50 years after RFK assassination, busboy still waits for someone to follow in senator's footsteps
Juan Romero has spent half a century trying to move on.
He gets up before sunrise, goes to work and paves another road or driveway in the San Jose, Calif., area, strong as ever at 67.
He likes to have a cold beer or two with his work crew when they punch out at the end of the day, caked in dirt and sweat. He enjoys time with family and friends and doesn't look too far down the road.
But what happened at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles in the early morning of June 5, 1968, is always there, a shadow at the edge of his consciousness, and sometimes he retreats into it.
Romero is 17, working as a busboy. He hears that Bobby Kennedy has won the California Democratic primary for president. Romero rushes to the food service area Kennedy is passing through and reaches out to congratulate the man he had met the night before while delivering room service.
And then the shots, the screams, the commotion.
Kennedy goes down, flat on his back, a ghostly look in his eyes. Romero crouches to help, and the black-and-white photographs freeze forever the image of a young immigrant laborer at the side of fallen American aristocracy.
Next week is the 50th anniversary of the murder of Bobby Kennedy, which followed by two
