Busboy who comforted Robert Kennedy after he was killed dies

LOS ANGELES (AP) – When Robert F. Kennedy decided to hide in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after winning the 1968 Democratic presidential primary, Juan Romero was delighted with his good fortune.

This meant that the 18-year-old busboy might have the chance to shake the hand of his hero – the man he assured himself would be the next president of the United States – for the second times in two days.

Romero had just seized Kennedy 's hand when gunshots rang out, one of them hitting the senator in the head.

Kennedy would die the next day and the teenage Mexican immigrant who had idolized her would carry the emotional burden of this encounter for most of her life.

"I remember him once saying that he felt guilty," said Thursday his daughter, Josefina Guerra. "He thought it was his fault."

His father explained: "If I had not reached out, he would not have been hit by a bullet," she said.

Romero died Monday in a hospital in Modesto, California, following a heart attack, said Thursday to the Associated Press Rigo Chacon, a longtime family friend and former TV journalist. He was 68 years old.

Romero, who left Los Angeles decades ago, has spent most of his life in the cities of San Jose and Modesto in northern California, Chacon said.

He has worked in construction, including paving concrete and asphalt, enjoying often exhausting physical work without the intention of retiring any time soon.

"Juan was a tough guy, muscular and apparently healthy," Chacon said, adding that his death had been a shock to family and friends.

The divorced Romero had recently met a woman and had moved with her to Modesto. He wanted to buy a house and travel, said his daughter.

"He was happy, he was so happy," she said. "It was just a short time."

For decades, every time Romero saw black-and-white photos of himself – a boy with baby's face gently rocking Kennedy as he lay on the concrete floor of the hotel kitchen – he wondered what he should have done more to save Kennedy.

Recently, he said in rare interviews, he finally overcame this difficulty.

He said that he always carried the example that Kennedy had given in his campaign for equality and civil rights.

"I always have fire burning in me," said Romero.

Born in the small town of Mazatan, in the Mexican state of Sonora, Romero lived in Baja California until his family got permission to bring him to the United States at age 10.

The family lived in blue – collar workers east of Los Angeles and Romero was a student at Roosevelt High School in 1968, when students in Chicano began organizing walkouts to protest discrimination at the school. regard to Mexican-American students. As the son of a disciplinary father, however, he said that he was too scared to participate.

He was working at the Ambassador Hotel on the eve of the June 1968 California Primary when Kennedy and his associates ordered a room service and he was called to help with his delivery.

"All I remembered was that I stared at him open mouth," he said later.

Finally, Kennedy approached, grabbed Romero's hand and said, "Thank you."

"I will never forget the handshake and the look … looking straight at you in the piercing eyes that said," I am one of you. We are good, "said Romero. "He was not looking at my skin, he was not looking at my age … he was looking at me like an American."

After Kennedy won the primaries, he thanked the fans in the hotel's embassy room, and then went through the kitchen for a meeting with reporters.

Romero jumped on the opportunity to see him again.

After the gunshots sounded and Kennedy fell, Romero rocked his bloody head.

"Is everyone okay?" Kennedy asked. Romero said yes.

"Everything will be fine," said the senator shortly before losing consciousness.

As they spoke, Romero pressed a set of rosaries into the senator's hand as press photographers frantically took pictures. Kennedy died the next day at 42 years old.

Because of the pearls, his bus boy's white coat and his beatific air, Romero had been misidentified in the first press articles as a priest.

"It was a really dramatic photo with the light coming from the front, it was strong photos," Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer David Hume Kennerly said Thursday.

"But really the heart of the matter," added Kennerly, "was this stranger who was there to help Senator Kennedy when he was downstairs, which is what has always struck me in these pictures."

Josefina Guerra said that his father felt guilty for years about the shooting, which had broken his heart, and he had spoken little to him.

"I think that's what made him a tough man, to master everything … as a teenager, facing that," she said.

When he visited Kennedy's grave at Arlington National Cemetery a few years ago, Romero cried speaking directly to the senator.

He "apologized for the fact that he did not think he had reacted soon enough," said Chacon. "It may be he's taking the ball." Or he could have pushed him away. "

Eventually, Romero overcame his guilt, in part thanks to the support of Kennedy admirers who told him that he was an example of the type of person that Kennedy had embraced.