Selected as one of the Lenza Six                        

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I had some free time this afternoon, so I drove over to Arlington Cemetery. I visited the grave of Bobby Kennedy. You can't read the marker. It says:

 ""He who learns must suffer and even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget , falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes Wisdom to us, by the awful grace of God."

The author is Aeschylus.

In the spring of 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated. Bobby Kennedy was scheduled to make a campaign appearance in Indianapolis. Everyone told him that it would be too dangerous and that he should cancel. He did not. Bobby went out and addressed the assembled crowd.

He stood before the mostly African American crowd and told them that King had been shot. I am sure there is a copy of his speech on the internet. I remember it. He spoke to the pain and he spoke to the dream. He shared the poem by Aeschylus. He didn't speak long. When he was done, the people went home. Riots broke out in cities across the country.

Indianapolis slept.

Bobby Kennedy was that kind of man. He offered hope for a better tomorrow and a large portion of America believed him. Charisma is a powerful sedative and an electrifying stimulant.

Bobby was killed the night of the California primary. As life left this vibrant leader, the dream of a better tomorrow faded into the cool California evening. I worked for his campaign locally and I was one of those that believed in him, in what he represented and in the country he promised to lead.

As his brother Ted eulogized:

" My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.

Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world.

As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him:

"Some men see things as they are and say why.
I dream things that never were and say why not."

Last night, I felt a rekindling of that dream. I was jarred from my complacency by those that stood in caucuses all across Iowa. I had to pinch myself. Had an African American really won a primary? I flipped from channel to channel and every station was reporting the same thing.

Barack Obama had won the democratic primary in Iowa.

I listened to his victory speech. I watched the crowd. I heard about the cross section of people that had supported him. I remembered Bobby Kennedy. Charisma is a powerful sedative and electrifying stimulant.

I was moved. I don't know that I will support him in the primary. I will forever be grateful to him for reaching his historic victory. I will forever be grateful that Americans, young and old, black and white, rich and poor, male and female left the comfort of their homes on a very cold day in Iowa and made their voices heard.

At some point, Tim Russert was on my t.v. sharing his views on the events of the evening. He spoke for me when he summed up the results and the impact of the unspoken statement shared by the voters. He looked at the camera and said "That is the kind of America I want to live in."

Mr. Russert.........so do I.

So I stood on that hilltop this afternoon and read the words of Aeschylus once again. I whispered to no one around. "Bobby, just like the eternal flame...the dream lives on. I just thought you ought to know."