Juan Romero, a hotel busboy who came to the aid of Robert F Kennedy after the New York senator was shot in Los Angeles, has died.
Romero died Monday of a heart attack in Modesto, California. He was 68.
Romero was just 17 years old when Kennedy was shot in the head while walking through the Ambassador Hotel kitchen after his victory in the California presidential primary in June, 1968.
Romero held the mortally wounded Kennedy, struggling to keep the senator’s head from hitting the floor.
Romero then placed Rosary beads he had in his pocket in Kennedy’s hand and reassured him that everything would be all right.
Is everybody OK?’ Kennedy asked him.
‘Yes’, Romero replied.
‘Everything will be okay,’ Kennedy said before losing consciousness. He was pronounced dead at a hospital hours later at age 42.
The moment, captured on film, became an iconic image that haunted Romero for most of his life because Kennedy had stopped to shake his hand just moments before he was shot.
For many years, Romero blamed himself for Kennedy’s death – wondering if he could have done something to prevent the shooting or if Kennedy might have survived if he had not stopped to shake his hand.
“I’ve always felt a great deal of empathy for him because of how difficult it was for him to move past that,” she Maria Shriver, RFK’s niece. “It’s kind of hard to know why someone gets put into a situation that they’re locked in forever. But as I see it, he was locked into an image of helping someone.”
As his photo was seen around the globe, Romero received letters from people congratulating him for what he did.
Romero only recently began to celebrate his birthday, refusing to for decades because it fell on the same month as the anniversary of RFK’s assassination.
He also went to an RFK memorial in a downtown San Jose park ever year to mark the senator’s death, always leaving flowers at the monument.
Earlier this year, Romero told The Associated Press in a rare interview that Kennedy inspired his lifelong commitment to racial equality.
“I still have the fire burning inside of me,” Romero said.