"It's on to Chicago, and let's win there."
- Robert F. Kennedy, after capturing California's June 4, 1968 Democratic presidential primary

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It's been 30 years since Bobby Kennedy was killed in Los Angeles, and it came at a moment of high triumph.

A former Rhode Islander, K. (for Kilvert) Dun Gifford, was there the night the New York senator defeated Sen. Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota. Gifford, an RFK campaign aide, was entering the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel when Sirhan Sirhan fired away. He helped subdue the assailant, he saw the senator on the floor, he rode in the ambulance with Kennedy, wife Ethel and sister Jean Kennedy Smith.

Says Gifford, 59:

"It was just, 'Hurry]' 'Fast.' You're saying, 'Drive faster]' Your whole being is focused on that because you know he needs help and you hope doctors will be there who'll know just what to do instantly. There's nothing that any of us in that ambulance could do except pray and hold him and just 'Faster, faster, faster]"'

Kennedy's victory over McCarthy had raised hopes he could best Vice President Hubert Humphrey for the presidential nomination at that summer's Democratic National Convention in Chicago and go on to defeat Republican Richard Nixon in the fall.

Gifford, who now lives in Cambridge, Mass., was on the staff of Sen. Ted Kennedy but was in California working on Bobby's campaign. When he remembers that night in Los Angeles, he thinks first of being in a hotel room with the candidate and his family and entourage. "There was a great sense of euphoria," he says.

Now Kennedy, 42, greeted supporters in the ballroom, finishing up with his on-to-Chicago cry.

"The room erupted in cheers and whistles and clapping," says Gifford, part of the group on the platform. "It was just thunderous, and he was beaming. Everybody was so pumped up."

Kennedy entered a kitchen passageway, en route to a press conference. It was 12:13 a.m., June 5.

Gifford trailed about 15 feet behind.

Kennedy threaded his way between a serving table and a line of well-wishers. "He shakes hands with people and he's smiling and laughing," Gifford says.

And in this line is Sirhan Sirhan, a 24-year-old Jordanian immigrant, and he is holding a small pistol. "I saw him raise a hand and start to shoot . . . I have a distinct freeze-frame in my head of the young man raising his hand and starting to shoot."

Gifford adds, "I saw (Kennedy) react and turn away, probably as he was struck. He was struck behind the right ear."

Kennedy's older brother, President John F. Kennedy, had been assassinated almost five years earlier. So when Bobby was shot, Gifford says, it was, in a sense, not a surprise. "You think about it all the time as a staff aide to Kennedys," he says. And when the shots come, "You say, 'Jesus, this is happening.' "

Now, Gifford says, "People start to rush. The guy keeps shooting."

Several are wounded.

Gifford's immediate attention is focused on Sirhan. "We all lunged for him and for the gun."

Gifford, who is 6 feet 5 inches tall, says he wanted to make sure Sirhan was not injured. "People were piling on, hitting him, berating him." They cried, "Kill the son of a bitch.' " Gifford says, "I went to law school and wanted to have him alive and not dead."

The June 6 Providence Journal published a UPI photo with this caption, "Shooting suspect (beneath raised arm) is set upon by crowd after he fired volley. In foreground is Los Angeles Rams' tackle 'Rosie' Grier, who helped subdue the man."

The June 7 Journal republished the upper portion of the picture and identified the man with the raised arm as Gifford.

A story said:

"Mr. Gifford is a son of Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Gifford Jr. of 5 Charles Field St., Providence. His father is president of the Rhode Island Hospital Trust Co.

"The elder Mr. Gifford could not be reached yesterday, but a spokesman in his office said he had recognized his son in a photograph that appeared on page one of the Providence Journal yesterday.

"The younger Mr. Gifford telephoned his wife in Washington early Wednesday morning, a short time after the shooting and she called his parents to assure them that he was not harmed in the incident . . ."

Hospital Trust is now part of BankBoston. K. Dun Gifford's brother, Chad, is its chairman.

Dun Gifford says this is the first time he has been interviewed about the episode by the Journal-Bulletin. In those hectic June 1968 days, he says, he was so wrapped up in developments, it would have been difficult for a reporter to arrange an interview.

IN LOS ANGELES, when he was satisfied that Sirhan was contained, Gifford turned his attention to Kennedy, who was lying on the cement floor, a pool of blood under his head, Ethel kneeling beside him.

Gifford says there were shouts of "Get a doctor]" "Call an ambulance]" "Stand back, give him air]"

Gifford tried to hold people back.

Kennedy was put on a stretcher and taken by ambulance, first to Central Receiving Hospital, then to Good Samaritan Hospital, where, after brain surgery, he died early on June 6.

In addition to the bullet that entered his brain, RFK had been struck by two other bullets, one that lodged in back of his neck and one that scraped his forehead.

During the ambulance rides, Gifford had found it hard to believe the worst. Mostly it was uncertainty and prayer, and hoping for the best. Kennedy was breathing, so you'd think, "Oh, good, he's still alive." But there were all these questions, such as, "Is he going to be all right?" and no one could answer.

At Good Samaritan, the "long wait" began. Family was there, campaign workers were there, and in such circumstances "you just need to keep busy." They organized a phone bank to call people who needed to be called, including other relatives. It was during this vigil that the reality sunk in that Kennedy wouldn't survive. Gifford remembers thinking, "This whole thing sucks. How can it be happening? Who is this cuckoo (Sirhan)?"

And, of course, when Kennedy did die, the feelings turned to "anger, sadness, rage."

Gifford was among those who flew east with the body.

THE PROVIDENCE native is an alumnus of St. George's School, Harvard College and Harvard Law. In 1956, he and his family survived the sinking of the Andrea Doria. In 1964, he was navigator aboard the Constellation, which retained the America's Cup.

He's been an investment banker and had several other business interests. He is a food and wine enthusiast and currently chairs Oldways Preservation & Exchange Trust in Cambridge. It is a nonprofit food-issues think tank that promotes healthier diets and the preservation of traditional agriculture (organic, say, as opposed to chemical).

Its work, he asserts, is in keeping with Kennedy's mission of making a difference in people's lives:

"Bobby Kennedy was, if nothing else, about cold reason. 'These people in America are starving. Why aren't we feeding them? These people have leaky roofs. Why aren't we fixing them? These people have terrible health problems. Why aren't we treating them?' We are really trying to change the world's attitudes about food and eating."

Kennedy was extraordinarily controversial. He had an enduring, bitter feud with President Lyndon B. Johnson. But even others, who admired his ideals, sometimes considered him ruthless or opportunistic - or too slow to act. McCarthy would never have been in the presidential race to begin with if Kennedy, a critic of the Vietnam War, had moved earlier to challenge Johnson in the primaries. After McCarthy did well against LBJ in New Hampshire, Kennedy launched his own bid. Johnson finally withdrew.

But the fact is that Kennedy, however slow he was to enter the race, did run, did protest Johnson's war policies, did advocate for blacks, Native Americans and other disadvantaged people here and abroad.

Over the years, we have come to appreciate how much passion Kennedy brought to politics, how few other politicians have been willing to speak up for the downtrodden, how few other politicians have challenged the comfortable to think about those less advantaged.

In a 1966 speech in South Africa about the need for change, he warned against timidity:

"Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality of those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change."

So, too, as we remember his assassination and think of the violence that still mars the United States today, and the gaps that still exist between whites and blacks, between haves and have-nots, we can ponder this passage from a speech he gave in Cleveland in April 1968, just after the slaying of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the riots that followed the civil rights leader's death:

"What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by his assassin's bullet.

"No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero."

He spoke also in that speech of another kind of violence:

"This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter."

People who miss Bobby Kennedy long for politicians who speak like that.

AND, FINALLY, think of that last Kennedy speech on California primary night, a speech Gifford heard in person and so many others heard on TV. It came from a candidate who was sickened by the divisions that tore the country but who nevertheless sounded a note of optimism:

"We can start to work together again. We are a great country, an unselfish country, and a compassionate country. And I intend to make that my basis for running over the period of the next few months."

And instead we got Richard Nixon and, over time, so many other politicians who set Americans against Americans and who appealed to the worst in people instead of the best.

M. Charles Bakst is The Journal-Bulletin's political columnist.