Clinton Urges Americans To Celebrate RFK's Legacy
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Clinton taped the radio tribute Friday at the Massachusetts
home of RFK's son, U.S. Rep. Joseph Kennedy III
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WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, June 6) -- On the 30th anniversary
of the death of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, President
Bill Clinton called on Americans Saturday to celebrate his
legacy of reaching out to others.
"We can do the memory of Robert Kennedy no greater honor than
to dedicate ourselves, as he did, to tame the savageness of
man and make gentle the life of this world," the Democratic
president said in his weekly radio address. "We still strive
to answer his insistent challenge to do good and to do
better."
Kennedy, the brother of the late President John F. Kennedy
who represented New York in the Senate, died June 6, 1968, at
age 42.
He had been shot in the head the day before, inside
the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, just after giving a
speech to jubilant supporters upon winning California's
Democratic presidential primary.
Sirhan Sirhan, a young Palestinian immigrant, was wrestled to
the ground at the scene and was later convicted of the
slaying. Now 54, he is serving a life sentence at
California's Corcoran State Prison.
'He touched their lives'
Clinton noted that Kennedy ran for president "to close the
gaps between black and white, between rich and poor, between
old and young."
"In a time of division, more than any American, he bridged
those gaps, reaching out to starving families in the
Mississippi Delta and to factory workers in Chicago, to
migrant workers in Northern California and struggling teens
in Harlem. He touched their lives. And just as important,
they touched his."
"Thirty years ago today, I, like so many others around the
world, felt pain, despair, a sense of deeply personal loss,"
Clinton said. But he went on to say that he did not think
Kennedy would want Americans to dwell on that loss.
"In his all-too-short life, he lost much. But he never lost
faith. In suffering, he struggled to find wisdom," Clinton
said.
Clinton taped the radio tribute Friday at the Massachusetts
home of RFK's son, Rep. Joseph Kennedy III, where the
president and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton gathered with
members of the Kennedy family -- including his widow, Ethel,
and eight of his nine surviving children -- to observe the
anniversary.
Kennedy is buried at Arlington National Cemetery outside
Washington, near the grave of his brother John, who was
assassinated in 1963.
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