BOBBY KENNEDY’S “AWFUL GRACE OF GOD”

By Linda Lee Greene, Author & Artist

Thursday, June 6, 1968, 52 years ago today, I was the perpetually exhausted but deliriously content young mother of my eighth-month-old baby girl and my twenty-seven-month-old little boy. As on every day, that day began at the peak of dawn for me, and even before my first cup of coffee, baby girl needed her diaper changed and little boy a mommy’s handhold while he squirmed on that strange device in the bathroom called “Potty.” All the while, in the kitchen, our new Instamatic Electric Coffee Pot huffed and puffed like an agitated volcano and was piping hot and ready to pour by the time hubby ambled in, his eyes sticky with sleep and tongue thick with terrible news. “Someone shot Bobby Kennedy last night,” hubby said over his shoulder as he walked to the television set in the adjoining living room and clicked it on. My musician husband was driving back to our Long Island home from his gig in a Manhattan nightclub when he heard the news on his car radio—sometime in the wee dark hours of that morning. It was gruesome déjàvu: a fatal bullet to the brain to a second Kennedy in what seemed like the blink of an eye in our young lives.    

Hubby and I were married a scant eight months when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Less than half a decade later, we Americans were still coming to grips with the enormous loss of President Kennedy, and our hopes were pinned on his younger brother Bobby, a candidate for the Democratic nomination of the upcoming presidential election, to resurrect in the White House the Camelot magic of John and Jackie and their adorable Caroline and John-John. Admittedly, there was a fairytale element to our expectations of Bobby that in some ways flew in the face of the sad turmoil that marked the decade, and too much of which persists to this day—crises such as the Cold War, the Vietnam War, civil rights, women’s rights, social unrest, to name just the major few.

What was it about Bobby that instilled such hope for the nation in so many people like me despite the enormous odds stacked against him—that Kennedy son who in the words of his own father was the “runt” of the litter and least likely to bring glory to his powerful political family? That “runt,” like so many others of his kind, whose physical frame barely hefted the weight of his enormously courageous heart, governed by a crafty brain, exhibited real promise of being the best of the brood in the end. Bobby’s track record housed in his gentle and in some ways flawed presence convinced us that he was our David who would slay Goliath—a totally unrealistic probability, most likely, but I believe, as do almost countless others, that Bobby would have wounded Goliath to a degree enough to slow him down—considerably enough that the evil giant just might have expired eventually. I think that Bobby had the power to change hearts and minds and policies, changes that could have nudged the giant toward imminent expiration.    

Bobby loved justice. While he considered civil rights as his greatest cause toward justice, and worked through and around the tangled web of the political system to confront it and right it, his wasn’t always a mature eye on the ways and means of achieving the goal. But he tried. And he never gave up on it or any of his aspirations toward justice. His was an ideological development on full view to those who paid attention—from a young lawyer in the Justice Department fighting the Mafia, organized union miscreants, corrupt politicians, and Soviet agents, to an advocate for civil rights, gun-control, nuclear-weapons control, and voting rights. He also supported ending the Vietnam War with visionary efforts toward an “honorable peace.”

One of his most impressive civil rights actions was in September, 1962, when as Attorney General under President John F. Kennedy, Bobby sent a force of U.S. Marshals and deputized U.S. Border Patrol agents, as well as federal prison guards to Oxford, Mississippi, to enforce a federal court order that allowed the admittance of James Meredith, the first African-American student, to the University of Mississippi. Whites rioted—rebellions fraught with death and injury, a situation that required further federal troops. Through the whole of it, Bobby remained adamant that black students had the right to enjoy the benefits of all levels of the educational system. He didn’t send in federal troops to ruthlessly beat back peaceful protestors to make way for his president to walk across the street and stand in front of a church and brandish a Bible upsidedown for a political photo op. NO! AG BILL BARR! YOU AIN’T NO BOBBY KENNEDY!

Bobby was three months shy of his nineteenth birthday when his eldest brother Joe Jr., was killed in action in World War II. His brother John’s assassination, as well as his brother Ted’s auto accident and serious injury sent Bobby into a period of depression and serious reflection. He came close to losing faith in politics as the avenue of reform and growth for the country. He rallied however, and pressed on, credited to his deep Catholic faith.  

In an interview for “Look” magazine following his trip to Apartheid-era South Africa in mid-1966, Bobby related a story about his confrontation with whites about their policy of disallowing blacks to pray with whites in their houses of worship. The rationalization by the whites was that it was a moral necessity based on Biblical scriptures. Bobby replied, “’What if we go to Heaven and we, all our lives, have treated the Negro as an inferior, and God is there, and we look up and He is not white? What then is our response?’ There was no answer. Only silence,” Bobby said to the reporter.

As a senator, Bobby worked to improve the plight of African Americans, Native Americans, immigrants, and other marginalized groups whom he called the “disaffected,” the impoverished,” and the “excluded.” He aligned himself with civil rights struggles and campaigners, and led the Democratic Party coalition to eliminate perceived discrimination on all levels, including in the areas of equal access to housing, education, employment, and health coverage.  

Two months before his own assassination, Bobby was campaigning in Indianapolis when he received word of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination. In a speech to the gathered

crowd about MLK, Bobby slightly misquoted Aeschylus with the following lines:

“Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”  

Bobby didn’t know he was speaking his own epitaph.©

"Thank You for Your Service"

By Linda Lee Greene

Memorial Day, May 25, 2020

When commissioned to paint an image of Jesus, artist Leonardo da Vinci chose a young man as his model whose beautiful face was full of innocent light and love. Years later, the artist combed the streets of Florence in search of a man who appeared ugly, dark, and hateful enough to use for his model of Judas, the Great Betrayer of Jesus. Da Vinci found the perfect subject, and in response to his request of the man that he model for the painting, the man replied, “Don’t you recognize me, Maestro? Years ago, I was your model for your painting of Jesus.” One can only imagine the circumstances that befell da Vinci’s cross-starred model that had changed him so greatly, and it is a fitting metaphor of the profound impact that life, especially deeply traumatic life-circumstances, can have on people of every persuasion. This is especially true of our warriors in the armed forces.

World War II gripped the throat of humankind when I was born, and too soon afterwards, the Korean conflict spewed its never-ending pox upon the world, followed in my teen- and young-adult years by the Vietnam War. As I mothered my two babies, terrifying and shocking images of American boys and their allies, as well as innocents caught in the crossfire, being maimed and/or killed in that doomed Vietnam conflict flashed across the screen of my television. In current times, the slaughter rages on in the desecrated streets and countrysides of Afghanistan, Syria and other places, and again, we cringe in horror at the carnage on our monitors and screens. 

Idealistic, or angry, or desperate, or naïve, but nevertheless fresh-faced young people sign up for military service and soon discover that it is a far different experience than membership on a football squad or volleyball team. Like da Vinci’s model for his artwork, life in the form of World War II altered greatly the men and women of my parent’s generation, and their young brothers and sisters succumbed to a similar fate in the Korean War. Not enough can be, or has been, said about the horrific consequences sustained by our brave fighters in Vietnam. And today, as our lovely young guardians walk among us on prosthetic legs, or carry their babies in artificial arms, or cower homeless in shadowed corners lost irretrievably to their former selves and society, adrift in incurable brain injuries or post-traumatic stress disorders, let us pray for them; let us help them. Let us also honor the brave warriors who never made it back home. 

This year, let us pay a special tribute to our precious armed forces veterans who were taken from us by a silent enemy called Covid-19.©        

When We Read, We Look for Ourselves in the Words

When we read, we look for ourselves in the words. If we are unable or uninspired to find ourselves there, the words remain meaningless to us. The stories they convey become “throwaway” experiences, never to revisit our minds, never to summon our memories. But if we “become” the old man in Hemingway’s sea; if we “are” Daisy to Fitzgerald’s Gatsby, then literature “is” who we are, or at least, points to whom we might have been, or can be—it is the indelible yardstick against which we measure ourselves. Author Francis Hamit’s “Shenandoah Spy,” a novel of historical fiction based on the true story of Belle Boyd, a legendary female spy for the Confederacy during America’s Civil War, was one of those stories that metamorphosed into a subjective experience for me, and to such an extent that it was surprising to me—surprising and satisfying. Let me tell you why.

                Although I often read and write about history, the Civil War of the United States is not high on my list of subjects; not because it isn’t fascinating in its own right, but rather that it holds less weight for me than other histories such as that of America’s native people, the Great Depression, and World War II. My interest in “Shenandoah Spy,” however was sparked by a social media interchange with its author, an informed and shrewd interchange on his part in response to a posting I submitted on Facebook on the 35^th anniversary of the Kent State Shootings in protest against the Vietnam War. I looked him up and discovered that he has an extensive background in military intelligence and espionage, a résumé I thought he might put to good use in the stories about which he writes. I ordered the book because of its “first-born” chronology in his body of work rather than its subject. But somewhere deep inside me, I also wanted to be “swayed” by a good Civil War story; I wanted to be brought into the fold. Hamit did not disappoint me on that point in “Shenandoah Spy.”

                How is it that in 2015, a reader in the senior years of her life (me) can be transported to a time a century-and-a-half ago and relate to a heroine of only seventeen-years-of-age (Belle Boyd)? The answer is found in Hamit’s presentation of Belle Boyd’s story. He makes room for the reader in the words. He writes with such intimacy and immediacy that it invites the reader to wonder how he/she would have behaved in Boyd’s stead. The reader suffers Boyd’s vulnerabilities; staggers in her exploits; quakes in her boots. And just as importantly for me, this author instilled in me a desire to pay closer attention to this era of my country’s history.   

                Despite my delight in “Shenandoah Spy,” conversely, an aspect of it niggles at my consciousness. Given that it takes place during, and in response to, the “slave-era” of America’s story, a supporting cast of African Americans is to be expected. There can be no such story absent that body of humanity. Hamit isn’t shy about offering a view of the Civil War as one less about “freeing the slaves” and more about other factors, though. The following conversation between characters Brodhead and Strother in the book illustrates this point: ‘“Not for freeing the slaves?” [asks Broadhead]. Strother had to think about it. “In time, on some abstract level, I might be, but this isn’t the way I’d choose to do it. Most people in the South don’t own slaves. They’ve been seduced into this thing by radical elements that wanted to break up the country, and seized upon the activities of the Abolitionists as an excuse.” “And those Abolitionists have stirred up the war fever on this side. Radicals on both sides have pushed this war into being. It could have been prevented.” Brodhead gestured with his hands as if to illustrate the futility of it all. Strother nodded. “The rich and privileged wanted a war and the rest of us will pay for it.”’

                In an excerpt further on in the story, Strother states. ‘“…Most Negroes [in the south] ain’t that displeased with their lot in life. ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ was a masterful load of horse manure when it came to representing the usual situation. You don’t abuse slaves, any more than you would a horse or a cow. It’s not good business and people frown on it. House servants especially have an easy life. They become a part of the family.”’ In that vein, Belle Boyd submits that the Yankees “…exaggerate the colored folks capacity and desire for freedom – those that want it find a way to buy themselves free.”’ Her personal slave Eliza is depicted as one such happy “servant.” Not only does Eliza aid and abet Boyd willingly in her daily life and her spying missions, she is depicted as a personal “friend” rather than as a slave of her mistress. Of course, Hamit puts forth the then self-serving point of view of southerners in his treatise. Following Solomon Northrup’s true story of cruelty suffered at the hands of a slave-owner in “Twelve Years a Slave” that found light in recent times, the portrayal of the master/slave relationship in “Shenandoah Spy” is difficult to reconcile. I suppose, as in any other human enterprise, the minutiae of America’s Civil War ranged every possibility available at the time. Many of those fine points are to be found in “Shenandoah Spy.” It is good reading.

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Linda Lee Greene’s novel “Guardians and Other Angels” is at http://goo.gl/imUwKO. Her novel “Jesus Gandhi Oma Mae Adams,” co-authored with Debra Shiveley Welch, is at http://amzn.to/VazHFG. Her artwork is on view online at www.gallery-llgreene.com. Her Twitter handle is @LLGreeneAuthor.