Kerry Kennedy Shares Childhood Photo with Dad RFK as She Marks Anniversary of His Assassination

William Allen/AP/Shutterstock From left: Kerry Kennedy and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy

Kerry Kennedy remembered dad Robert F. Kennedy on Instagram on Sunday, marking the 53rd anniversary of his 1968 assassination with a photo from her childhood.

Kerry, the daughter of Ethel Kennedy and the late New York senator, began her post with a quote from Armenian poet Siamanto: "If you are chased down by raw Evil, don't forget that you are born to bring forth the fruitful good."

"Missing my dad every day. And grateful to all those who seek the fruitful good," Kerry, 61, wrote in her caption alongside the photo of her as a girl with her father.

She added a special thanks to photographer Harry Benson, who captured the moment.

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Sen. Kennedy, who had served as the 64th attorney general before being elected, was assassinated during his campaign for president while leaving an event at the ballroom at The Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

According to an Evening Journal report from the time, he died at age 42 at "1:44 a.m., PDT, little more than 25 hours after the assault at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles."

His pregnant wife, Ethel, was at his bedside, along with his son Joseph, then 15.

The couple had 11 children total, including son David who was left alone to watch his father's laying replay on the TV for hours before he was discovered. David eventually died of an overdose at the age of 28 — one of a decades-long string of tragedies shadowing the storied political family.

Sen. Kennedy's body lay in state at St. Patrick's Cathedral in the days following the assassination.

In the 2018 book American Values: Lessons I Learned From My Family, his son Robert F. Kennedy Jr. detailed the ominous signs leading up to the assassinations of both his father and his uncle, President John F. Kennedy.

During his dad's campaign, Robert wrote in the book, the candidate remained "fatalistic about his own destiny," refusing to be "surrounded by security" because he was afraid of being spied on by the FBI and opting instead to "engage and touch the crowds."

"Often, former federal agent Billy Barry was alone with my dad in the back of a car," Robert wrote. "In hindsight, it was certainly reckless, given the power and determination of his many enemies. I suppose it was hubristic, too."

According to the book, Sen. Kennedy remained unfazed even as death threats became so "routine that they had become banal."

Speaking to PEOPLE in an interview about the book, the younger Kennedy said his father's final campaign "seemed, from its outset a lost cause, but he was genuinely happy for the first time since losing his brother."

Mike Pont/Getty Kerry Kennedy

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Kerry reflected on her father's legacy in a December interview with PEOPLE, saying then that her dad appealed "to the best in all of us."

"I think the most important thing about him is his moral imagination," Kerry said. "It was his capacity to understand — and really understand — where people he was talking to were coming from, and to find common ground."

His speeches drew on his ability to "speak truth from his heart," she added, and that is "what makes him such an enduring figure."

The Kennedys are well-acquainted with loss, weathering two infamous assassinations as well as more recent family losses including the 2019 accidental overdose of Kerry's 22-year-old niece, Saoirse Kennedy Hill, and the April 2020 drowning of another niece, Maeve McKean, along with McKean's 8-year-old son, Gideon.