WITNESS TO HISTORY

Pete Hamill, Legendary New York Journalist and Writer, Dies at 85

The author was with Robert F. Kennedy when the assassin opened fired.

Pete Hamill, the legendary writer and best-selling author who also served as editor for both the New York Daily News and the New York Post, died aged 85 Wednesday morning. The Daily News reported that Hamill suffered a fall this weekend, injuring his hip, and died of kidney and heart failure following emergency surgery. He wrote more than 20 novels and over 100 short stories during his career, and was often featured in the pages of The New Yorker, Esquire, Rolling Stone and New York magazine. Hamill was a frequent witness to history—most notably in 1968 walking alongside Robert F. Kennedy in the Ambassador Hotel when his assassin opened fired. He helped disarm killer Sirhan Sirhan during Kennedy’s last moments. “My notes told me later that Kennedy was shot at 12:10, and was carried out of that grubby kitchen at 12:32,” he recounted four years later. “It seemed a lot longer.” According to the Daily News, he was survived by his wife, daughters Deirdre and Adriene, and a grandson.