Fifty years ago, on May 15, 1972, I was a student at the University of Alabama and in my Tuscaloosa apartment when a “Special Report” on the television announced that my father, Gov. The frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination at the time, Dad had been campaigning in Maryland on the eve of that state’s primary. The Michigan primary was scheduled for the next day, as well, and polling predicted that my father would carry both states by wide margins.
Despite the chaos surrounding him, he had felt a certain peace and finality come over him as he wrongly assumed his wounds would be fatal. A Secret Service agent had kneeled over him in a protective position, but his drawn gun was dangerously close to Dad’s head. “I wish you wouldn’t point that at me – I have been shot enough for one day,” he told the agent.
Within minutes of receiving the news, state troopers arrived at my apartment door, whisked me to the airpot, and placed me aboard a private jet along with Charlie Snider, the national chairman of the presidential campaign, press secretary Billy Joe Camp, and a handful of others. We soon arrived at Holy Cross Hospital, where my father had been taken by ambulance and was undergoing five hours of emergency surgery.
Once he regained strength, he received visits from notable leaders that included President Nixon, Senator McGovern, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, and Ethel Kennedy, whose husband, Robert, had been killed while campaigning for the presidency in 1968. Cards, letters, telegrams, and flowers flowed into the hospital by the thousands.
As my father spoke, a handful of liberal delegates tried to shout him down, and some marched around the convention hall wearing paper masks depicting Arthur Bremer, which supporters ripped from their faces. The vast majority, though, gave him a warm reception and appreciated the history of the moment. His mission complete, it was time to return to his beloved Alabama.
During a quiet moment together, I once asked my father what led him to write the note, and his reply is one I will always remember, “Son, if I can’t forgive him, my Lord won’t forgive me of my sins.” In a very real sense, the event that took place a half-century ago resulted in two distinctly different Perhaps the change was best illustrated one night when we watched television together as I sat beside his bed. Knowing he had twice won a Golden Gloves championship as an amateur, been captain of the University of Alabama boxing team, and loved the sport his entire life, I turned on a prizefight between two ranked contenders.
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