5 June 2008
• The spring of 1968 was a time when a black hole opened in history. It happened twice. At the end, there was more than just a sense of loss. There was a profound sense of grief for the future of America. And in a very real sense, that grief has never completely gone away. A hole opened in history. An enormous absence filled it. It continues even now. And we memorialize that absence tonight.
We will never know what America could have become had Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy lived to fulfill their missions here. But those of us who lived through that time believe what we believe, know what we know, and grieve to this day. And tonight there is nothing more we can do but remember, and pray, and rededicate ourselves to the fulfillment of their mission. Those of us whose lives they touched do not forget. They left to us a larger vision of what can be, and how it can come about. Most of all, that it is within our grasp, and we are obliged to reach out to it.
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“My brother need not be idealized or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.”
Eulogy, Edward M. Kennedy, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York, 8 June 1968
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/mp3clips/speeches/
tedkennedyonrfk45565656564.mp3
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“Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago:
to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Indianapolis, Indiana 4 April 1968
http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/rfk.htm
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