Sept. 23, 1964 - Robert F. Kennedy confronted his first hostile audience today — 3,000 scowling, muttering hard-hats from the Brooklyn Navy Yard — and charmed them with an election promise to help save the shipyard.
He promised that if he were elected Senator, he would go to the Pentagon and demand from Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara enough contract award to keep the yard busy.
For almost a year, workers at the yard have been haunted by fears that the 163-year-old installation, the largest of 11 yards owned by the Navy, would be closed.
Mr. Kennedy immediately won the sympathy of the workers by alluding to his brother, the late President Kennedy. He thanked the workers for their memorial to the President, a stone monument standing inside the shipyard gates.
A child in the crowd waved a banner reading: “Dear Bob, Save My Daddy’s Job.” A lone cry of “We Want Keating” was smothered in applause for the speaker.
“If I am elected to the Senate on the 3rd of November,” Kennedy declared, “I will met with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on the 4th, and I will work for this yard as hard as I can.”
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