Ethel Kennedy at Long Last Is Reunited With Her Late Husband

Ethel Kennedy, wife of the late Robert F. Kennedy (1925–68), died this week at age 96.

She was a remarkable woman, a mother of 11 children, the last of whom was in her womb at the time of the assassination of her husband in June 1968. She is mother of, among others, one of the speakers at our annual gala of The American Spectator, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Ethel was a devoted wife and mother. She was also a very devout Catholic. Throughout her life, she was a daily communicant; she attended daily Mass. RFK Jr. talks of how as a child his mother and father took the family to Mass not only once a day but sometimes twice. “We went to church, sometimes twice a day … at 7 and 8 o’clock,” says RFK Jr. today. “The centerpiece of our lives was Catholicism.” 

That was his father’s doing as much as his mother’s. The senior Bobby Kennedy was so devout that if he had not gone into politics, he might well have become a monk.

I’ve noticed negative reader comments at the end of obituaries of Ethel from some conservative Catholics critical of the once obviously pro-life mother for raising a family of mostly and wildly pro-choice children. But I can’t say that ought to be considered Ethel’s fault. Nor do I know where she personally stood on the issue. But I do know that she and Bobby until the time of his death had both been staunchly against abortion and generously gave the gift of life.

For me, and perhaps many, the most enduring, searing image of Ethel is a very tragic one. Photographers caught it and sadly have saved it for posterity.

It occurred shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968. The place was the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Robert F. Kennedy was there for a celebratory speech after having just won the California primary for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. It was major victory, positioning Kennedy as possibly the Democratic Party’s nominee for president. Many now believed that Bobby was headed for the White House.

Bobby exited the Embassy ballroom and was guided by handlers along a path that winded through the hotel kitchen and pantry. Hiding there was a 24-year-old Palestinian–Jordanian immigrant named Sirhan Sirhan, who jumped out from behind a cart stacked with trays next to an ice machine and began firing a .22 revolver. He struck Kennedy three times, including a fatal head shot that entered behind his right ear.

A good Samaritan who attempted to come RFK’s aid at that awful moment was Juan Romero, a busboy. The 17-year-old Mexican immigrant had badly wanted to see Robert F. Kennedy that night. As onlookers seized Sirhan, Romero knelt next to Kennedy. He asked the senator: “Are you okay? Can you get up?” He noticed that one of Kennedy’s legs was trembling and his left eye was twitching.

Romero placed his hand under Kennedy’s head. At that moment, Bobby’s wife, Ethel, kneeling in a pretty orange-and-white dress, pushed Romero away. Romero, however, wanted to give something to the senator at that moment. “When I was in trouble, I would always go and pray to God,” he later explained innocently. He asked Mrs. Kennedy if she would mind if he gave his Rosary to her husband. Dumbfounded, shocked, Ethel said nothing.

Romero pressed the beads into Kennedy’s lame hand, wrapping them around the senator’s thumb. When they wheeled Bobby Kennedy away, the Rosary beads were hanging off his hand. Ethel was at his side all the way to Good Samaritan Hospital, where he died the next day.

That image of Ethel and Bobby was the last image taken of them together. The woman lived with that the remainder of her long life. She lived without her husband. She missed him terribly. She never remarried.

This past week, Ethel, devoted wife, was reunited at long last with her beloved husband taken so brutally from this world 56 years ago. May this woman who suffered so much at long last rest in peace.

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