RFK Assassination: It Was 40 Years Ago Today

Sadly, the Ambassador Hotel, where Bobby Kennedy was shot in the early hours of June 5, 1968, no longer stands. And as Patt Morrison writes, that's a shame:

Imagine studying American history within the very walls where Richard Nixon wrote the "Checkers" speech that saved his political bacon.

But the Kennedy family pretty much wanted the place razed and the ground sown with salt. Coupled with the LAUSD's desperate need for classrooms, it was adios, Ambassador. The first of the three new schools on the property is supposed to open 15 months from now.

So where is the pantry now?

After the preservationists' lawsuits and the environmental impact reports, the LAUSD agreed to pluck it out and maintain it intact. But the LAUSD's senior project manager, John Kuprenas, told me that an engineer said no way. "Hold the bus," is what Kuprenas told me the engineer said. "This plan looks kind of iffy." The fear was that if the district "tried to take it out in a mass, it'd all completely crumble," Kuprenas said.

So the pantry exists today not even as a kit to be eventually reassembled but in sample pieces -- 2-foot-diameter cores of floor, walls and ceiling, along with doors, electrical panels and the biggest piece, the ice machine behind which Sirhan Sirhan stood, waiting to open fire. It's all on 30 pallets, shrink-wrapped and stored in a secure, undisclosed location, waiting for a special commission and the school board to decide what historical institution might deserve them.

Except for some recycled steel, the rest of the pantry, along with most of the Ambassador Hotel, went to a landfill.

Morrison swings it to now, noting that the Universal fire got more press attention than the Ambassador pantry destruction.

Meanwhile, for an as-it-happened piece of history, check out the live coverage of the RFK shooting, archived from 1968. I first posted this a few months ago, and mentioned at the time how a YouTube user named JFK1963 has posted, in chronological order, nine videos from CBS News that chronicle the assassination of Bobby Kennedy on June 5, 1968. It's chilling to watch the videos in order, as if you're watching coverage of the event live -- starting with RFK's victory speech at the Ambassador Hotel, having just won the California primary.