LOS ANGELES – With a band of traditional Korean drummers, a Latin dance group and a martial arts exhibition, city officials broke ground Wednesday on a small urban pocket park at the site where Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated 40 years ago.
Few in the crowd of more than 200 knew much about Kennedy except that he had been shot to death at the site of the old Ambassador Hotel after winning California's Democratic presidential primary in 1968.
But many said they thought a park would be a fitting tribute to the late senator and a valuable resource to the crowded, multiethnic community.
“I'm too young to remember, but I thought the words said about him today were very touching,” said Dore Burry, who works at the nearby Koreatown Youth and Community Center.
Damian Carroll of the political group San Fernando Valley Young Democrats quoted from a 1966 speech the senator gave in South Africa. At the time he was one of the few U.S. politicians to publicly oppose that country's apartheid system of racial segregation.
“Few will have the greatness to bend history but each of us can work to change a small portion of the events, and in the total of all these acts will be written the history of this generation,” Kennedy said. “Each time a person stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
Those words will be etched in stone near the park's entrance.
Kennedy had just declared victory before a throng of cheering supporters at the Ambassador, then one of the city's plushest hotels, when he was shot to death in June 1968. His assassin, Sirhan B. Sirhan, remains in prison.
The park hasn't been formally named yet, but a model put on display at the site Wednesday proclaimed it “Robert F. Kennedy Inspiration Park.” Paul Schrade, a Kennedy family friend, said that is what the family would like.
