A Night That Turned From Excitement To Sadness

Back in the spring of 1968, I was a senior in high school, ready to spread my wings a little.

And that spring, there was a comet that streaked across the sky named Bobby Kennedy.

I was living at Our Lady of Grace Monastery in Indianapolis, a boarding school run by the venerable Benedictine sisters, most of them originally from Monastery Immaculate Conception in Ferdinand.

We had all lived through the elation of John F. Kennedy being elected the first Catholic president in 1960, and the despair when he was assassinated in 1963. Then a few short years later his younger brother threw his hat into the ring and began campaigning for the Democratic nomination for president. Whenever the younger Kennedy came to Indianapolis, the sisters gave their blessing for a small group of boarders to drive downtown to hear him speak.

And so that's what we did the evening of April 4. But this time we didn't go to a municipal building or a major thoroughfare to see him. This time we drove to 17th and Broadway, the heart of the inner city in Indianapolis.

I still remember his black limousine arriving, and a very youthful Bobby Kennedy bounding up to the stage. At that moment, he knew something that most of us didn't. Before boarding his campaign plane for Indianapolis, he had been told that Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had been shot. When his plane landed, he was informed that the civil rights leader had died.

If you listen to a Youtube video from that night, you can hear him ask if the crowd is aware of the death of Rev. King. He is told it is not, and then in a quivering voice he begins, "I have some very sad news for all of you . . . Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tenn."

He paused as the crowd screamed, and then he continued, "Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it's perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in."

He suggested that as a country "we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand, and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion and love."

He added, "What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black."

He then encouraged everyone in the crowd to return home and say a prayer for the slain man's family and a prayer for our country.

It's been 45 years since that night, a night that quickly turned from excitement to sadness. I was 17 years old at the time, and not terribly aware of Rev. King or what he stood for.

Now I am. And now when I hear his words, "I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character," they seem to ask for so little. But if we heeded them, that could do so much.