Bobby Kennedy Archives - BillBored.org

XIII

After receiving several of my CD compilations, a fraternity brother, Brad Caldart, suggested creating one with my top ten songs. I took his challenge to heart and began compiling lists of possible entries. That was well over a year ago. I’ve promised several times to quit producing CD collections, only to do so again and again.

So, I beg forgetfulness and share my latest anthology. To no surprise, it’s more than ten songs. The profundity of the occasion demanded no less than XIII. And like the Super Bowl, I chose Roman numerals to convey their renown. I searched for songs that say something, and to no surprise, many have appeared on previous compilations. There are several new ones. As is my custom, what the songs mean to me, and why they matter, is explained below. They carry one common theme – nostalgia.

I. Big River (1995) – This song first came to my attention in October 2021. On an early Saturday morning, I prepared to watch the Tottenham soccer match played at Newcastle. The home team celebrated their new Saudi owners by playing over the stadium loudspeakers Jimmy Nail’s wistful remembrance about growing up in Newcastle. It’s focused on the collapse of the Newcastle shipbuilding industry on the River Tyne where his father worked. The Neptune shipyard was the last to go, Jimmy heard on the radio, and then they played the latest No. 1.

It took several listenings, before I heard the line, “that was when coal was king,” the name of my newspaper column since 2007. Sting grew up nearby and expressed similar sentiments in his 2013 album, The Last Ship, which spawned a 2014 musical of the same name with Sting in the starring role. Through blind luck, we caught his performance in L.A., a month before Covid shut down the nation.

II. Tambourine Man (1965) – I listened to this song continuously during college. Why – the poetic lyrics, the storytelling parable, and conclusive end, “let me forget about today until tomorrow.” This song appeared on my first cassette compilation, The Best of December 6, 1978.

III. Superman’s Ghost (1987) – Growing up, I was a huge fan of Superman, the comic books, the TV show, and all things to do with superpowers. After school, found me planted at home or with a friend in front of a TV watching Adventures of. Though George Reeves’ death by suicide came in 1959, my innocent ears didn’t hear about it until several years later – in the school yard when this silly joke was offered, “Do you know why George Reeves shot himself? – He thought he was Superman.” Don McLean captures more than just his death in his poignant song.

IV. Questions (1976) – I was so enraptured by Mannfred Mann and Chris Slade’s lyrics that my sister, Danica inscribed them for me in calligraphy on old-fashioned parchment paper. I’ve kept it in my Webster’s Third International Dictionary under the letter Q. Another song from the collection of Dec. 6, 1978.

V. The Last Campaign Trilogy (1974) – Several years back, upon asking Siri to play John Stewart songs, this tune from his live double-album Phoenix Concerts came on. From its opening lyrics (“It was more than Indiana, more than South Dakota, more than California, More than Oregon”), I immediately understood the reference to Bobby Kennedy’ ill-fated run for president. Stewart traveled with the campaign playing songs before Kennedy took the stage.

A political junkie in the 9^th grade, I followed each primary and was fascinated by the three-way races in both parties: D’s – McCarthy, Humphrey, Kennedy; R’s – Rockefeller, Reagan, Nixon. Stewart’s allegorical song is about much more. Our family was in Vienna that fateful morning, where the newspapers’ front pages showed a Hispanic waiter by his side, offering comfort to the fallen senator. In the hotel lobby, an old Austrian woman, her greying hair wrapped in a black scarf, hissed, “Johnson, Johnson!”

VI. A Winter’s Tale (1982) – This song was written for David Essex and spent ten weeks on the British charts peaking at No. 2. I discovered it on the Moody Blues’ 2003 album, Tim Rice, famous for Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita wrote the lyrics. Great lyricists invest heartfelt meaning into a mere 156 words.

VII. I Was Only Joking (1978) – Rod Stewart released this song as a double-A single. Its flip side, Hot Legs was played heavily the U.S. I spent most of the first six months of 1978 traveling in Europe, where this introspective side was regularly played. I fell in love with his autobiographical lyrics and confessional delivery.

VIII. ‘39 (1975) – Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen’s mammoth hit from A Night at the Opera, is a song that might just as well been included here. Brian May, the group’s lead guitarist, wrote ‘39. The song is about space travel and the dilation of time in Einstein’s theory of relativity. A century has passed when the explorers return, but they are but a year older. Their contemporaries are dead, and the space travelers encounter only their aging grandchildren. May achieved his doctorate in Astrophysics in 2007.

IX. The Way Life’s Meant To Be (1981) – Another time travel song, where ELO’s Jeff Lynne discovers a disappointing future world, filled with ivory towers and plastic flowers. It’s not the utopia he imagined, symbolized by a wish to be back in 1981. I had never heard this song until 35 years after its release, when Spencer used it as the fadeaway in a short film project at Chapman University.

X. Going All the Way – A Song in 6 Movements (2016) – This song appeared on Meat Loaf’s final album, Braver Than We Are. While Meat Loaf was the front-man, all his best songs were by Jim Steinman, who also wrote and produced No. 1 songs for Bonny Tyler – Total Eclipse of the Sun; Air Supply – Making Love Out of Nothing at All; Boyzone – No Matter What; and Barry Manilow- Read ‘Em and Weep. Steinman joined Andrew Lloyd Webber and wrote the lyrics for their 1996 musical, Whistle Down the Wind. Meat Loaf and Steinman died within months of each other during Covid.

XI. God Only Knows (1966) – Opens side 2 of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds album. Paul McCartney summed it up best, when he described it as, “The greatest song ever written.”

XII. See Me Through (Part II) Just a Closer Walk (1991) – Van Morrison takes this 1941 gospel-jazz standard way back to Hyndford Street, where he grew up in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Morrison reflects back on his childhood memories about 80 seconds in with a spoken-word poem that describes a Sunday afternoon in winter . . .

And the tuning in of stations in Europe on the wireless,
Before, yes before this was the way it was,
More silence, more breathing together,
Not rushing, being,
Before rock `n’ roll, before television,
Previous, previous, previous.

XIII. All the Love I Have (2000) – Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical, The Beautiful Game (soccer) is centered on a Belfast Catholic team during the Troubles of 1969, the deadly conflict between Protestants and Catholics (watch the 2021 film “Belfast”). Ben Elton wrote the lyrics.

The star soccer player, John Kelly has joined the IRA, as his wife, Mary, pleads for him to reconsider leaving their marriage and abandoning his young son. It’s a stirring finale to this fine musical.

Note: The finale is actually two songs, All the Love I Have and Beautiful Game Finale, thus two video are shared below.

The Beautiful Game Finale:

XIII – December 2025 is also available on WJMK90 Spotify or as an Apple Playlist. Message Bill Kombol for a mailed CD version or a text of the Spotify or Apple playlists.

Abraham, Martin and PCC

In the fall of 1968, Dion released a song that touched my soul. About the same time, I started working Saturdays at a job that defined my life. I still work there until March 2022. This is the story of the song, that job, and a 15-year-old boy.

The Beatles’ single “Hey Jude” backed by “Revolution” dominated the airwaves. The Detroit Tigers, my favorite baseball team would soon play in the World Series. A presidential election heated up following a deadly political year culminating in riots at the Democratic convention in Chicago.

Kris Galvin and I were freshly minted sophomores. Each day after school we played a board game called Mr. President. Two players strategized their way to victory by assembling a majority of votes in the Electoral College. In the real election, Nixon did just that, defeating Hubert Humphrey while George Wallace carried five states.

In late September, I began a new job at Palmer Coking Coal as their Saturday boy. After a day of training, I was in charge of the Black Diamond office from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m., though typically worked longer. I didn’t yet drive so Dad dropped me off each morning, picking me up a little after noon.

**The mine office of Palmer Coking Coal on Highway 169, about the time I started working there.**

The work consisted of sacking coal, answering phones, and operating a scale—but mostly selling nut and stoker coal to old guys driving pickup trucks. It was quite a thrill to command an office, poke about in drawers, make change, and run the store. I earned $1.00 per hour, paid with money drawn from the cash drawer and replaced with a handwritten receipt.

Dad signed for my wages and I’d take a $5 bill out of the drawer. Three years later when I left this job, I was earning $2 per hour. (I found this old receipt 40 years later in a box in the attic at the same mine office where I first started).

It wasn’t always busy so after reading the P-I, I tuned the radio to KJR-95. My youth’s mind remembers where and what I was doing when certain songs played. That October, I heard Dion DiMucci sing a gentle folk tribute to the assassinated heroes, “Abraham, Martin and John.” The final lyrics delivered a stanza for Bobby Kennedy.

“Has anybody here seen my old friend Bobby

Can you tell me where he’s gone?

I thought I saw him walkin’ up over the hill

With Abraham, Martin and John.” – Dick Holler

**Dion’s single next to Bill Kombol on his first day of high school, Sept. 3, 1968.**

I was a fervent reader of newspapers and convinced Mom to buy a subscription to U.S. News & World Report. On the last day of March 1968, Lyndon Johnson announced he wouldn’t seek re-election to the presidency. Martin Luther King was shot dead in Memphis four days later.

On June 6^th, the Kombol family checked into the Hotel Austria on Fleischmarkt Street in Vienna. The tragic news of Robert Kennedy’s assassination splashed across the front pages of every paper on the newsstand. The photo of 17-year-old, Juan Romero cradling the head of a fallen senator in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel has haunted me ever since. An old Austrian woman draped in a black shawl stood in the lobby hissing, practically spitting the words out, “Johnson, Johnson!”

**Kombol family in Austria, L-R: Jeanmarie, Pauline, Bill, Barry, Dana. June 1968.**

Dion’s song was poignant and melancholy. It tugged at my heart while coaxing a tear. Soon the three-minute radio broadcast was over. It might be hours until it played. I wanted to hear it time and again.

Work ended and I was home in the afternoon. I usually fixed tomato soup and cheese-toast for lunch then listened to the Huskies on the radio. Only the rarest of U.W. football games were broadcast on television. Later friends and I might play a game of touch football at the Kibler school playground. Time passes quickly in adolescence and evening came soon enough. Dinner was promptly at 6 p.m. Mom always made hamburgers on Saturday night.

While the song accompanied my introduction to the first months of high school, “Abraham, Martin and John,” made a cameo appearance shortly after graduation. A collage by Tom Clay joined “What the World Needs Now Is Love” to live broadcasts of the assassinations introduced by snippets from Dion’s hit. That summer of 1971, I worked long hours selling popsicles east of Kent and often drove home listening to the six-minute spoken word hymn.

I never really left Palmer Coking Coal. During college, I spent summers as a laborer. I worked the afternoon shift at the Rogers No. 3 my senior year. It closed a few months later, the last underground coal mine in Washington. After graduating, I joined Palmer for employment stints of two and three months when no other adventure called.

On of my stints working for Palmer involved relocating parts of the Stergion cement plant in Enumclaw to Black Diamond With money made from those three months, I traveled to Hawaii with my high school buddy, Wayne Podolak, Jan. 1976.

In August 1978, I began full-time employment at PCC, back on the picking table. A decade of college, loafing, banking, odd jobs, and traveling landed me back where I’d begun 10 years earlier. Four years later, I was appointed Manager of the company. The following summer we celebrated Palmer Coking Coal’s 50^th anniversary. I was 29-years-old.

In early 1979, I was brought into the office to learn how to run the business. I sat across my uncle Charlie Falk who snapped this picture. I continued to sit at the same desk for the next 44 years, Summer 1979.

It’s now 40 years down the road. I’ll soon be leaving full-time employment at PCC. It’s where I’ve spent all but two years of my working career. Of these things I’m certain––this job and that tune will forever remain in my heart, intertwined in a romantic ballad where the only constant is change.

I look back with nostalgia yet forward in anticipation. How these next adventures unfold will be the continuing story of my life.

* * * * * * *

Post Script: Here’s the short story of Dion’s life and the song that changed mine. Dion DiMucci was born in 1939 to Italian-American parents in the Bronx. Teaming with friends from Belmont Avenue, Dion and the Belmonts scored their first hit in 1958 with “I Wonder Why.”

While on the 1959 winter concert tour with Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper; the bus’s heating system gave out so Holly charted a plane to their next venue. Dion balked at paying $36, his share for the flight because it was the rent amount his parents struggled to pay each month. The plane crashed, killing all on board.

Dion split from the Belmonts in 1960, pursuing a solo career with hits like “Run-Around Sue” and “Donna.” After continually humming Dion’s rendition of “When You Wish Upon a Star,” from the Disney movie Pinocchio, Brian Wilson composed the Beach Boy’s ballad, “Surfer Girl,” in 1963 It was his very first composition.

**Dion Now & Then is how I titled my Dion tribute CD compilation.**

Dion was one of only two rock artists to appear on the cover of the Beatles’ 1967 album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Bob Dylan was the other. With changing tastes from the British Invasion and a growing heroin addiction, Dion started recording blues numbers in the mid-1960s. His records failed to sell so he lost his contract.

In April 1968, Dion experienced a powerful religious awakening. He gave up heroin and his label agreed to re-sign him if he’d record “Abraham, Martin and John.” The single was released that August, reaching #4 on the charts in October. It was written by Dick Holler, composer of the Royal Guardsman’s novelty hit, “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron.”

In the 1980s, Dion became a born-again Christian, releasing five albums highlighting his evangelical convictions. In June 2020 at age 81, Dion released his most recent album, “Blues with Friends” featuring a range of artists including Jeff Beck, John Hammond, Van Morrison, Paul Simon, and Bruce Springsteen.

* * * * * * *

Coda: On a warm summer evening in the early 1960s, Billy Kombol stood at the door of the open-air dance pavilion at Barrett’s Lake Retreat resort, mesmerized by the sight of teenagers dancing to the jukebox sounds of Dion and the Belmonts.

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