Kathleen Kennedy Townsend is still moved by the strangers who approach her to describe how her father inspired them.
Former U.S. Sen. Joseph Tydings, a Maryland Democrat, says that his dear friend Robert F. Kennedy's murder transformed him into a gun control activist, a move that cost him his political career.
And civil rights advocate Kweisi Mfume remembers 1968 as a pivotal year of his life, with Kennedy's death as one in a series of events prompting him to pursue a political career that led him to the halls of Congress.
Forty years ago, Kennedy was leaving a victory celebration at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles when he was felled by an assassin's bullets. Kennedy had just won the California Democratic primary for president. He died on June 6, 1968 at age 42.
His death shattered his family, people across the nation and a generation of young idealists who had looked to him with hope during a decade of great upheaval. Though shaken, many went on to follow his path. Today, notable Marylanders point to his legacy of social justice, integrity and courage as an enduring inspiration for their lives and deeds.
"Not a day goes by that someone doesn't come up to me and say they were affected by my father's legacy in some way," Townsend, now 56, said during an interview this week at a Lutherville coffee shop.
"1968 was really changing America, and that change of America is something we are still gripping with today. That, in a sense, is why he is so compelling."
Townsend, who was Maryland's first female lieutenant governor, doesn't discuss where she was or what she was doing when her father was killed.
"That's voyeuristic; I'm not going to talk about that," she says curtly. But she acknowledges that 40 years later, she still struggles with grief.
"It's really sad, it's sad for my family and it's sad for our country," she said. "It's often said, when someone dies, time will heal all wounds. Well, no, time does not heal all wounds. It's really raw, and it's very awful. It's important it is not forgotten."
Robert Kennedy's death came two months after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and five years after his brother, President John F. Kennedy, was slain in Dallas.
During Robert Kennedy's passionate 82-day campaign for the presidency, he identified with the swelling outrage about the Vietnam War and racial injustice at home, promising to fight poverty, end the war and heal divisions.
