Sept. 7, 1964 - Thousands of sunbathers, many of them almost hysterical in their enthusiasm, swarmed around Robert F. Kennedy yesterday on Nassau and Suffolk County beaches. Kennedy, the Democratic-Liberal candidate for the U.S. Senate from New York, was forced to abandon plans to walk along the beaches when he was trapped in a friendly mob outside the West Bathhouse at Jones Beach. In closing the first week of his campaign, the former Attorney General stopped at Atlantic Beach, Long Beach, Lido Beach, Jones Beach in Nassau County, and at the Fire Island community in Suffolk.
On a magnificent late summer day, Kennedy was met by boisterous crowds wherever he went — 800 persons at the traffic circle near the Atlantic Beach Bridge, 4,000 on the Long Beach boardwalk, and thousands more along the roads.
But nowhere did the crush compare with that at Jones Beach, which was thronged by 160,000 holiday visitors when the candidate arrived a few minutes before 2 p.m.
Kennedy climbed to a parapet outside the bathhouse and waved to the crowd below. Then, speaking through an electric megaphone, he declared:
“For the past three years, I’ve been working for the New Frontier. Now, and from now on, I’m dedicating my life and my future to the people of the State of New York.”
Random interviews with those who came to see Kennedy yesterday indicated that a fair number of them intended to vote for his Republican opponent, Senator Kenneth Keating.
Asked why she had come, one woman who said she was for Keating replied: “As long as he was here, I thought I’d come; everyone always wants to see famous people and people in public life. Everyone wants to see a Kennedy.”
Some of those who screamed loudest for Kennedy today were too young to vote. Near Long Beach, one teenaged girl held up a placard that said: “Ringo for President, but Kennedy for Senator.”
Ringo Starr is the drummer for the Beatles, the British singing group that evokes hysteria in many teenagers.
Last night, Kennedy returned by helicopter to his home in Glen Cove, where he is resting and working on campaign plans today. He begins a three-day upstate swing tomorrow.
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