#RFK ASSASSINATION BUSBOY TORRENT#

In the immediate aftermath of the assassination, it disturbed him that Ambassador guests wanted to pose for pictures with him. Kennedy had been rushed to Good Samaritan Hospital and was still alive when Romero went to school, but he died the next day. “What made me realize it was real was that a lady was sitting in front of me reading the newspaper.… I remember the lady showing me the picture and saying, ‘This is you, isn’t it?’ That’s when I first saw the picture, and I never wanted to see it again.” “At Seventh and Broadway, I remember sitting there on the bus, still looking at my hands and all the blood, not realizing what happened and hoping my mom would grab me by the leg and say, ‘Wake up, you lazy bum.’ and caught the first of three buses, headed to Roosevelt High. You knew he was looking at you and not through you … I remember walking out of that room … feeling 10 feet tall, feeling like an American.… I didn’t feel like I was Mexican, and I didn’t feel like I was a busboy, and I didn’t feel like I was 17 years old. “He had piercing blue eyes, and he looked right at you. I remember him grabbing my hand and he gave me a two-handed shake,” said Romero.

“I remember staring at him with my mouth open, and I see him shaking the hand of a waiter and then reaching out to me. “He said, ‘Come on in, boys,’” Romero recalls, the memory bringing a smile to his face. Kennedy stood at a bay window, finished up a phone call and turned to the visitors. Romero and a waiter knocked at the door, then pushed two food carts into the room. He told other busboys he’d do anything for them if they let him take a room service call from the candidate. Romero, who recalled homes in Mexico with photos of the pope and of John F. Romero lifted a pair of rosary beads from the glove compartment of his mother’s car and carried them in his pocket to ward off the temptation to miss school or be late for work.īobby Kennedy, candidate for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States, checked into the hotel at the end of the California primary. His unfailingly strict stepfather worked at the Ambassador and helped Romero get a job as a busboy to keep him off the street. at 10, began getting into trouble while going to Hollenbeck Middle School and then Roosevelt High in Boyle Heights. He’d grown up in Mexico, moved to the U.S. It was as if a long-traumatized soldier could no longer keep a lid on a battlefield story that had haunted him for years, locked in the depths of his being.

#RFK ASSASSINATION BUSBOY TORRENT#

We went to a San Jose restaurant owned by a relative of Romero’s, ordered a couple of beers, and over the course of a few hours, it came gushing up - a torrent of sorrow, regret and pain. He told me, at the time, that he wanted to remind people what Kennedy stood for. But he was unsettled by the racial division stirred by California’s Proposition 187, the ballot initiative to establish a citizenship screening system and deny some services to immigrants here illegally. Romero had avoided the spotlight for a quarter of a century at that point, keeping his thoughts to himself. The first time was in 1998, on the 30 th anniversary of the assassination. But when we meet, I always get the sense that talking about his experience is still cathartic for him. I always feel a twinge of guilt when I arrange another get-together with Romero, knowing that to survive, he needs to be defined by something other than the photos we all remember. To him, compassion, tolerance, equal opportunity and social justice are worth fighting for, and he lives with the hope that a new leader - inspired, perhaps, by someone from the past - will step forward. “But maybe I can help everyone understand there were people who tried to correct injustice.” “Maybe I don’t have the tools to become a politician and change the laws,” Romero said.

Rfk assassination busboy