Ethel Kennedy, social activist and widow of Robert F. Kennedy, dies at 96 : NPR

BOSTON, Mass. — Ethel Kennedy, the widow 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’s with our hearts full of affection that we announce the passing of our wonderful grandmother,” Joe Kennedy III posted on X. “She died this morning from problems associated to a stroke suffered final week.”

The Kennedy matriarch, whose youngsters have been Kathleen, Joseph II, Robert Jr., David, Courtney, Michael, Kerry, Christopher, Max, Douglas and Rory, was one of many final remaining member of a era that included President John F. Kennedy. Her household mentioned she had lately loved seeing lots of her kinfolk, earlier than falling ailing.

“She has had an important summer season and transition into fall,” mentioned a household assertion, issued after she was hospitalized. “Daily she loved time together with her youngsters, nieces, nephews, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. She was in a position to get out on the water, go to the pier, and luxuriate in many lunches and dinners with household. It has been a present to all of us and to her as properly.”

A millionaire’s daughter who married the long run senator and lawyer normal in 1950, Ethel Kennedy had endured extra dying 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 Resort 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 have been killed in a airplane 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 airplane 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 Courtroom 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 a lot this household should be anticipated to soak up,” household pal Philip Johnson, founding father of the Robert F. Kennedy Basis, instructed the Boston Herald after Michael Kennedy’s dying.

Ethel Kennedy sustained herself by way of her Catholic religion and devotion to household.

“I knew how troublesome it was going to be for her to lift that massive household with out the guiding position and affect that Bobby would have supplied,” her mother-in-law, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, recalled in her memoir, “Occasions to Keep in mind.” “And, after all, she realized this too, absolutely and keenly. But she didn’t give method.”

She based the Robert F. Kennedy Middle for Justice and Human Rights quickly after husband’s dying 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 could not share her grief.

“After we misplaced Daddy …” she started, then teared up and requested that her youngest daughter “discuss one thing 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 in the course of the Obama years, receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014 and assembly Pope Francis in 2015.

A lot of her progeny grew to become well-known. Daughter Kathleen grew to become lieutenant governor of Maryland; Joseph represented Massachusetts in Congress; Courtney married Paul Hill, who had been wrongfully convicted of an IRA bombing; Kerry grew to become a human rights activist and president of the RFK middle; 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 grew to become a nationwide determine, though not as a liberal within the household custom. First referred to as an environmental lawyer, he developed right into a conspiracy theorist who unfold false theories about vaccines. He ran for president as an impartial 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 relations 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 in the course of the Kennedy administration hosted a few 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 referred to as an avid and extremely aggressive tennis participant and a compulsive planner.

“Petite and peppy Ethel, who doesn’t look one bit the outdoorsy sort, considers outside exercise so essential for the kids that she has organized her busy Cupboard-wife schedule so she will be able to personally take them on two day by day outings,” The Washington Submit 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 essential for People to satisfy strange individuals abroad.

“Folks have a definite liking for People,” she instructed the Submit. “However the Communists have been so vocal, it was a shock for some Asians to listen to America’s perspective. It’s good for People to journey and get our viewpoint throughout.”

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 way of his sister Jean, her roommate at Manhattanville School in New York. They moved to Charlottesville, Virginia, the place he completed his final 12 months of legislation college on the College of Virginia, after which in 1957, they purchased Hickory Hill from by John and Jacqueline Kennedy, who had purchased it in 1953.

Robert Kennedy grew to become chief counsel to the Senate Choose Committee in 1957. He later was appointed lawyer normal 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 photos that remained indelible a long time later.

The assassination traumatized the household, particularly son David Kennedy, who watched the information in a lodge room. He was simply days earlier than his thirteenth birthday and by no means recovered, battling habit 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 dying, 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 dying and the speech her husband had provided that evening in 1968, which was credited with averting rioting within the metropolis.

“Of all of the Kennedy ladies, she was the one I might find yourself admiring probably the most,” Harry Belafonte would write of her. “She wasn’t playacting. She checked out you and instantly acquired what you have been about. Usually within the coming years, when Bobby was balking at one thing we needed him to do for the motion, I’d take my case to Ethel. ‘We have now to speak to him,’ she’d say, and he or she would.”

Ethel Kennedy joined President Obama and former President Invoice Clinton — every held one in every of her fingers — 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 dying.

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

She additionally was lively within the Coalition of Gun Management, Particular Olympics, and the Earth Conservation Corps. And he or she confirmed up in individual, collaborating in a 2016 demonstration in assist of upper 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.