It was 40 years ago today that I awoke, like millions of Americans in the eastern half of the United States, to learn New York Sen. Robert Kennedy had been assassinated following his victory in the California presidential primary.

Hard though it maybe for so many younger readers to grasp, in those days there was no 24-hour news cycle, no unending cable news networks, no Internet.

On the evening of June 5, 1968, all the early exit polling had indicated RFK would emerge the winner of the California primary, effectively nudging Sen. Eugene McCarthy out of the primary fight.

And so we went to bed, only to awaken on the morning of June 6 to learn Kennedy had been mortally wounded by a lone assassin, Sirhan Sirhan.

I cannot begin to explain the depth of sadness, which swept over the nation. Bobby had been more than an heir apparent to the legacy of his murdered brother John F. Kennedy. It truly was, to this then 18-year-old young man, a loss of that intangible sense of all that this country could and ought to be.

Make no mistake, despite the mop of unruly hair, the angelic sereneness of Bobby’s demeanor, he was by all accounts a skilled and ruthless politician, as adept at the throwing of sharp elbows as any pol who ever kissed a baby.

It is not too far of a stretch to suggest that had Kennedy lived, he would have won the nomination and the presidency.

Can you remotely fathom how the dour, ever-sweating Richard Nixon would have held up on a debate stage opposite the young, charismatic, articulate, poet of the hustings? It wouldn’t have been pretty. It would certainly have been decisive.

Alas the Robert Kennedy presidency is a history chapter forever lost.

This much we can reasonably assume, though.

Chances are the riots in the streets during the 1968 Democratic Convention would never have taken place, since an anti-war candidate was poised to win the nomination.

And thus, a President Robert F. Kennedy would have moved quickly to end the debacle of the Vietnam War, which was tearing the country apart.

And the office of the presidency, now occupied by the brother of a martyred, beloved president, would never have been subjected to the debasement of Richard Nixon’s Watergate.

Who knows how two terms of a Kennedy Administration would have influenced the careers of Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, George W.W. Bush? We’ll never know.

If you are ever in Washington you should include a visit to the Arlington National Cemetery.

Among the graves of thousands of fallen soldiers and dignitaries, you’ll also find the final resting place of John F. Kennedy, where the assassinated president is joined by his wife Jacqueline and son Patrick Bouvier, who died shortly after he was born and an unnamed stillborn daughter.

An eternal flame marks the location.

A few feet away however, you’ll see a simple white cross. This is Bobby’s plot, just as powerful in its simple elegance as his older brother’s grave site.

Linked forever in death, you can’t help but stand there and wonder - what might have been, what might have been?