed his suffering, after his brother’s murder. He made the most of his grief, channeling it through his commitments to work for the voiceless, for his family, friends, and even, I realize, honoring his staunchest enemies with tenacious challenges.
Through the cast of humble and worldly hotel employees and guests, the film focused on Robert Kennedy’s effect on us, on what he means to us even now. Beyond the tug of emotional memories, “Bobby” ventured into the realm of public arena, and showed personal magnetism alone can’t explain his unusual gifts, his demeanor with power. This film portrays some of the Bobby I knew and will always grieve. This film very much conveys the essence of how Bobby, beyond death even, inspires many of us to live, creating actions born of empathy, outrage and courage.
