HYANNIS, Massachusetts – President John F Kennedy’s sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who carried on the family’s public service tradition by founding the Special Olympics and championing the rights of mentally disabled people, died early yesterday surrounded by relatives at a Hyannis hospital. She was 88.
Ms Kennedy Shriver had suffered a series of strokes in recent years and died at Cape Cod Hospital, her family said in a statement. Her husband, her five children and all 19 of her grandchildren were by her side, the statement said.
“She was the light of our lives, a mother, wife, grandmother, sister and aunt who taught us by example and with passion what it means to live a faith-driven life of love and service to others,” the family said.
The hospital is near the Kennedy family compound, where her sole surviving brother, Senator Edward Kennedy, is seriously ill with a brain tumour.
Senator Kennedy said his earliest memory of his sister was as a young girl “with great humour, sharp wit, and a boundless passion to make a difference”.
“She understood deeply the lesson our mother and father taught us – much is expected of those to whom much has been given,” he said in a statement.
“Throughout her extraordinary life, she touched the lives of millions, and for Eunice that was never enough.”
President Barack Obama said Ms Kennedy Shriver would be remembered as “a champion for people with intellectual disabilities, and as an extraordinary woman who, as much as anyone, taught our nation – and our world – that no physical or mental barrier can restrain the power of the human spirit”.
As celebrity, social worker and activist, Ms Kennedy Shriver was credited with transforming America’s view of the mentally disabled from institutionalised patients to friends, neighbours and athletes. Her efforts were inspired in part by the struggles of her mentally disabled sister, Rosemary.
Ms Kennedy Shriver was the wife of 1972 vice-presidential candidate and former Peace Corps director R Sargent Shriver, and the mother of former NBC newswoman Maria Shriver, who is married to California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. With her death, Jean Kennedy Smith becomes the last surviving Kennedy daughter.
It was Ms Kennedy Shriver who revealed the condition of her sister Rosemary to the nation during her brother’s presidency. Rosemary Kennedy, who underwent a lobotomy when she was 23, lived most of her life in an institution in Wisconsin, dying in 2005 aged 86.
Well into her 70s, Ms Kennedy Shriver remained a daily presence at the Special Olympics headquarters in Washington.
Eunice Kennedy Shriver was the fifth child of Joseph Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. She graduated in sociology from Stanford University in 1943 after attending a British boarding school while her father was ambassador to Britain. – (AP)