This year, WA US History teacher Christopher Gorham put a drawing of Robert Kennedy in his classroom 112. This drawing was made by Gorham’s father, Gregory Gorham, when he was in high school.

“This Christmas my dad sent it to me and I got it professionally framed.  [I] thought it would be a wonderful thing to put in the classroom,” Gorham said.

The reason he put the drawing in his classroom is that it goes along with what his students are learning, and it makes the classroom look more interesting.

Having gone to college for art, and later majoring in industrial design, Gregory Gorham worked at Ford Motor Company for many years. After he retired from Ford, he focused more on his artwork.

The reason Gregory drew Robert Kennedy is because he was in high school during his time in the late 60’s. He drew Kennedy because he was inspired by the assassination and wanted to commemorate everything he did.

“Robert Kennedy’s death to the people in that generation hurt people like 9/11 did to this generation, our generation,” Christopher Gorham said.

To the Gorham family, it is an artifact from their family history. Christopher Gorham is proud of his father for his art because he was young when he drew it and for the act of citizenship to draw an American politician.

Gregory knows that it was hung up, and he is happy that it is at WA and not staying in the basement or in a random drawer.

Something ironic about this drawing is that it relates with Christopher Gorham’s wife’s father, Phil Hayes, who met Robert Kennedy in May of 1968. Hayes drove Kennedy to some of his meetings in his friend’s Cadillac, instead of his Volkswagen. At the time Hayes was a lawyer and was a state senator, for the state of Indiana and was a U.S. senator. He spent a year in the House of Representatives as a U.S. congressmen in the mid 1970s.

Hayes never saw the drawing in person, but someone took a picture of it and sent it to him. There is also a news article of Hayes and a picture with Robert Kennedy on display in Gorham’s classroom.