November 2000 Tribute by Senator Edward M. Kennedy Essays by Normal Mailer and Evan Thomas Published by Umbrage Editions When Robert F. Kennedy was killed by an assassin in 1968, the USA lost one of its most passionate and controversial politicians. The killing, coming five years after the assassination of his older brother and the same year as the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., called into question whether our country could let its own leaders live. Hope was quickly replaced by a shocked despair. Paul Fusco, then a photographer for Look magazine, accompanied the train that slowly brought Kennedy's body from New York to Washington, D.C., repeating the final voyage of Abraham Lincoln 103 years before. His color photographs, simple, sad, at times slightly blurred, evoke the long, quiet, painful moment. Grief followed the train that day, surrounded it, and the never-to-be-realized potentials of a manÕs life were mourned by those who tend to live along the train tracks - the poor and the dispossessed. And the book raises a question: Were Kennedy and King the last political leaders in this country who could be similarly mourned? Given the deadlock on presidential voting in Florida, the RFK Funeral Train recalls a time when people could passionately believe that they had a representative in Washington. Magnum, the photographers' cooperative, should also be acknowledged for going ahead and printing this book by itself and, in cooperation with Umbrage Editions, publishing it without a major distributor. It's a fine little book; one hopes for more. Fred Ritchin