MONDAY
E-mail a friendPaul Schrade
airdate June 4, 2008
Paul Schrade is a former director of the United Auto Workers in California. His involvement with the union dates back to the time of founder Walter Reuther. Schrade was also a close associate of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and an aide in Kennedy's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in '68. He was one of the five people wounded on the night RFK was assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on April 5, 1968. Now in his 80s, he continues to be an activist for auto worker issues.
Robert Kennedy friend and colleague, who was wounded in the shooting at the Ambassador Hotel, discusses new evidence about the assasination. (2:10)
Full Interview (12:31)
Paul Schrade
Tavis: Paul Schrade is a former director of the United Auto Workers Union who was at the Ambassador Hotel 40 years ago tonight, along with other RFK supporters, after Kennedy's victory speech. Paul Schrade was one of five others wounded as they left the stage.
Doctors were able to remove a portion of the bullet that entered his skull, and thankfully, 40 years later, he's still here to share his story with us. Paul Schrade, I guess you're happy about that, too, huh?
Paul Schrade: Yes.
Tavis: Nice to see you.
Schrade: Thank you.
Tavis: Glad to have you here. Before I go to this night 40 years ago, let me ask a couple of things that occurred to me first. When you heard the news about the health challenge that Bobby's brother Teddy is enduring, you thought what? I suspect these stories about the Kennedy family must always take you back.
Schrade: Always.
Tavis: What did you think when you heard about Ted's challenge?
Schrade: Well, Ted's such a great man and the best senator we've ever had, and it just reminded me of the kind of guts and courage that he had to be able to take this and then go out on his sailboat. And it's just wonderful to see his spirit.
Tavis: So 40 years ago tonight, literally just miles from this studio, you were at the Ambassador. Does it seem, first of all, like 40 years ago?
Schrade: No, because you live with it every day, and you try to continue the kind of work that Robert Kennedy and I was involved in during that period.
Tavis: For you, continuing that work has meant what for these 40 years?
Schrade: Well, it meant we continued community action. Bob sort of invented in our period the whole idea of community action, giving people a chance to organize their own lives and improve their lives. We took him to Watts in 1965 and a couple times later, where we were putting together a union program, a community union based upon the community action ideas that he invented when he was attorney general.
And he then went to Bed Stuy - the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Project was a product of that whole period of community action. It was just wonderful working with him on that.
Tavis: We know what happened 40 years ago; we'll come back to what happened to you specifically on that night. Before I do that, though, how did your relationship with Bobby get forged?
Schrade: Well, we first met in 1956 at the Democratic Convention, and he and Jack Kennedy met Walter Reuther, the president of my union, the United Auto Workers, in the hallway someplace. And Jack said to him, "Walter, how can I get your support for the vice presidential nomination with Stevenson?" He said, "Young man -" this is Walter - "you have to change your voting record."
This is '56. And this happened with both Johnson and Kennedy. They became more liberal than conservative during that period as they began maneuvering to become the candidate in 1960.
Tavis: So you were with your boss on this particular night?
Schrade: Yeah. Yeah, I was a delegate; I was a Stevenson delegate. The other thing that happened with Bob is that he asked me to join him in Los Angeles during the '60 convention, a couple weeks before the convention, to try to hijack delegates from the Stevenson slate, which I'd been part of four years before, and to bring them over to Jack Kennedy.
And I worked with Sarge Shriver in doing that, and we brought some Stevenson delegates over. I think that's the kind of thing that impressed Bob. When anybody really made a contribution like that, that loyalty was there forever.
Tavis: You were loyal to him, and because of your loyalty to him you were at the Ambassador, as I said, 40 years ago tonight. I suspect - you tell me if I'm right or wrong - I suspect because you were shot that night and fell unconscious that you probably have learned more stuff after the fact, even though you were there in the room that night.
Schrade: And still learning.
Tavis: And still learning.
Schrade: Still learning.
Tavis: All these years later.
Schrade: Yeah.
Tavis: Yeah.
Schrade: And I talked to a guy last night who was an 18-year-old (unintelligible). We were at a meeting together - oh, in fact, we were over at the Good Samaritan Hospital, where Bob died. There was a religious ceremony there conducted by Cardinal Mahoney. And he was telling me something he saw. He was right close to us, and he was just - and he got blood on him at that point, and he was there when Bob fell and when I fell. And you begin - and so he had some ideas what happened that night.
Tavis: You were shot in the head?
Schrade: Yes.
Tavis: Yeah. What do you recall about what made that evening so special before you were felled by this bullet?
Schrade: Well, that we were in a very important struggle there. I had endorsed Robert Kennedy as soon as he announced, because I was in the anti-war movement, civil rights movement, we were doing community action work, and this is where Bob was working as well. And so I had this problem of supporting him, but it was kind of interesting to know that that night we had won, even though we were behind in the early count, and I wasn't going down to the hotel that night.
I'd just decided to do that when I heard on the radio in my car that we were behind, I said, "I have to go down and commiserate. It's a terrible blow on Rob Kennedy." When I got there, everybody was so happy and pleased. The returns were coming in; Bob invited me to come upstairs and be with him and family and friends. And it was just a joy - it became a joyous occasion.
Tavis: Forty years later, there's still so many theories about what happened. What's your sense about what happened and who's responsible for what happened that night? Was it just Sirhan Sirhan? Was it deeper than that? What do you make about what happened that night?
Schrade: I don't know what happened, and I don't think anybody else really has all the information yet. I actually left Los Angeles, moved out into the desert area, because I just couldn't handle Los Angeles after losing Bob. And when I came back in town - in fact, my wife helped me come back, she encouraged me to do this - and I was really influenced by Congressman Allard Lowenstein who said, "Look, there are serious questions about the assassination, and you ought to get involved. You can play a role here."
Well, I considered what was going on and finally joined him in that. That was 1975. What we did find out at that point there was strong physical evidence that more bullets than Sirhan, the assassin, could have fired.
Tavis: By himself.
Schrade: By himself. He had eight bullets - expended bullets - in his gun. There was holes in doorjambs, the center divider behind us, and the police took those into custody and then destroyed them. And so there was - they opened and shut the case so quickly, without really investigating, so we were left with a lot of serious questions about a second gunman.
Tavis: You think it ought to be reopened, then? Should it be reopened 40 years later?
Schrade: Yes, it has to be, because there's new evidence now from an audio tape that was recently discovered in the Los Angeles Police Department archives, which show that 13 shots were fired that night, not the eight Sirhan fired, and there are two double shots, which could not have been fired that quickly from the Sirhan kind of gun. So we're seeking a new investigation.
Tavis: I mentioned earlier - my time is about up, but I mentioned earlier that the hotel, the Ambassador, just miles down the street from this studio, where you and Bobby Kennedy, of course, tragically shot that night, it is no longer a hotel, it's been torn down.
There was a great controversy in this city for years, as you well know, about what to do with that hotel. The hotel has since been torn down and you were - and now there's a school being built on that site. You were where in that debate about what should happen to that historic site?
Schrade: Well, for 20 years I started that, and -
Tavis: Started the movement to tear it down.
Schrade: To tear it down. When the school district had an interest in the property, we beat out Donald Trump, who wanted to put five big towers there. Wal-Mart wanted the property, and hotels came in to took a look at it and see if it could be rehabbed. But the all said it would have to be demolished.
So we finally got it demolished by a vote of the school board. We had to fight the school board on that one. But what happened is mostly Latino, some Black and Korean families in that area, one of the poorest sections of any city in the country, they were the ones that we organized to go after the school board, and we finally got the decision made to tear it down and build new schools.
The elementary school is now framed. It'll be open September 2009, and 2010 for the middle and high school - 4,200 seats. We got the Kennedy family involved in it, because I was being questioned - I didn't even know it was a Kennedy friend - that they didn't really want it. So we went after the Kennedy family, (unintelligible) Kennedy and the kids (unintelligible).
Tavis: I think a school is a good tribute to his legacy.
Schrade: Well, he believed that poor kids, if they had a decent education like his kids got, and a decent job, we could break the cycle of poverty. It was his really number one effort to change the system in this country.
Tavis: My time is up. Is that what you think is at the epicenter of his legacy?
Schrade: Yes, I think so.
Tavis: Yeah.
Schrade: And that's why the school is so important to establishing that legacy in our city.
Tavis: Well, I'll close where I began, saying to you how nice it is to meet you, what an honor it is, and I'm delighted that all these years later you're still here, having survived that tragic night. Nice to meet you.
Schrade: Thank you.
Tavis: Glad to have you on.
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