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Editor's note:This article is a part of a series reviewing Utah history for KSL.com's Historic section.
SALT LAKE CITY — Robert F. Kennedy was no stranger to Utah in the years before he was shot in the early hours of June 5, 1968.
His death — 50 years ago on Wednesday — stunned Utahns and those across the world. It happened a little more than 24 hours after he was shot three times after he had just delivered a victory speech following his California primary win.
The state reaction came partly because Kennedy’s connection with Utah ran a little deeper than most national politicians have, though many of Kennedy’s visits involved the outdoors.
In 1950, he and his wife, Ethel, spent nearly a week between a ranch near Moab and in Salt Lake City during their honeymoon, according to a Deseret News article published June 6, 1968. In 1965, now a U.S. senator, Kennedy, his wife and their five children traveled to Colorado and Utah for a July 4th trip down the Yampa and Green rivers.
He told reporters that he and his family had “the time of our lives,” according to a July 5, 1965 edition of the Deseret News. A river runner from Vernal who guided the trio told the newspaper the family was “the most active bunch I’ve ever had on the river.”
Kennedy also visited Utah in 1967, where he spoke at a fundraiser for the Democratic Party before he took a trip down the Colorado River to Lake Powell in southern Utah, according to the newspaper.
Eleven days after announcing he was running for president, Robert Kennedy spoke at BYU, then-Weber State College and at the Terrace Ballroom in Salt Lake City and even took in a little skiing at Alta on March 27, 1968. He spoke at the Salt Lake venue even after a bomb threat was called before the event.
“Sen. Kennedy told his backers that America’s ‘New Day’ does not lie ‘in guns, planes and napalm, but in liberty at home and prudence abroad in the conduct of our national life,’” wrote M. DeMar Teuscher, political editor for the Deseret News at the time. Kennedy later added, “we must seek new guidelines for the future, not be bound by the past.”
Teuscher also reported that 5,000 people attended the event, while at least another 2,000 had to be turned away because of the venue’s capacity. He estimated about 75 percent of the crowd was “barely voting age” or younger, which emphasized the impact Kennedy had on the younger generation of the country at the time. In all, a combined 25,000 people attended the speeches.
Flash forward to June 1968, when the Democratic Party’s primary in California was front page news in Utah along with updates on the U.S. war front in Vietnam. The news that Kennedy was shot was met with surprise and sadness.
Of course, many across the nation had just mourned Martin Luther King’s assassination two months prior.
“Aside from the terrible and personal tragedy suffered by the Kennedy family, I am deeply disturbed and angered by the realization that assassination and attempted assassination are becoming common practice in today’s America,” said Utah Sen. Wallace F. Bennett, according to a June 5, 1968, edition of the Deseret News. “This mad and ever-spreading challenge to law and order in this country cannot go on.”
Others were hopeful Kennedy would recover. The following day was met with increased mourning after Kennedy died.
Then Utah Gov. Calvin Rampton offered his condolences.
“Mrs. Rampton and I extend to Mrs. Kennedy and the children our deep sympathy on the senator’s death,” he said. “This is a tragic and senseless thing which is difficult to understand. We hope the Lord will sustain them in their great loss.”
“I had an opportunity to work with Sen. Kennedy in the Senate and was fortunate to be his personal friend,” Utah Senator Frank Moss added. “He was a senator of uncommon amity and great promise, and will be greatly missed in the leadership of this country.”
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints President David O. McKay, who visited with Kennedy during his visit in March 1968, sent his condolences in a telegram to Ethel Kennedy. The Most Rev. Joseph Lennox Federal, bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City at the time, said, “The death of Sen. Kennedy adds to the distress and dismay we have experienced ever since hearing the news that he was the victim of the attack.”
An interfaith service was held at St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral in the days after Kennedy's death. A June 7, 1968, Deseret News edition describes representatives of Jewish, Catholic, Protestant and LDS faiths attending the service.
One attendee called Kennedy "a champion of the poor and downtrodden" while another called him a "warm, compassionate young man," the newspaper reported.
It was clear that many Utahns were saddened with the tragic headlines of the time. Despite the darkness in the news, John Creer, a Salt Lake City-based attorney, offered the optimism others sought.
"America is still good," he said, according to the article. "The land is still free. God is still in heaven above."
