RFK's Former Staffer Kisses and Tells About the Night They Didn't Spend Together in New Memoir (Exclusive)

Donna Chaffee went to work for Bobby Kennedy fresh out of high school; four years later, she was helping coordinate his funeral

NEED TO KNOW

• Donna Chaffee details her time working for Sen. Robert F. Kennedy in a new memoir, First Great Sorrow: My Years With Robert Kennedy
• In the memoir, Chaffee explains how JFK’s assassination inspired her to devote her life to public service and work for his younger brother, with whom she shared a flirtatious relationship — then one night almost changed her life forever
• She also details the days before and after RFK’s assassination, including an inside look at how she helped the Kennedy family through yet another tragedy

Donna Chaffee was a senior at Hollywood High School in Los Angeles when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. It was an event that would shape both the world and the path she chose.

"I decided that, in tribute to President Kennedy, I would devote my life to public service," Chaffee writes in her new memoir, First Great Sorrow: My Years With Robert F. Kennedy, released on Tuesday, June 9.

"President Kennedy was my hero," the author tells PEOPLE. “When I went to college in Washington, D.C., I visited his grave at Arlington so often that one day, a guard asked me if I was a member of the family.”

Eager to get to work in Washington, Chaffee enrolled in George Washington University, finessing her schedule so she could attend classes in the early morning and evenings, leaving time for midday work on Capitol Hill. When JFK's younger brother, Robert F. Kennedy, was elected as the junior senator from New York in 1964, she knew she had to be one of the first volunteers through the door.

Emboldened by the same teenage confidence that got her into the VIP section at President Lyndon B. Johnson's inauguration, Chaffee's instincts were correct. After a month of volunteering and making a name for herself in the RFK office, she was offered a paid position in the mailroom, helping to organize the massive amount of correspondence the senator received every day.

“There were 30 of us, which was large for a Senate staff at the time," Chaffee recalls, "but he took the time to get to know everyone.”

The young staffer also made it a point to put herself in RFK's path as often as possible. She would hand-deliver mail to his office and eat lunch outside the building so they would pass one another as he walked to meetings and votes.

Even more boldly, “I knew his schedule, and I would time it so we would be leaving the office at the same time," Chaffee recalls. "He would offer me a ride home; me and sometimes Provi."

"Provi" was Providencia Paredes, a longtime member of the Kennedy family inner circle, who worked as Jackie Kennedy's personal assistant. She and Chaffee became fast friends in the senator's office, and the young staffer gained even more access and recognition within the famous family.

And then, there were those rides home. "He would ride up front with his driver, Jim Boyd," Chafee says of the senator. "And it was a two-door, so he would have to get out onto the curb to let me out."

Channeling even more of that teenage audacity, Chaffee began a daily routine. "I have to admit that even after all these years, I’m reluctant to share this next bit," she writes in the book. "But here it goes."

Stepping out of the convertible, onto the curb, "I looked him directly in the eyes, and then, with a coy smile, I said, 'Aren’t you going to kiss me goodbye?' "

Every day, she asked. And every day, Senator Kennedy granted her request, giving her a kiss on the cheek. "It became a routine," Chaffee writes. "But for me, it never felt routine. I can’t deny it — it was exciting."

Looking back, Chaffee admits that there are many who might not be charmed by such an anecdote. "I know some might say there was a power dynamic, because he was my boss. But it never felt like that," she tells PEOPLE.

She knows that eyebrows may raise at the age gap — she was just out of high school, RFK was in his 40s — as well as the fact that he was married. By the time he was elected to the Senate, Bobby and his wife, Ethel, had welcomed eight of their 11 children.

For Chaffee, there was perhaps a bit of "out of sight, out of mind" when it came to the senator's wife. “Maybe if I had known her better, I wouldn't have been so flirtatious with her husband,” she tells PEOPLE.

But as it was, Ethel and the children lived at the family home, Hickory Hill, in McLean, Va. And by the time summer rolled around and the Senate staffers were invited over to use the pool, Chaffee recalls, "Ethel and the kids were never there — they had gone up to Hyannisport for the summer."

"In the Senator’s defense," Chaffee writes in her book, "I can only say that I believe he understood that this was not Donna trying to seduce him, but rather Donna being her usual outrageous self… I assumed that he didn’t mind, since he continued to offer me rides home."

She tells PEOPLE that it also didn't feel a pattern of unfaithful behavior on Kennedy's part — at least, not one she was aware of.

“Ted [Kennedy] was the womanizer at that time," Chaffee recalls. "And everyone knows the stories about President Kennedy. But as far as I knew, he was faithful."

Sign up for PEOPLE on the Kennedys, our free weekly newsletter where editor-at-large Liz McNeil examines one of America's most famous political dynasties.

Things between them never went further than a kiss on the cheek — until one night in San Francisco in 1966.

By this time, Chaffee had left her job in D.C. and transferred to the University of California, Berkeley, though she had an open offer to return to the Kennedy office — from the senator himself. When RFK came through Berkeley, campaigning for Democratic candidates in the 1966 midterms, Chaffee and a friend came by and joined the staff for an afterparty in his suite at the Fairmont Hotel.

During that reunion with RFK, Chaffee writes, something shifted. "The Senator had to meet some political people in San Francisco for dinner, but at one point, he pulled me aside and asked if I could come back to his suite when he returned. I told him I would."

As they said goodbye, she channeled her old, bold request: "Aren’t you going to kiss me goodbye?"

"He looked at me again for what seemed like a long time, and then he moved in closer, took my face in his hands, and kissed me. This kiss was very different from the others — for one thing, it was on the lips. Afterwards, he held me close in his arms for a few moments. We exchanged some more words, and I left his suite."

But whatever might have happened in RFK's hotel suite later that night, Chaffee didn't follow through. After a slightly tipsy heart-to-heart with the senator's executive secretary and staff confidante, Angie Novello, she decided to get a cab back to Berkeley, leaving an apologetic message behind for Kennedy.

"Although I was madly in love with him — we all were — my feelings about him were also very complicated," Chaffee writes. "I don’t mean that I was in love with him in a purely romantic sense, even though that might be hard to believe given how I sometimes behaved. But it was different. I admired him so much, and he was the embodiment of everything I believed in, too. So it was difficult for me to look at him as just another man."

That was that, until two years later. Chaffee would see RFK twice more, this time as a candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 1968 presidential election.

By that time, she was engaged to her first husband, and she took her then-fiancé to the University of San Francisco to see RFK. Chaffee recalls how he saw her in the crowd as he took the stage and greeted her with a kiss on the cheek. "It was the first time I didn’t have to ask for it," she remembers fondly.

However, when that event turned volatile due to protesters, they weren't able to speak. So, on the morning of June 2, 1968, Chaffee returned to the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, once again with her fiancé in tow. Thanks to some last-minute scheduling by Novello, they were able to have a brief meeting with RFK, who promised to attend their wedding later that year.

Two nights later, shortly after midnight while he was celebrating wins in the California and South Dakota primaries with supporters at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, RFK was shot and ultimately killed by Sirhan Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestinian-Jordanian man who later said he assassinated the politician due to his role in arms deals to Israel.

“Initially, I think I was in a state of shock," Chaffee recalls. "Then I shut down and got to work.”

She helped RFK staffers coordinate funeral plans, riding with the Kennedy plane back to New York and then taking the funeral train with the family and other mourners to D.C. When it was all over, she plunged into a years-long depression.

Despite, or perhaps because of her grief, Chaffee still went through with her plans to marry her first husband that fall, knowing the relationship wouldn't last. It was the wedding RFK had promised to attend.

"I think I did it just to have someone to take care of me," she admits.

Eventually, the invitations to Hyannisport stopped coming. And she still mourns what could have been.

"I’ve heard it's the same for lots of people, even those who didn’t know him personally," she says. "Especially if you were around high school, college age at the time. His death deeply affected a lot of people of that generation."

That's why she wrote the book, Chaffee says. Not as a tell-all but as a glimpse into RFK's life and legacy from someone who admired him greatly and misses him deeply.

"When you Google RFK now, it’s three pages of RFK Jr. I don’t even know if people realize he had a father!" she laments, recoiling when asked how RFK might feel about his controversial namesake.

In the epilogue of First Great Sorrow, Chaffee writes that "it’s not just Robert Kennedy’s words that have inspired me over these many years. It is also the memory of his sacrifice."

"He was willing to give his life for what he believed in. I will forever mourn his loss, but it is some comfort to me remembering those remarkable years that I spent with him. I tell my son that I don’t regret being this old, because it allowed me the opportunity to breathe the same air as the Senator."

Read the full article here