RFK Mobbed in Brooklyn

May 31, 1965 - An admiring mob rushed Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and knocked him down today minutes after a monument to President Kennedy was unveiled at Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza. Kennedy, shoved off his feet as he walked from the monument site to Flatbush Ave., was helped up and went on through the crowd of 20,000.

The police commander on the scene thrust his body between the Senator and the nearly hysterical admirers, who scratched and grappled in their efforts to approach.

The officer, Asst. Chief Inspector Patrick Whalen, a burly 190-pounder, said the crowd’s screaming adulation of Sen. Kennedy was “just like it was with his brother, God rest his soul.”

Sen. Kennedy’s eyes brimmed with tears at the unveiling ceremony after Brooklyn Borough President Abe Stark declared:“The people of Brooklyn loved and honored President John Kennedy for many things, and most of all for the sensitive qualities of his warm, young heart and brilliant mind.”

After dabbing at his eyes with a suntanned hand, the Senator said a lesson of his brother’s life had been that “one person could make a difference.”

A mosaic of listeners of different races paved the plaza and onlookers stood among television aerials on nearby rooftops as the Senator exhorted Brooklyn to look to the future, not the past, quoting from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “Ulysses,” line 55:

“’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.” The Senator, who spoke without notes, said “build” instead of “seek.”

The monument, built on Stark’s initiative, is a marble plinth bearing a bronze bust of President Kennedy with the solid look his features acquired after he attained the Presidency. It was sculpted at a Brooklyn Heights studio by Neil Estern, 39 years old, whose parents, also Brooklyn residents, attended the ceremony with their son.

Inscribed in the Vermont marble base are the words spoken by President Kennedy at his inauguration in 1961: “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”

The monument was to have included an eternal flame. But plans were changed at the request of Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy, who wished the flame beside the President’s grave to remain the only one. Mrs. Kennedy has been avoiding public appearances and passed the Memorial Day weekend in private.

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