American Values: Lessons I Learned from My Family

by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The desolation evoked by his death was global. In nearly every nation, highways, businesses, factories, schools, and colleges closed. Radio and TV stations worldwide suspended advertising. Airplanes were grounded. Professional sports teams canceled contests. Sixty thousand Germans carrying torches flooded the square beside Rathaus Schöneberg, the former city hall for West Berlin where Jack had given his “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech. Three days later, the German government renamed it John-F-Kennedy-Platz. In Iran, every school, government office, and business shut down for days as the nation mourned. William Manchester reported that a Kalahari bushman walked ten miles to the U.S. embassy in Botswana and told the consul general, “I’ve lost a friend.” In Kenya, Masai warriors held a tribal feast of mourning. The British prime minister described his nation as enduring convulsions of pain, and London teamsters who had never seen Jack roamed the streets in tears. In Greece all traffic stopped during the mass; Germany banned cars from the Autobahn. Traffic in New York also came to a halt, and trains stopped on their tracks across the country. Greyhound buses pulled over. The Soviet Union’s deputy premier Anastas Mikoyan, the ruthless Bolshevik, burst into tears when Jackie said to him, after the funeral, “Please tell Mr. Chairman President that I know he and my husband worked together for a peaceful world and now he and you must carry out my husband’s work.”