On RFK's 100th birthday, memorial stands tarnished

May Sun stood on Wilshire Boulevard in Koreatown on Tuesday morning, looking through the fence at the memorial she and another artist designed to honor Robert F. Kennedy near the site of his 1968 assassination.

- STEVE LOPEZ

GRAFFITI and trash mar the Koreatown memorial honoring Robert F. Kennedy.

ALLEN J. SCHABEN Los Angeles Times

Graffiti smeared the monument. Scattered trash included a potato chip bag, a smashed beer bottle and a sneaker. Weeds poked up from neglected garden beds and dozens of orange sandbags sat on ledges and columns, for no apparent reason.

In years past, people have left candles on Nov. 20, RFK's birthday. This year marks his 100th, but a temporary fence, with graffiti sprayed on the "no trespassing" signs, now stands in the way of anyone who might be inclined to mark the day here.

The monument and adjacent Inspiration Park, unveiled in 2010 after years of planning, design and careful selection of the right words to honor Kennedy's legacy, are a mess.

"It's just been so heartbreaking," said Sun, who told me that despite the current state of the memorial, it's been in far worse shape and has served as a homeless encampment.

"I've been avoiding this area. I can't drive past it, you know?" The memorial sits on the edge of the K-12 RFK Community Schools at the site of the former Ambassador Hotel, where an assassin shot and mortally wounded Kennedy on the night of June 5, 1968, after he'd won California's Democratic presidential primary.

The condition of the memorial is shocking but unsurprising, I told Sun, given the state of disorder and disrepair in many parts of the city. And it represents a kind of surrender.

THE MEMORIAL sits on the edge of the K-12 RFK Community Schools, at the site of the hotel where Robert F. Kennedy was fatally shot.

Photographs by ALLEN J. SCHABEN Los Angeles Times