Ethel Kennedy, matriarch of the famous family, dies at 96

Ethel Kennedy, who misplaced her husband, Robert F. Kennedy, and brother-in-law, President John F. Kennedy, to assassins’ bullets, and who channeled her grief into elevating her 11 youngsters and pursuing a lifetime of public service, died Thursday. She was 96.

Kennedy died from problems from a stroke she suffered final week, former Rep. Joe Kennedy III, D-Mass., a grandson, stated in an announcement posted on X.

“It’s with our hearts full of affection that we announce the passing of our superb grandmother, Ethel Kennedy,” the previous congressman stated.

Joe Kennedy wrote that his grandmother “was a religious Catholic and a every day communicant.”

“We’re comforted in understanding she is reunited with the love of her life, our father, Robert F. Kennedy,” he wrote.

“Together with a lifetime’s work in social justice and human rights, our mom leaves behind 9 youngsters, 34 grandchildren, and 24 great-grandchildren, together with quite a few nieces and nephews, all of whom love her dearly.”

Kennedy died six weeks after her third youngster, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., ended his presidential marketing campaign and outraged his Democratic household by endorsing former President Donald Trump.

Born Ethel Skakel on April 11, 1928, in Chicago, Kennedy’s life was marked by tragedy even earlier than Sirhan Sirhan made her a widow in 1968 by gunning down her husband whereas he was operating for president.

Kennedy’s mother and father, coal magnate George Skakel and Ann Brannack Skakel, have been killed in a 1955 airplane crash.

Kennedy met her future husband in 1945 at a ski resort in Quebec. On the time, he was relationship her older sister, Patricia, in response to an official biography on the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

5 years later, “Bobby and Ethel” have been married, and their first youngster, Kathleen, was born on July 4, 1951.

By 1956, the younger couple was dwelling with their rising household within the sprawling Virginia mansion they purchased from JFK. In the meantime, Robert F. Kennedy’s public profile was on the rise as chief counsel to the Senate Choose Committee. 

Like the remainder of her household, Kennedy took half in JFK’s presidential marketing campaign and, after he was elected in 1960, her husband was appointed legal professional normal.

Following JFK’s assassination, Robert F. Kennedy ran efficiently for america Senate from New York. Then in 1968, he launched his personal presidential marketing campaign together with his spouse’s blessing.

“Kennedy’s spouse, all the time his most fervent believer, was essentially the most constant advocate of a race for the White Home, ” RFK biographer Evan Thomas wrote in “Robert Kennedy: His Life.” “If she harbored non-public ideas of changing into a widow, she didn’t focus on them.”

Six months after RFK was killed, Kennedy gave delivery to their final youngster Rory. Round that point, Kennedy based the Robert F. Kennedy Middle for Justice and Human Rights and threw herself into working for among the similar causes her husband had championed.

For her efforts, Kennedy was awarded in 2014 the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.

“Ethel Kennedy was an expensive pal with a ardour for justice, an irrepressible spirit, and a terrific humorousness,” Obama posted on X. “She touched the lives of numerous folks world wide along with her generosity and style, and was an emblem of tolerating religion and hope, even within the face of unimaginable grief.”

Kennedy by no means remarried, though within the Nineteen Seventies she was typically seen on the arm of singer Andy Williams, a household pal who denied they have been romantically concerned.

Within the years after RFK’s assassination, Kennedy’s life was marked by extra misfortune.

In 1997, her son Michael died in a snowboarding accident. Earlier, in 1984, her son David was discovered useless of a drug overdose in a Palm Seaside, Florida, resort room.

In 2002, Kennedy’s nephew Michael Skakel was tried and convicted for the 1975 homicide of his then-neighbor Martha Moxley. He was launched in 2013 when a decide agreed that Skakel’s former legal professional didn’t defend him adequately.

And in 2019, Kennedy’s 22-year-old granddaughter, Saoirse Kennedy Hill, died of a drug overdose.

Joe Kennedy, in his assertion, stated his grandmother additionally misplaced her daughter-in-law Mary, granddaughter Maeve and great-grandchildren Gideon and Josie.

Kennedy’s non-public ache over the demise of her husband was thrust again into the general public area in 2021 when a California parole board really useful, for the primary time, releasing RFK’s killer.

Then 93, Kennedy objected.

“Our household and our nation suffered an unspeakable loss as a result of inhumanity of 1 man,” Kennedy wrote. “We imagine within the gentleness that spared his life, however in taming his act of violence, he shouldn’t have the chance to terrorize once more.”

Kennedy was backed by six of her surviving youngsters — Joseph P. Kennedy II, Courtney Kennedy, Kerry Kennedy, Christopher G. Kennedy, Maxwell T. Kennedy and Rory Kennedy.

However two of Kennedy’s different sons, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Douglas Kennedy, stated Sirhan had carried out his time and supported his parole bid.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom agreed with Ethel Kennedy, and in 2022 he blocked Sirhan’s launch from jail. And when Sirhan went earlier than the parole board once more in March 2023, his bid to be launched was denied.