A Letter From the Publisher

By Robert L. Miller

Hays Gorey and his wife Nonie were visiting friends in Washington one summer ! evening in 1959 when their hosts dragged them along to a lawn party. Sipping a drink in a dark corner of the yard, Gorey was startled by a rustling in the hedges. A party crasher? When the intruder emerged from a gap between the shrubs, Gorey recognized him instantly and asked, "Senator, do you usually enter parties this way?"

That was the first meeting between John F. Kennedy, then a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, and Gorey, then news editor at the Salt Lake City Tribune. Gorey also met Robert and Ethel Kennedy, the host and hostess of the lawn party at which he found himself. A few months later, Gorey was back on the job in Utah when J.F.K. came through to deliver a speech. Noticing Gorey in the audience, he sought him out and asked his advice about the best time to declare his candidacy for the presidency. The earlier the better, replied Gorey. Kennedy smiled. Soon afterward, he made his announcement. "Of course," Gorey says, "I do not flatter myself that I had anything to do with it."

Gorey, who wrote the reminiscence of Bobby Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign in this week's issue, moved to Washington for TIME in 1965. By then Bobby and Teddy Kennedy were Senators, and Gorey became a frequent visitor to Hickory Hill, Bobby's estate in Virginia. "I shared with Ethel an enthusiasm for tennis," he says. He also sometimes met with Bobby on Saturdays. "He would go to his office wearing old clothes, with his dog Brumus and kids trailing behind," Gorey recalls. "We would talk about Viet Nam and the speculation that he would challenge Lyndon Johnson for the White House." When Bobby finally declared his candidacy, Gorey covered what became an exhilarating campaign -- and a national tragedy. Gorey was across the room at Los Angeles' Ambassador Hotel on June 5 when Kennedy was assassinated.

Gorey is now a senior correspondent for TIME in Washington, but the tennis matches at Hickory Hill are less frequent. (Ethel, he reports, still plays furiously.) Gorey's fascination with the clan is undiminished. "The Kennedys were youthful, attractive and appealing," he says. "There is something riveting about a family that had so much and also suffered so much -- assassinations, accidental deaths, drug problems. Yet they are always trying, never retreating."