Kennedy Campaign Worker in tears 1968

Robert F. Kennedy represented hope.

But on June 6, 1968, a nation was left once more to watch and grieve and wonder after another senseless act of violence robbed us of that hope.

The GE alarm clock in my bedroom set to get me up in time to catch the school bus didn’t go off, as usual, that morning of June 5th, 1968.

Instead, my mother came into my bedroom and sat on the edge of my bed. She woke me and softly said: “Sally, darling, your friend Bobby Kennedy has been shot.”

There was an odd symmetry. It had been I, only five years earlier who had raced home from grade school to breathlessly announce to my mother that John Kennedy had been shot. Now, it was she telling me as I headed to school that another Kennedy had been assassinated.

I was in disbelief, as the elated sense of hope that had been Bobby suddenly drained away.

June 5, 1968, Robert Kennedy and his wife Ethel after his acceptance speech winning the California Primary.

Only the night before, hope beamed in black in white as I had watched the last day of the California presidential primary which had seemed a certain win for Kennedy.

I had gone to sleep certain of his victory.

I never met Robert Kennedy but I was always grateful that I get a chance to volunteer on his campaign. In the tumultuous spring of 1968, Bobby Kennedy beckoned the youth of America to join him in his presidential fight.

Mobilized and energized with the earnestness of a 13-year-old I responded.

Hand made poster RFK

Every day after school that spring, my best friend Karen and I rode our Schwinn bicycles to the local Robert Kennedy for President headquarters where we volunteered. Located in an abandoned suburban storefront, I would spend my afternoons and weekends stuffing envelopes making phone calls, and doing whatever grunt work was needed to help ensure that Bobby would be the 1968 Democratic candidate.

Bobby was all about hope.

That morning of June 5,  I awoke shattered.

Unlike John Kennedy or Martin Luther King, Bobby didn’t die immediately. He lingered for 24 hours.

On that long day, it felt as though being in a nightmare we couldn’t wake from. For over 24 hours we were in limbo. Hope was in limbo,

Throughout the day his press secretary Frank Mankiewicz updated the media on his condition at times sounding encouraging saying “his life signs remain good.” We hung on to every report with bated breath as he underwent a 4-hour surgery. He was breathing on his own we were told.

Hope returned.

Later in the day, hope began to dim, as the reports were more discouraging. At 10 pm President Lyndon Johnson went on television telling Americans he was “as shocked, shocked and dismayed as you are” and announced a commission to study “the causes and prevention of violence.”

I went to sleep knowing hope was in critical condition.

55 years later it still is.

Vintage ad NY Times July 1969

The following year when I was 14, I saw a startling full-page ad that ran in the New York Times in July of 1969. It was now one year after the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, and 6 years after the shooting of President John Kennedy. Under photos of my fallen heroes the powerful headline  read:

” Hold onto this page for 1 year and hope and pray it’s ended.”

“The trouble is hoping and praying isn’t enough. Violence won’t end unless you’re willing to start the ending.”

I had saved it all these years, and clearly, the violence hadn’t ended. It had escalated. Half a century later it was time to use this aging piece of paper.

As the Featured artist “Ending Gun Violence- It’s About Time-Hope and Prayers Arent Enough” will be part of the exhibit “Absurdity In Dada We Trust” at The Art Center Highland Park, Illinois, on June 23-August 5, 2023.

I created “Ending Gun Violence -Its About Time-Hope and Prayers Arent Enough”

Surrounding the ad on the canvas, I had handwritten all the hundreds of mass shootings since that newspaper advertisement ran. When I made this piece in 2019 more than 400 people had been shot in over 230 school shootings. It would now take more than one canvas to fill the number that has happened since I created this.

The violence continues.

But the hope only diminishes.

Click Below to watch Video of the story behind that vintage ad

Click to Watch  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ds51g2JFoRR0vd-ZrC2GlTk-RPfDbZEe/view?usp=drive_link