#37

#37

Noel Laflin

6-2-19

There's a lot of ruckus at Disneyland this weekend regarding the new Star Wars attraction.

But 51 years ago today, real life astronaut John Glenn co-piloted a bobsled car with Robert Kennedy and two of his children as Kennedy took a break from campaigning for the California presidential campaign and brought some of his kids, and Glenn, to Disneyland.

Glenn, a close friend of the Kennedy's, would be tasked with breaking the news of their father's death to Bobby Kennedy's children four days later. Ethel Kennedy phoned and asked him to do so as Glenn was back in Massachusetts and she was still in California at the hospital with her slain husband.

“It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do," Glenn later wrote, never elaborating on those personal one-on-one conversations with each child.

Post Script: It dawned on me, while looking at the bobsled car number in this photo, that had Kennedy taken the Democratic nomination and gone on to win the general election that year, he would have been the 37th President of the United States.