I have a vintage, framed portrait of Bobby Kennedy hanging on my wall. It has moved to new apartments with me for 15 years or more. When I moved to Sweden, it was one of the few things I brought with me. During that move, I sold or gave away most of my belongings, but this, I kept.

Every November 20th, I’m reminded that it’s Robert Kennedy’s birthday and he’s not around. I was born 15 months after he was taken away, so he and I were never alive at the same time. I am older now than he ever was.

I’ve spent a lot of time wondering how things could have been different had he not been killed just before securing the Democratic nomination and if he had won the presidency in 1968.

What would it have been like to have been born into a country where Bobby Kennedy was the president instead of Richard Nixon?

If President Robert Kennedy had spoken to the Apollo 11 astronauts on the surface of the Moon upon the fulfillment of his brother’s challenge? If the Vietnam War had ended in the Sixties? If Watergate had never happened? If the president hadn’t resigned in shame and turmoil?

We’ll never know.

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