Ethel Kennedy, Social Activist and Widow of Robert F. Kennedy, Dies at 96

Ethel Kennedy, the spouse of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy who raised their 11 youngsters after he was assassinated and remained devoted to social causes and the household’s legacy for many years thereafter, died on Thursday, her household mentioned. She was 96.

Kennedy had been hospitalized after struggling a stroke in her sleep on Oct. 3, her household mentioned.

“It is with our hearts full of love that we announce the passing of our amazing grandmother,” Joe Kennedy III posted on X. “She died this morning from complications related to a stroke suffered last week.”

“Along with a lifetime’s work in social justice and human rights, our mother leaves behind nine children, 34 grandchildren and 24 great-great grandchildren along with numerous nieces and nephews, all of whom love her dearly,” the household assertion mentioned.

The Kennedy matriarch, whose youngsters had been Kathleen, Joseph II, Robert Jr., David, Courtney, Michael, Kerry, Christopher, Max, Douglas and Rory, was one of the final remaining members of a technology that included President John F. Kennedy. Her household mentioned she had not too long ago loved seeing many of her family members, earlier than falling in poor health.

A millionaire’s daughter who married the longer term senator and lawyer common in 1950, Ethel Kennedy had endured extra demise by the age of 40, for the entire world to see, than most would in a lifetime.

She was by Robert F. Kennedy’s facet when he was fatally shot within the kitchen of the Ambassador Lodge in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968, simply after profitable the Democratic presidential major in California. Her brother-in-law, President John F. Kennedy, had been assassinated in Dallas lower than 5 years earlier.Her dad and mom had been killed in a aircraft crash in 1955, and her brother died in a 1966 crash. Her son David Kennedy later died of a drug overdose, son Michael Kennedy in a snowboarding accident and nephew John F. Kennedy Jr. in a aircraft crash. One other nephew, Michael Skakel, was discovered responsible of homicide in 2002, though a decide in 2013 ordered a brand new trial and the Connecticut Supreme Court docket vacated his conviction in 2018.

In 2019, she was grieving once more after granddaughter Saoirse Kennedy Hill died of an obvious drug overdose.

“One wonders how much this family must be expected to absorb,” household pal Philip Johnson, founder of the Robert F. Kennedy Basis, informed the Boston Herald after Michael Kennedy’s demise.Ethel Kennedy sustained herself by her religion and devotion to household.

“She was a devout Catholic and a daily communicant, and we are comforted in knowing she is reunited with the love of her life, our father, Robert. F. Kennedy; her children David and Michael; her daughter-in-law Mary; her grandchildren Maeve and Saorise and her great-grandchildren Gideon and Josie. Please keep our mother in your hearts and prayers,” the household assertion mentioned.

Ethel’s mother-in-law, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, initially frightened about how she would deal with a lot tragedy.

“I knew how difficult it was going to be for her to raise that big family without the guiding role and influence that Bobby would have provided,” Rose recalled in her memoir, Instances to Bear in mind. “And, of course, she realized this too, fully and keenly. Yet she did not give way.”

She based the Robert F. Kennedy Middle for Justice and Human Rights quickly after husband’s demise and advocated for causes together with gun management and human rights. She hardly ever spoke about her husband’s assassination. When her filmmaker daughter, Rory, introduced it up within the 2012 HBO documentary, Ethel, she couldn’t share her grief.

“When we lost Daddy …” she started, then teared up and requested that her youngest daughter “talk about something else.”

In 2008, she joined brother-in-law Ted Kennedy and niece Caroline Kennedy in endorsing Sen. Barack Obama for president, likening him to her late husband. She made a number of journeys to the White Home throughout the Obama years, receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014 and assembly Pope Francis in 2015.

Many of her progeny turned well-known. Daughter Kathleen turned lieutenant governor of Maryland; Joseph represented Massachusetts in Congress; Courtney married Paul Hill, who had been wrongfully convicted of an IRA bombing; Kerry turned a human rights activist and president of the RFK heart; Christopher ran for governor of Illinois; Max served as a prosecutor in Philadelphia and Douglas reported for Fox Information Channel.

Her son Robert F. Kennedy Jr., additionally turned a nationwide determine, though finally not as a liberal within the household custom. First generally known as an environmental lawyer, he advanced right into a conspiracy theorist who unfold false theories about vaccines. He ran for president as an unbiased after briefly difficult President Joe Biden, and his identify remained on ballots in a number of states after he suspended his marketing campaign and endorsed Donald Trump.

Ethel Kennedy didn’t remark publicly on her son’s actions, though a number of different members of the family denounced him.

Many years earlier, she appeared to thrive on her in-laws’ rising energy. She was an enthusiastic backer of JFK’s 1960 run and throughout the Kennedy administration hosted some of the period’s most well-attended events at their Hickory Hill property in McLean, Virginia, together with one the place historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. was pushed absolutely clothed into the swimming pool. Within the Kennedy spirit, she additionally was generally known as an avid and extremely aggressive tennis participant and a compulsive planner.

“Petite and peppy Ethel, who doesn’t look one bit the outdoorsy type, considers outdoor activity so important for the children that she has arranged her busy Cabinet-wife schedule so she can personally take them on two daily outings,” The Washington Put up reported in 1962.

In February of that 12 months, she accompanied her husband on a round-the-world goodwill tour, stopping in Japan, Hong Kong, Italy and different international locations. She mentioned it was necessary for People to fulfill strange individuals abroad.

“People have a distinct liking for Americans,” she informed the Put up. “But the Communists have been so vocal, it was a surprise for some Asians to hear America’s point of view. It is good for Americans to travel and get our viewpoint across.”

Kennedy was born Ethel Skakel on April 11, 1928, in Chicago, the sixth of seven youngsters of coal magnate George Skakel and Ann Brannack Skakel, a religious Roman Catholic. She grew up in a 31-room English nation manor home in Greenwich, Connecticut, and attended Greenwich Academy earlier than graduating from the Convent of the Sacred Coronary heart within the Bronx in 1945.

She met Robert Kennedy by his sister Jean, her roommate at Manhattanville Faculty in New York. They moved to Charlottesville, Virginia, the place he completed his final 12 months of regulation college at the College of Virginia, and then in 1957, they purchased Hickory Hill from by John and Jacqueline Kennedy, who had purchased it in 1953.

Robert Kennedy turned chief counsel to the Senate Choose Committee in 1957. He later was appointed lawyer common by his brother, the newly elected President Kennedy.

She had supported her husband in his profitable 1964 marketing campaign for the U.S. Senate in New York and his subsequent presidential bid. Pregnant with their eleventh little one when he was gunned down by Sirhan Sirhan, her look of shock and horror was captured by photographers in photographs that remained indelible a long time later.

The assassination traumatized the household, particularly son David Kennedy, who watched the information in a resort room. He was simply days earlier than his thirteenth birthday and by no means recovered, combating dependancy issues for years and overdosing in 1984.

In 2021, she mentioned Sirhan Sirhan shouldn’t be launched from jail, a view not shared by some others in her household. Two years later, a California panel denied him parole.

Though Ethel Kennedy was linked to a number of males after her husband’s demise, most notably singer Andy Williams, she by no means remarried.

In April 2008, Ethel Kennedy visited Indianapolis on the fortieth anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. A monument there commemorated King’s demise and the speech her husband had provided that night time in 1968, which was credited with averting rioting within the metropolis.

“Of all the Kennedy women, she was the one I would end up admiring the most,” Harry Belafonte would write of her. “She wasn’t playacting. She looked at you and immediately got what you were about. Often in the coming years, when Bobby was balking at something we wanted him to do for the movement, I’d take my case to Ethel. ‘We have to talk to him,’ she’d say, and she would.”

Ethel Kennedy joined President Obama and former President Invoice Clinton — every held one of her palms — as they climbed stairs to put a wreath at President Kennedy’s gravesite throughout a November 2013 observance of the fiftieth anniversary of JFK’s demise.

The nonprofit heart she based stays devoted to advancing human rights by litigation, advocacy, training and inspiration, giving annual awards to journalists, authors and others who’ve made important contributions to human rights.

She additionally was energetic within the Coalition of Gun Management, Particular Olympics, and the Earth Conservation Corps. And she or he confirmed up in particular person, collaborating in a 2016 demonstration in assist of greater pay for farmworkers in Florida and a 2018 starvation strike towards the Trump administration’s immigration insurance policies.Hickory Hill was offered in 2009 for $8.25 million, and Ethel Kennedy divided her time between properties in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, and Palm Seashore, Florida.