Recently I finished Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Pulitzer Prize winning "An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s." Her late husband Richard Goodwin was a speechwriter and tireless aide for Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson and Sen. Robert Kennedy. Doris Kearns was both a youthful aide to President Johnson and an important biographer for him.

The 1960s are remembered for turmoil. Goodwin’s book reminded me that it was also a time of promise, with Martin Luther King Jr.’s non-violent campaigns calling forth our nation’s better spirits. As hatred descended toward courageous civil rights workers, the nation responded with a triumphal March on Washington and meaningful legislation, including Johnson’s Great Society that brought us Medicare, Medicaid, job training and multiple other programs. These promises sank as Vietnam’s casualty counts mounted; the nation became more divided.

Dr. King was assassinated on April 4; Bobby Kennedy on June 6, 1968 — two months that tore the nation’s hopes apart. One paragraph from Goodwin echoed deeply:

"Bobby became the common denominator connecting divergent groups. Both Blacks and low-income blue-collar workers, he stressed, were discriminated against by the affluent white establishment who only didn’t care about either of these groups but often harbored an active disdain for both. By hammering at the broader issue of class rather than race as his central theme, Bobby was able to articulate something no other candidate could."

I was 15 that tumultuous spring, a gangly, half-pint high school freshman. The black and white television and newspaper images still resonate in my mind and soul.

On Saturday, June 8, 1968, I was glued to that television. A long journey stretched into the evening as Kennedy’s funeral train traveled from New York to Washington. What stuck with me were the thousands trackside who came, not to see a spectacle, but to honor a man who transmitted caring. As I rewatch that old footage, I see Black and white, young and old, the shirtless, bedraggled and the well-dressed, Boy Scouts and Legionnaires at attention with their flags, police and firefighters, nuns and children all waiting for hours in silent tribute. Tribute to a dream of a better nation that touched their souls.

The recent outpouring along President Jimmy Carter’s funeral procession from Plains to Atlanta echoes this personal, caring touch that our nation needs.

We cannot deny we live in fractious times and the 1960s were divided, also. Watching those old images, I wonder who or what could draw Americans together again in the diversity that June 8, 1968, demonstrated? Do we exercise the politics of unity or division? The 1960s dawned with a spirit of hope and renewal. Fulfilling those dreams was not a lighthearted adventure, but a serious commitment to the common good, a nation of equals, a helping hand to our neighbors and not a fist of separation and division.

It is important to know ourselves and our identity. This should never supersede our commonality.

I thank Doris that she and her late husband Richard unearthed their multiple document boxes that spanned that decade and shared its wide sweep along with their personal involvement. Our American dream is badly frayed, and no politician can mend like we the people can if we open our hearts and minds to each other and renounce false divisions. I remember well Bobby Kennedy’s admonition, and repeat as he often said: “Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream of things that never were and say why not.”