I've known RFK Jr. for years, and I'm sad at what he's become

It was a brief, unintentionally shocking message that was so moving to me I’ve saved it since that day in 1977. Upon arriving at my desk at ABC’s Good Morning America, I found a note from a colleague: "Bobby Kennedy returned your call — please call him in A.M."

I think I gasped, though I knew the call was from Bobby Kennedy, Jr.; his father had been assassinated nearly a decade earlier.

As a 24-year-old associate producer, I worked on several programs, and periodically helped out with segments on GMA. I’d been asked to interview Bobby about his undergraduate Harvard thesis, based on the heroic career of Alabama anti-segregationist Judge Frank Johnson.

It was an interesting conversation; Bobby and I were nearly the same age, and we clearly agreed on the issues we were discussing.

My family had long supported the Kennedys. In 1967, as a New York resident, I wrote to Sen. Robert F. Kennedy about what I could contribute to our state and country despite being too young to vote; he took the time to respond with a detailed signed letter.

In February 1968, my father was working on NBC’s Tonight Show and met RFK before a guest appearance; a photo of him with the senator has hung on the wall — first in my late parents' home, now in my house — ever since. Four months after the picture was taken, Kennedy was dead.

So this initial connection with Bobby Jr. in 1977 was memorable for me. Three years later, we met at the Democratic National Convention in New York, which I was covering as news director of Long Island’s WLIR Radio. At the end of the interview, Bobby asked, "Did you get everything you needed?" and said we should keep in touch.

And we did. Although Bobby had been struggling with alcohol and drug abuse for years, he seemed to be having an adventurous life and the beginnings of a valuable career, which began with his work in the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

I once gave Bobby an audiotape of an interview I'd done with his brother Michael, who later died in a skiing accident; he said hearing Michael's voice was "bittersweet." We had fascinating conversations about subjects ranging from his monthlong imprisonment for protesting Navy bombing exercises on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques, to the murder trial of his cousin Michael Skakel. He was passionate, and I was certain he had overcome the many traumas in his life and had conquered his demons. 

I was wrong. I was astonished when Bobby started speaking out against vaccines, and horrified when I heard the misinformation and outright lies he began spouting about that and other topics. The stories of his brain worm and dead bear cub were beyond bizarre.

It culminated in the often-unhinged news conference in which Bobby suspended his doomed-to-fail presidential campaign, repeated Donald Trump-like conspiracy theories, then actually endorsed the former president. His siblings got it right when they wrote, "Our brother Bobby's decision to endorse Trump today is a betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold most dear. It is a sad ending to a sad story."

I don’t think I’ve ever been this disappointed over anyone I’ve known in my more than half-century career in journalism. I have a file folder about him, including a 1983 People magazine cover story titled: "The Tragedy of Bobby Kennedy Jr." Four decades later, we have seen the lowest point of that continuing tragedy.

This guest essay reflects the views of Steve North, a veteran broadcast and print journalist who lives in Roslyn Heights.