By Christopher T. Assaf , Sun reporter|June 04, 2008
New Milford, Conn. — New Milford, Conn. - The kernel was planted in Bill Eppridge's mind while he was studying photojournalism at the University of Missouri.
"Create a photographic epic poem."
Eppridge was taking a history course in the late 1950s taught by the university's poet-in-residence, John Neihardt, who was best known for his 1932 book, Black Elk S peaks, about an Oglala Lakota medicine man who had witnessed Gen. George Custer's defeat at Little Big Horn and the Massacre of Wounded Knee. Outside of class, Eppridge spent a lot of time discussing what Neihardt, the poet laureate of Nebraska and the Plains, called epic poems. He asked Neihardt if he had ever seen a photographic version of an epic poem.
"I have seen a lot, but never really something I would call an epic," the professor told him, Eppridge said.
Forty years ago tomorrow, Eppridge captured what could be described as an epic photo and certainly one of the most famous images in modern American history: A mortally wounded Robert F. Kennedy lying cradled in the arms of an anguished hotel busboy named Juan Romero.
The slow-motion events of that night, June 5, 1968, remained with Eppridge forever.
"Every day I think about it," he said, sitting in a wooden rocking chair as a thunderstorm boomed in the hills surrounding the Connecticut home he shares with his wife, and editor, Adrienne Aurichio. "Bad dreams go away. ... I don't think nightmares ever do."
In 1966, Life magazine assigned Eppridge to cover Kennedy, the 42-year-old New York senator, former U.S. attorney general and brother to assassinated President John F. Kennedy, for a six-month assignment.
"He's a superb photojournalist," Donald M. Wilson, assistant publisher of Life at the time, said of Eppridge. "I worked there for many years, knew all the greats. He was excellent."
In 1968, after Kennedy announced his intention to seek the Democratic nomination for president, Eppridge volunteered to cover his campaign. From state to state, in open limousines and among the throngs of people, the specter of the candidate's brother's tragic death always seemed to accompany them.
