INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Robert Kennedys final flight is less famous than his final train ride.
Kennedy's body was loaded onto the front of the Air Force jet early in the afternoon of June 6, 1968
His family, holding hands, surrounded the coffin while it was hoisted up
Meanwhile, the various Kennedy friends, relatives and aides who had assembled at Los Angeles International Airport boarded from the stairs
Paul Sweeney, the Secret Service agent standing by the back door as people filed in, peeked to his right, and spotted something quite
extraordinary: Midway down the aisle, America's three most famous widows were conversing
They spoke only briefly, maybe five or 10 minutes
But they were there, together
Then, for the next 4 and half hours, Ethel Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy and Coretta Scott King shared a flight over their grieving, wounded,
troubled country.Robert Kennedy's final flight is less famous than his final train ride, the one that took him from New York to Washington
before the final leg to Arlington National Cemetery
But what Sweeney witnessed that day appears to be the only time throughout the aftermath of Kennedy's death when the three women actually
What they said can only be surmised: None of them wrote about it afterward
Nor did any photographer preserve the moment; there were none aboard the plane.Little about the flight was ever preserved
In America's minutely recorded assassination chronicles, it remains a black hole
Only three reporters were aboard that day, and they had been invited as friends, not chroniclers
Two of them, the columnists Joseph Kraft and Rowland Evans, said next to nothing about it afterward
But fortunately for history, the third, Sander Vanocur of NBC News, didn't feel so constrained, or couldn't keep a good story to himself
Minutes after the plane landed in New York, Vanocur was on the air, describing what he had just seen.Up until the moment he boarded the
plane in California, Vanocur had been working
He had been tracking down rumors that the family patriarch, Joseph P
Kennedy, had died upon learning about his third son
Then, shortly after Air Force One had arrived from Washington to fetch everyone, Vanocur had stood in front of the empty aircraft and
reflected on the journey to come."It somehow seems ironic that on afternoons very much like this, Air Force jets bear the bodies of male
Kennedys out of the West back to their resting place in the East," he had said
"Also on board today will be another widow, Mrs
Martin Luther King Jr., whose husband went to his grave on a mule train
And it really doesn't make any difference, I suppose, by mule train or by jet, the fact that somehow and in some way, we seem to be sending
a great many of our young leaders to their early graves."Other factors accounted for the blackout
Many of the 70-odd other passengers, exhausted after consecutive sleepless nights - the night Bobby Kennedy had been shot, followed by the
night he died - passed much of the flight sleeping, experiencing little and remembering less
Those managing to stay awake followed an unwritten Kennedy code, disclosing nothing about it either after the plane landed or for the next
Now, there's nearly no one left to remember it or, in the case of the Kennedys themselves, willing to relive it.Thanks to a Kennedy advance
man named Murray Richtel, who picked up a copy of the flight manifest that day at LAX, we know who was aboard
Among the Kennedys were not only Ethel and Ted, but Ethel's three oldest children: Kathleen, then 16, Joe, 15, and BobbyJr., 14
Two Kennedy sisters, Eunice and Jean, were also on hand, along with their husbands
So were Jacqueline Kennedy's brother-in-law and sister, Prince Stanislaw and Lee Radziwill. The official manifest of passengers on the
plane that transported Kennedy’s body from Los Angeles to New York.There were key aides from Kennedy's campaign - his press secretary,
Frank Mankiewicz, and the speechwriter Richard Goodwin - and from Kennedy's days as attorney general, Burke Marshall and John Seigenthaler
Joining them were old Kennedy friends such as Andy Williams, Rosey Grier and Rafer Johnson
Also on hand was yet another person touched by assassination: Charles Evers, whose brother Medgar, an NAACP official in Mississippi, had
been gunned down five months before John F
Supervised by a veteran agent named Darwin Horn, a five-man crew from the Secret Service, Paul Sweeney among them, was also present,
protecting someone already past protecting.When Robert Kennedy was shot in the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel just after midnight on June 5,
1968, Jacqueline Kennedy was in London and Coretta King was in Washington
But both instantly knew where they wanted, and needed, to be
King was sitting before the television set, weeping copiously," Stanley Levison, a key adviser to Martin Luther King who'd seen her a few
hours after Bobby Kennedy had been shot, remembered
"She said, 'You know, I have almost never been able to cry about Martin because I couldn't permit myself to
but now, I don't have to restrain myself, and I can't control my feelings.' "Robert Kennedy had played a crucial role following the death of
her husband: He had arranged to have Coretta flown from Atlanta to Memphis to retrieve King's body, and then been a conspicuous and
comforting presence at his funeral
She and Ethel Kennedy had even gotten together in the interim, for a "Poor People's March" in Washington
She wanted to reciprocate
"It was a very easy decision for me to make," she later said.Jacqueline Kennedy, meanwhile, flew from London to New York
From there, the private jet of IBM chief Thomas Watson carried her to California
The FBI, which had tracked death threats against King (and, to a much lesser but still significant degree, against Bobby Kennedy) for years,
now monitored and transmitted the uniquely American reunion to ensue."PIERRE SALINGER advised that Mrs
KENNEDY is to arrive Los Angeles International Airport by private plane 5:30 PM today," went a memo to the Los Angeles office on June 5
"Los Angeles Police Department is to meet Mrs
KENNEDY and bring her to Good Samaritan Hospital." The same memo reported that, also according to Salinger, Coretta King would arrive a
half-hour earlier from Washington, to be met by one of Kennedy's black aides, Earl Graves
King unknown," it stated.King's widow reached the hospital first
King!' several women in the crowd said, but not that much in amazement, for little these days amazes," the New York Post reported
An hour and a half later, the former first lady arrived - "wearing dark brown, or black - no one could tell for sure because she rushed by
so quickly."Slowly but inexorably, Robert Kennedy's life receded
As his condition changed from "critical" to "extremely critical" to "extremely critical as to life," there was little to do but wait
Ethel Kennedy stayed by his bedside
Meanwhile, Jacqueline Kennedy and Coretta King, along with Pierre Salinger's wife, Nicole, remained in a room nearby
She watched the two widows converse and, recognizing their unique bond, left them alone
What struck her most that night was how dark and silent the room was: For all the two widows shared, what was there, really, for them to say
At one point, all three were summoned for a last look at Robert Kennedy
"I don't think he was totally dead yet, but not far," she recalled.- - -At 1:44 on the morning of June 6, Kennedy died
Fifteen minutes later Mankiewicz, still wearing a Kennedy pin on his lapel, announced it to the world
He did not waste words, adding only that Robert Kennedy was 42 years old
Standing outside the hospital, Roger Mudd of CBS News speculated that the funeral would be held in Washington, and that to get there, the
Kennedys might favor a smaller, private plane, the better to keep off reporters clamoring for places on Robert Kennedy's last journey
But by Ethel Kennedy's decree, the funeral would in fact be in New York, where his constituents and parish church - the Church of the Holy
Family on East 47th Street - were.The requiem Mass would be held at St
The force behind that choice, Vanocur speculated to his NBC colleagues, was Stephen Smith, Kennedy's brother-in-law, money man and protector
"He felt that Senator Kennedy ought to be a figure in his own right," Vanocur explained, commemorated somewhere besides Boston or
Washington, as prior Kennedys had been
It would also address an image problem Bobby Kennedy had never fully shed
"There was a good deal of talk about Senator Kennedy being a carpetbagger in New York," Vanocur said
A Manhattan funeral might help settle that once and for all.One of Kennedy's most dogged detractors, President Lyndon B
Johnson, furnished the plane
With UNITED STATES OF AMERICA emblazoned on it, it was one of three jets designated "Air Force One." It was the same plane that had been
ferrying Dean Rusk, Salinger and others to Japan on Nov
22, 1963, only to turn back over the Pacific once the news from Dallas of John F
Kennedy's assassination reached it."Will Mrs
Martin Luther King be considered one of the friends who will travel with the family" Salinger was asked at a briefing shortly after Kennedy
Coretta King spent part of that night attempting uplifting thoughts: that the legacies of both Robert Kennedy and her husband would be
strengthened by their premature, unnatural deaths
When day broke, she issued a statement
"We must put an end to violence or violence will put an end to us," she said
"Surely the tragic and untimely death of this brilliant and dedicated leader must cause each one of us to ponder our sense of responsibility
in bringing an end to this kind of insanity."- - -Another wait ensued: Superfluous as it seemed, the coroner conducted an autopsy
Meanwhile, Jacqueline Kennedy spoke to Mankiewicz
"She commiserated with me as to what a tough job I had, which is an odd thing to say," Mankiewicz later recalled
"And then she said, 'Well, now you know about death.' She said, 'The Church is a marvelous thing at a time like this
It's really at its best only at the time of death
The rest of the time it's often rather silly - little men running around in their black suits
But the Catholic Church understands death.' ""I'll tell you who else understands death are the black churches," she went on, according to
"I remember at the funeral of Martin Luther King I was looking at those faces and I realized that they know death
They see it all the time and they're ready for it
They're prepared for it in the way in which a good Catholic is." And then, Mankiewicz continued, "She said a thing which just absolutely
She said, 'Well, now we know death, don't we, you and I As a matter of fact, if it weren't for the children, we'd welcome it.' "On
television, Mudd provided a partial list of passengers released by the campaign
The autopsy was completed, and the embalmers went to work
Robert Kennedy would be buried in the dark blue suit and white shirt that John Glenn had retrieved from Kennedy's room at the Ambassador
But Glenn had not found a necktie, so Andy Williams removed his - the one he had been putting on for the post-election party when Kennedy
Kennedy was placed in a casket made of African mahogany that Ted Kennedy had selected, which was then covered with a maroon cloth.At 12:37
that afternoon, the blue hearse, with Ethel in the front and Ted behind her, headed down Wilshire Boulevard, accompanied by motorcyclists
from a suddenly solicitous Los Angeles Police Department
Motorists on the freeway recognized the procession; no sirens were necessary.Some Kennedy associates, such as speechwriter Milton Gwirtzman
and his wife, got to the airport early
As Lisa Gwirtzman stood on the tarmac, another Kennedy aide, K
Dun Gifford, handed her a large paper bag to hold until they were airborne
It was filled with cash - "walking around money" left over from Election Day
Murray Richtel's fellow advance man, Larry Nagin, arrived with the $50 worth of liquor John Seigenthaler had dispatched him to buy for the
flight.Of the close relatives, only Jacqueline Kennedy boarded from the rear, and only once she had been assured that this wasn't the jet
that had carried her and the body of her husband back from Dallas
She was first in line, making her way down a red carpet strewn with roses and carnations
Linda Deutsch of the Associated Press never forgot the image
"Whether it was a statement about her special position as JFK's widow or whether she was afraid of hydraulic lifts we will never know," she
"But it was dramatic."The other passengers followed
When Coretta King boarded, CBS reminded its audience how Robert Kennedy had not just attended Martin Luther King's funeral but, nearly eight
years earlier, had helped spring King from a Georgia jail, a move that had electrified black voters and thereby helped send John F
Kennedy to the White House
Two other black passengers - the Olympic athlete Rafer Johnson and Charles Evers - wept as they boarded
of what a burden of tragedy this plane carries, what a burden of death and sadness and sorrow," George Herman of CBS declared
Commentators sometimes stumbled over Bobby Kennedy's title, calling him "president" rather than "senator."- - -Like so many others, Vanocur
had not liked Robert Kennedy when they met
During the Wisconsin primary in 1960, he had even griped to John Kennedy about how obnoxious his kid brother was
Nor had he been much impressed with his oratorical skills: In fact, Bobby had given the worst speech he had ever heard
He couldn't speak and he was faltering and sweating and rubbing his palms," Vanocur later said.But since Dallas, he, too, had come to see
Bobby's more sensitive, introspective side
"The most vulnerable man I've ever known," was how Vanocur now described him
He had traveled with him in Africa, sailed with him off the coast of Maine, joined him for lousy dinners and bad movies at Hickory Hill
Vanocur remained upstairs in Kennedy's suite when Kennedy had been shot
He was later asked why he hadn't followed the senator to the ballroom
"I didn't want to get bruised or anything," he explained
"I didn't want to fight the mob."After climbing the steps to the jet, Jerry Bruno, the veteran advance man who had been with John Kennedy in
Dallas - and, after that, with Robert Kennedy when he had spoken in Indianapolis following King's death - surveyed the 2,000 or so people
gathered behind the fence
"He would have liked this crowd," he said
Nearby, Paul Sweeney was checking in the passengers
He had been a last-minute recruit, pulled off a counterfeiting investigation to cover Robert Kennedy - or "what was left of him" - at the
hospital.At one point Sweeney sneaked a glance to his right, and saw the three widows
Two of them - Ethel and Jackie, he thinks - were seated, and the third standing alongside them
"They were consoling one another, I guess, but I don't know that, because it was at the back of the plane," he recalled
"I wasn't concentrating on them." The doors closed at 1:20
Edward Kennedy briefly reemerged at the front to retrieve a wreath, then placed it atop his brother's casket
By 1:38 they were airborne."The body left here today with a planeload of family, friends, staff, including Mrs
Martin Luther King," David Brinkley said on "The Huntley-Brinkley Report" that night
"So, in one airplane, three widows of three American public figures murdered by assassins." The family of Robert Kennedy stands outside of
Patrick's Cathedral in New York, the day of his funeral on June 8, 1968.- - -Oddly enough, the atmosphere aboard the plane wasn't especially
"I remember Jack Kennedy telling me once that he never worried about a situation over which he had absolutely no control," Rowland Evans
"This is a philosophy that really, I think, goes to all of them
Nothing could possibly change that fact, and it immediately became an accepted fact and they dealt with it.""There was grief to begin with,"
the writer George Plimpton, another passenger on the flight, recalled
"I remember looking back down the aisle just after the plane had left the Los Angeles airport
One of the Kennedy aides in back of us was crying." But as the plane banked over the Pacific and rose above the clouds, something else
"I think as the earth fell away, so in a sense did that cloaking sense of depression and gloom," Plimpton said
"After we got 10 or 15 minutes up in the air, the natural esprit of those people who surround Ethel and the senator began to break
out."Jacqueline Kennedy, Vanocur reported, had spent most of the flight talking with Prince Radziwill and Burke Marshall
But "for a long while," he said, she spoke to Coretta King as well
Jackie and Ethel also talked, for a half-hour or so
"And then, after that was over, Mrs
Kennedy walked down the aisle, stopping with various people along the way," Vanocur said
"I used the word 'joking' with them, because that's what she did
She was in remarkably good spirits
I suspect she's been under sedation for the last 24 or 25 hours
I suppose everybody was trying to keep her mind off what had happened.""It wasn't that [she was joking]," he later elaborated
"She was trying to make people feel better
She was the one who was trying to psych people out of their gloom." Plimpton noticed the same thing
"Everyone saw that she was trying to put a face on all of this, and it gave them a release, I think, and they were able to start
Good cheer, or at least stoicism, was the thing
"Listen," a Kennedy friend snapped at someone crying by Kennedy's casket
"If the family can take it and the kids can take it, then you shape up!"Coretta King remembered going up to Ethel Kennedy and then how,
after a time, Ethel had come back to visit her
"She seemed very strong and really bearing up very well, I thought," she recalled
The two, she said, spoke "woman to woman." "There are a lot of things you can't put into words; you sort of communicate," she said
"I hope that I was able to give, in part, some strength to her because I was far enough removed from my own situation that I felt that I
could be, in that situation, stronger."But for her, there was no getting around the all-pervasive gloom
well, depressed - the same kind of feeling that people around my husband had at the time of his death, the kind of feeling of, 'What do we
do now We've lost our leader.' " But at no time during the flight, at least from the fragmentary reports available, did the three widows
ever regroup.Under such circumstances, something concrete - such as planning Kennedy's funeral - provided a blessed distraction
Ethel wanted to use the phrase from Aeschylus that her husband had quoted in Indianapolis on the Mass card, but wasn't sure where it could
be found; Jacqueline Kennedy told Mankiewicz she might have it somewhere in her library in New York
Dave Hackett walked up and down the aisle with a yellow pad, asking passengers to suggest those people close enough to Kennedy to stand
vigil by the casket in the cathedral.Edward Kennedy remained by his brother throughout the flight
Vanocur watched him oscillate between grief and anger
"I might as well say it: He's mad," he said
"He's mad at what happens in this country
He does not know whether this is the act of a single person or if this is the act of a conspiracy
But from him, from others in the plane, one got the impression - it's no more than that - that there's kind of a pattern
faceless men - that's the phrase I heard.""And I suppose if you were a Kennedy or a Kennedy employee or if you were a Kennedy supporter you
would wonder, too," he went on
"It's this faceless thing
I'm not trying to suggest something more than exists but I'm telling you as faithfully as I can kind of a feeling aboard that plane."Talk of
conspiracies kept popping up in the television commentaries
On CBS, Daniel Schorr and Dan Rather discussed how black leaders assumed King had been the victim of one, though nothing supported that
For all the grim sameness of the two Kennedy assassinations, there was this distinction: John's was greeted with sadness and shock; Bobby's,
with sadness, resignation, doubt and fury.To Vanocur, the scene on the plane had the "feeling of an O'Neill tragedy." People aboard suddenly
realized, he said, that were Ted Kennedy ever to run for president, "he, too, would get killed." "The feeling was, 'Enough is enough: We
can't go through this more than twice in a lifetime,' " he added
"Nobody was in much of a mood to talk about the future because it didn't seem like there was any future."About an hour out of New York,
Edward Kennedy fell asleep beside his brother's coffin
Ethel came in and followed suit
Jim Whittaker, the mountaineer who'd climbed Mount Kennedy with Bobby, put a pillow beneath her, and brought her rosaries.Once the descent
began, the protective cloud cover evaporated
I mean with the sky outside," Plimpton recalled
"But then the insulation began to collapse as soon as the plane started down
We went through the clouds and at the first glimpse of the lights of New York
well, that was the end of the conversation
It became so quiet you could hear the plane creak." The captain asked that Kennedy's coffin be placed against the bulkhead so that it
wouldn't slide forward as the plane landed at LaGuardia Airport
The weather there was different from what it had been in Washington in November 1963, steamy rather than cold, but the scene, of a grieving
Kennedy widow looking on in the dark as her husband's remains went from plane to hoist to hearse, was eerily familiar.Then the motorcade
carrying the three widows - all 26 cars of it - headed for Manhattan
Patrick's, Vanocur, with his newsman's instincts, rushed from the limousine to the NBC booth nearby, where he joined John Chancellor and
Edwin Newman to describe the scene
His rage was no easier to camouflage than his fatigue
Kennedy," he said at one point
"She's seen all this before
Not at this cathedral, but she brought dead Kennedys back from the West before."He offered additional tidbits from the flight: that the
California Democratic kingpin Jesse Unruh had deliberately chosen to fly commercial, in an effort for it to be said that no politicians had
been on board; that the three most roundly disparaged entities on the flight were Mayor Sam Yorty of Los Angeles (with whom RFK had long
fought); the columnist Drew Pearson (ditto); and the New York Times (ditto: Kennedy was convinced it was anti-Catholic).Once Robert Kennedy
Pat's, where he would lie in state the next day, his entourage dispersed
"Sander Vanocur, how long has it been since you've had any sleep" Chancellor asked
"Two nights," Vanocur said quietly
"I'm going to say good night." "Two nights: too long," Chancellor replied
"I'm glad you were aboard for us and for the audience, Sander
Get some sleep." Vanocur departed
