E Pluribus Unum

Remembering Bobby Kennedy (who died 37 years ago, almost to the day) has triggered some memories of my first trip to Washington in the late summer of 1998.

When my then-wife and I decided to make the trip, we planned for it as though it were a trip to DisneyWorld, a trip we had made many times before.

In fact, while we were there, I had the distinct impression that (with a bit of tweaking here and there) Washington could be made into the baddest theme park of all time.

Well.

Did I say it was like a trip to DisneyWorld? Right. We knew we'd be walking and sight-seeing; we knew we'd be waiting in line. Our kids were accustomed to this drill.

Also, know this about the Rubyan family: we are into politics. Each member of my family is a political junkie of the most intense kind. For example, my son once told me that his favorite president was Harry Truman.

He told me this when he was four years old.

We became the ultimate tourists, making up lists of sights to see and checking them off one by one. We rode the subway, we walked, we drove. We covered the city like a blanket in the 72 hours that we were there. We got up early, we stayed out late.

For example, one evening we trekked out to view the White House lit at night. We heard it was quite a beautiful sight.

We got there at 11 pm, approaching from the south. Just as we walked up to the gate, all the exterior lights went out at once.

"Hey! Who tripped on the extension cord?" I said. My son didn't think it was funny. He insisted we go back again the next night, an hour earlier.

I also remember our trip to Arlington Cemetery. I remember being struck by the familiar and dramatic set-piece that is the JFK family grave site. If you have only seen pictures of it, you are missing the grandest part of all -- the view out over the Potomac River and across the mall. You can literally see for miles. It is a breathtaking view of Washington.

But around the corner, a short walk away, is the grave site of Robert Kennedy. It is a totally different experience.

Robert Kennedy's grave sits by itself, marked with a single white cross and a small, gravestone lying flat on the ground. It is surrounded by green grass. On the other side of the walk is a low fountain, more of a basin than anything else.

Carved into the walls surrounding the fountain are the words of a speech that Kennedy gave one evening in Indianapolis in April, 1968.

Some background: Kennedy was at a campaign stop. Martin Luther King had been murdered just moments before. Most of the people in the assembled crowd that night were African Americans; many did not know that King lay dead in Memphis. It was up to Kennedy to address the crowd with that horrible news. It was up to him to try to calm the restless crowd. It was up to him to try to put this cataclysmic event into some kind of perspective.

What he said that evening is carved on the walls of the fountain near his grave. Click below to listen to the audio recording that captured Kennedy's words that night in Indianapolis:

"In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in.

"For those of you who are black...you can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge.

"We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization--black people amongst black, white people amongst white, filled with hatred toward one another.

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

"For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust...against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling.

"I had a member of my family killed...

"But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times.

"My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: '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.'

"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 or lawlessness; but 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 they be black.

"So I shall ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King...but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love--a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke."

I remember seeing film of that speech the next day back in '68. I was watching Huntley-Brinkley and thinking, "Is there any other politician who could have given that speech, at that moment?"

After more than 35 years, I still have the same question. Who could have connected with the crowd, connected with the nation, connected with history that night, in that way? Only a remarkable man. It was a galvanizing moment.

It was a profoundly moving experience to see those words etched in stone on the grounds of Arlington Cemetery, 30 years later. When I saw those words, I said a simple prayer: God, bless America.

(This post was adapted from one three years ago.)