“He passed away on Monday morning.”Ī niece and a brother confirmed Romero’s death, but family members were unavailable for comment.
Rfk assassination busboy photo tv#
“He had a heart attack several days ago and his brain went too long without oxygen,” said his longtime friend, TV newsman Rigo Chacon of San Jose.
That only made the news of Romero’s death this month in Modesto, at age 68, seem all the more tragic. Finally, he said, he was able to mark his birthday after years of refusing to celebrate because it was in the same month as RFK’s assassination. It was only in recent years that Romero began to let go, and in my visits with him three years ago and again this past June, he seemed to have been revived. and by five years the assassination of RFK’s brother, President John F. The photos of that moment, with confusion and despair in Romero’s young, dark eyes, made for searing portraits of 1960s upheaval and followed by two months the assassination of the Rev. attorney general, cradled Kennedy’s head, and tried to help him up before realizing how gravely wounded Kennedy was. Romero, just 17 at the time, squatted next to the fallen U.S. Kennedy, a candidate for president of the United States. That was the night an assassin took aim at Robert F. He left Los Angeles and moved to Wyoming, later came back west and settled in San Jose, raised a family and devoted himself to construction work.īut still he was haunted by what happened just after midnight on June 5, 1968, when he was on duty as a busboy at the Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard near Koreatown. “Everything will be OK,” Kennedy said before losing consciousness.LOS ANGELES - Juan Romero struggled for decades with a memory he could not escape. News photographers captured images that would be seen all over the world.
Voters went to the polls the next day, and that night Kennedy thanked supporters in the hotel’s Embassy Room before leaving through the kitchen, where the gunman opened fire. “He wasn’t looking at my skin, he wasn’t looking at my age … he was looking at me as an American.” “I will never forget the handshake and the look … looking right at you with those piercing eyes that said, ‘I’m one of you. Kennedy grabbed Romero’s hand with both hands and said, “thank you.” For a moment, there was silence. “All I remember was that I kept staring at him with my mouth open,” Romero said. Kennedy put down the phone and waved Romero to come forward. He saw Kennedy toward the back - one hand holding a curtain and the other gripping a phone. Romero was on duty and came into the room with a group of other busboys. He met Kennedy the day before the California primary, when the senator and his aides ordered room service. He got a job at the Ambassador Hotel as a dishwasher and later a busboy. Romero feared he’d face trouble at home if he took part in the protests. The family lived in blue-collar East Los Angeles and he attended Roosevelt High School the year that Chicano students started organizing walkouts to protest discrimination against Mexican-American students. “I still have the fire burning inside of me,” Romero said while publicizing the NetFlix documentary “Bobby Kennedy for President.”īorn in the small town of Mazatan in the Mexican state of Sonora, Romero moved to Baja California until his family received permission to bring him to the U.S. Earlier this year, Romero told The Associated Press in a rare interview that Kennedy inspired his lifelong commitment to racial equality.
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