Pages of History: The News Journal archives, week of June 5

"Pages of history" features excerpts from The News Journal archives including the Wilmington Morning News and the Evening Journal.

June 6, 1968, Evening Journal

Robert Kennedy is dead; Mourning proclaimed by President Johnson

Sen. Robert F. Kennedy died today, felled like his brother by an assassin’s bullet.

He never regained consciousness, never showed signs of recovery after a burst of revolver fire sent a bullet into his brain as he stood at the pinnacle of his own campaign for the White House.

With his pregnant wife, Ethel, at his bedside, the New York senator, 42, died at 1:44 a.m., PDT, little more than 25 hours after the assault at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. A son, Joseph, 15, was also there.

Pierre Salinger, former presidential press secretary, said the body will lie in state at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York tomorrow between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. A Requiem Mass will be held there Saturday at 10 a.m.

The train carrying the body of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy is scheduled to pass through Wilmington at about 2:30 p.m. Saturday. It will leave New York City at 12:30 p.m. and is scheduled to arrive at Union Station in Washington at 4:40 p.m., about an hour before the burial at Arlington National Cemetery.

June 7, 1944, Wilmington Morning News

Normandy beaches cleared of Germans; Allies driving at Paris

A great force of R.A.F. bombers swept across the English Channel last night, continuing the mighty serial assaults that prepared the way for the Allied invasion, during which more than 1,000 troop-carrying aircraft at dawn yesterday dropped the largest air-borne force in history into France.

An official statement said the R.A.F. planes had struck at targets in German-occupied territory during the night, apparently in support of the ground troops fighting inland from beachheads in Normandy….

In all yesterday, American warplanes alone flew more than 9,000 sorties as Allied airmen ruled not only the invasion beaches but also the air far inland. Prime Minister Churchill told Parliament that an armada of 11,000 front-line planes sustained the assault. Some 10,000 tons of bombs cleared the way for the ground troops.

U.S. losses were 50 planes – 25 bombers and 25 fighters….

Thousands in city pray for success of armed forces

With thousands of relatives and friends in the armed services and many of them probably on the beaches of France, Wilmingtonians yesterday greeted the long awaited D-Day with a generally subdued attitude and with prayer for loved ones.

A feature of the day was the 4 p.m. “moment of silence” urged by Mayor Albert W. James.

Thousands of persons of the state followed President Roosevelt in his radio prayer last night.

Persons of all faiths – Jews, Catholics and Protestants – stopped into churches and synagogues throughout the day to offer prayers for the success of the invasion and the quick return of soldiers to their homes….

VETERAN'S WWII STORY: On the 80th anniversary, a 100-year-old Delaware veteran recalls attack on Pearl Harbor

June 11, 1973, Evening Journal

City shopping mall contract canceled

The contract calling for development of a giant retail shopping center in downtown Wilmington was canceled today and city planners went back to the drawing boards.

Mayor Thomas C. Maloney called an emergency meeting of Downtown Wilmington, Inc., this morning, and disclosed afterward that the agency had voted to cancel the four-year-old contract with Pan American Development Corp. He said…Pan American had been unable to deliver on its proposals to develop the southern section of the Wilmington Civic Center as a regional shopping center.

The coup de grace will be delivered Thursday when the Wilmington Housing Authority, the city’s urban-renewal agency, meets to officially terminate the contract, Maloney said….

Periodically, representatives of Pan American and of Downtown Wilmington had issued statements claiming major tenants had been lined up for the two department stores supposed to have been the keystones of the center….

Downtown Wilmington was handed the job of developing the commercial section of the Civic Center. It is a joint venture of the city and the Greater Wilmington Development Council.

CATCH UP ON HISTORY: News Journal archives, week of May 1

Biden probably will finish his Senate term

“My boys are doing well. Things are better than can be expected at home.”

The words are those of Joseph R. Biden Jr., freshman Democratic senator from Delaware and father of two young boys whose mother and sister were killed in an automobile accident in December.

Because his sons are doing well, Biden says, he probably will serve his full six-year term in Washington. Shortly after the accident, the 30-year-old senator said he would quit his Senate job in six months if he found he couldn’t be a good father to his two sons.

In order to be with his children, Biden commutes between Wilmington and Washington each working day. Unlike his colleagues, he almost never stays overnight in Washington….

Reach reporter Ben Mace at rmace@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: News Journal archives RFK assassination, D-Day, Wilmington mall, Biden