PHOTOGRAPHY BY PETER MURPHY

world champion

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a man with a big name, a huge legacy and an indefatigable mission to help save the planet

When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is asked to explain how he became one of the nation’s most passionate environmental champions, he begins at the beginning. He remembers joining the cause as a boy, at the very dawn of American awareness that pollution and waste were despoiling our air, water and land, in the years just after the publication of Rachel Carson’s classic, SilentSpring. His uncle John F. Kennedy was president, and his father, Robert F. Kennedy Sr., was the U.S. attorney general and the president’s closest adviser.

“I was interested in the environment even when I was a little kid, and in fact, when I was 10 years old, I told my father that I was going to write a book about the environment, about pollution,” Bobby Kennedy recalls. “And he arranged, and my uncle, President Kennedy, arranged for me to interview Stewart Udall, the secretary of the interior, and some of the other environmentalists within the federal government at the time.”