When the Cheering Would Not Stop

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"When there were periods of crisis, you stood beside him. When there were periods of happiness, you laughed with him. And when there were periods of sorrow, you comforted him."

Robert F. Kennedy
Aug. 27, 1964

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It was the president's birthday, and he was scheduled to give a speech accepting his party's nomination that night. His newly anointed running mate also was scheduled to give a speech accepting his nomination.

But the delegates at the Democratic National Convention 50 years ago tonight gave their longest, most sustained ovation to the attorney general and late president's brother, Robert F. Kennedy.

Kennedy was there to introduce a film honoring his brother, who had been assassinated about nine months earlier.

There was no love lost between Lyndon Johnson and Bobby Kennedy. Johnson feared having to put Kennedy on the ticket with him to placate party leaders; the bad blood between them predated John F. Kennedy's administration, and LBJ had worried, on the day of the assassination, that Bobby Kennedy, as attorney general, would find some way to deny him the presidency.

That did not happen, of course, but so intent was LBJ on preventing Kennedy from seizing power that he had announced, early in 1964, that no members of his Cabinet would be considered for running mate.

(In my studies of that time, I have yet to see any kind of evidence that Kennedy ever wanted to be Johnson's running mate.)

Of course, that didn't prevent Johnson from relying heavily on Kennedy to get the Civil Rights Act passed earlier in the summer of 1964. If he was nothing else, Johnson was a political creature, and he knew the P.R. value of at least appearing to be in Kennedy's good graces. But he feared being upstaged by Kennedy.

Kennedy originally was scheduled to introduce the film on Tuesday, Aug. 25, but Johnson wanted to push it back to Thursday night. He was worried that a movement to draft Kennedy, born of the emotion of the moment, could force him to put Kennedy on the ticket. Consequently, he wanted Kennedy to make his appearance on Thursday night, the last night of the convention — when the nominations would be done deals and all that remained would be the acceptance speeches.

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Even though it was supposed to be Johnson's night.

Even though it was Johnson's birthday.

"I stood on the floor in the midst of the thunderous ovation," wrote historian Arthur Schlesinger. "I had never seen anything like it. Ordinarily an organ in the background controls the pandemonium of a convention. This time they stopped the organ after a moment or so. But the demonstration roared on, reaching a new intensity every time that Robert Kennedy, standing with a wistful half–smile on his face, tried to bring it to an end."

The delegates' ovation was not a surprise. The duration and fervor of it was.

As Schlesinger noted, Kennedy tried, unsuccessfully, to quiet the crowd so he could speak. Henry Jackson of Washington reportedly told Kennedy to let the delegates have their demonstration. "Let them get it all out of their systems," he supposedly said. And, for the most part, Kennedy did.

When Kennedy finally did speak, there couldn't have been a dry eye in the convention hall, particularly when he closed with a quotation from Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet:"

"When he shall die
Take him and cut him out in little stars
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun."

Burying Kennedy

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On this day 50 years ago, America said goodbye to the 35th president of the United States.

The numbing shock of the events of the previous Friday had worn off enough for the grief to set in, kind of like when the novocaine wears off and your jaw starts to hurt, and it was time to mourn for John F. Kennedy, the youngest man to be elected president and the youngest president to die.

On Saturday, Nov. 23, the president's flag–draped coffin was placed in the East Room for 24 hours. The next day, it was carried on a horse-–drawn caisson to the Capitol to lie in state.

The new president, Lyndon Johnson, proclaimed Monday, Nov. 25, a national day of mourning. A requiem mass was held for Kennedy at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington, with the archbishop of Boston, Richard Cardinal Cushing, presiding, then Kennedy was buried in Arlington Cemetery. Representatives of more than 90 countries attended the funeral.

My father and I usually have dinner together on Thursdays, and on more than one occasion he has observed that people are frozen in his memory as they were the last time he saw them. When I was growing up, he taught religion at a small college in central Arkansas. When he sees obituaries for old friends and colleagues that include pictures of them late in their lives, he can scarcely recognize them.

I guess it is like that for public figures.

Take John F. Kennedy Jr., for example. He was about to turn 3 when his father was killed, and, throughout his life, most people remembered his salute on this day 50 years ago. I can still remember my grandmother — who lived in Dallas most of her life and was not a Kennedy sympathizer — speaking of that "brave salute" that John–John gave his father's casket as it went by.

As an adult, he was recognizable because he had so much of the Kennedy look to him, but, right up until the time of his death in a plane crash in July 1999 — and even after — he lingered in the public's memory as little "John–John." Even though he went on to accomplish other things as an adult, the salute he gave his father's casket following the conclusion of the requiem mass was what most people remembered.

After he died, I remember reading obituaries that mentioned his childhood nickname in the lead paragraph. It was how most people probably remembered him, even though he had spent some time in the public eye as he launched a politically oriented magazine.

On this day in 1963, though, he and his sister were regarded as too young to attend the burial. John–John's salute, in addition to being an iconic image, was his final farewell to his father.

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Anyone who has ever lived through the sudden death of a loved one knows that it doesn't end with the funeral, that there are many unexpected issues to confront in the weeks, months, even years that follow. It is a journey, sometimes an arduous one. So it was with those who survived John F. Kennedy.

It was on this day in 1963 that the president's brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, truly embarked on what historian Arthur Schlesinger called the "corridors of grief" that he would have to navigate. To an extent, I guess, it was that way for all the Kennedys.

"[F]or those who believed in a universe infused by the Almighty with pattern and purpose — as the Kennedys did — Dallas brought on a philosophical as well as an emotional crisis," Schlesinger wrote. "Robert Kennedy in particular had to come to terms with his brother's death before he could truly resume his own existence."

The first steps on that journey began 50 years ago today.