Kennedys liken Obama to RFK during South Bend visit

By JEFF PARROTT, Tribune Staff Writer

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Mrs. Ethel Kennedy, widow of Robert F. Kennedy, and their son Max Kennedy,

Mrs. Ethel Kennedy, widow of Robert F. Kennedy, and their son Max Kennedy, receive a round of applause during Friday, April 4, 2008. Forty years ago today in a park next to the school Kennedy broke the news to a crowd that King had been assassinated. The park is home to a peace memorial honoring the two men. (AP Photo/Tom Strattman)

By Beth Boehne

Story Created: Apr 5, 2008 at 3:26 PM EST

Story Updated: Apr 5, 2008 at 3:55 PM EST

SOUTH BEND — Calling Sen. Barack Obama a man who can unite the country as their late husband and father, Robert F. Kennedy, once tried to do, Ethel and Max Kennedy campaigned in South Bend Saturday for the Democratic presidential hopeful.

Their visit came about six weeks before Indiana’s May 6 primary election, the first time in 40 years — when Robert Kennedy ran for president — that the nomination is still contested this late in the election. It also came 12 days after RFK daughter Kathleen Kennedy Townsend accompanied Bill and Chelsea Clinton to South Bend to drum up support for Hillary Clinton, Obama’s rival for the Democratic nomination.

"Kathleen has to sit at the grandchildren’s table now," Max Kennedy, 43, quipped to the delight of a raucous Obama crowd at the West Side Democratic club.

The Kennedys, accompanied by former Indiana congressman Tim Roemer, first stopped at the West Side Democratic Club, where they whipped Obama supporters up into a frenzy with cheers of "Yes we can!" and "Yes we will!"

Later, before a more reserved audience at the University of Notre Dame’s Washington Hall, Max Kennedy was more serious.

"I have met people my whole life who have come up to me and said that they love my father," Kennedy told a group comprised largely of college students in the University of Notre Dame’s Washington Hall. "I understood what they were saying but I never felt what they were saying. This election has changed my life. I want so much for this country to be again the country I thought it was when I was a child."

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