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

Ethel Kennedy, the widow of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy who raised their 11 children after he was assassinated and remained dedicated to social causes and the family's legacy for decades thereafter, died on Thursday, her family said. She was 96.

Kennedy had been hospitalised after suffering a stroke in her sleep on October 3, her family said.

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.

The Kennedy matriarch, whose children were Kathleen, Joseph II, Robert Jr., David, Courtney, Michael, Kerry, Christopher, Max, Douglas and Rory, was one of the last remaining member of a generation that included President John F. Kennedy. Her family said she had recently enjoyed seeing many of her relatives, before falling ill.

 

She has had a great summer and transition into fall, said a family statement, issued after she was hospitalised. Every day she enjoyed time with her children, nieces, nephews, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. She was able to get out on the water, visit the pier, and enjoy many lunches and dinners with family. It has been a gift to all of us and to her as well.

A millionaire's daughter who married the future senator and attorney general in 1950, Ethel Kennedy had endured more death by the age of 40, for the whole world to see, than most would in a lifetime.

She was by Robert F. Kennedy's side when he was fatally shot in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968, just after winning the Democratic presidential primary in California. Her brother-in-law, President John F. Kennedy, had been assassinated in Dallas less than five years earlier.

Her parents were killed in a plane 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 skiing accident and nephew John F. Kennedy Jr. in a plane crash.

Another nephew, Michael Skakel, was found guilty of murder in 2002, although a judge in 2013 ordered a new trial and the Connecticut Supreme Court vacated his conviction in 2018.

In 2019, she was grieving again after granddaughter Saoirse Kennedy Hill died of an apparent drug overdose.

One wonders how much this family must be expected to absorb, family friend Philip Johnson, founder of the Robert F. Kennedy Foundation, told the Boston Herald after Michael Kennedy's death.

Ethel Kennedy sustained herself through her Catholic faith and devotion to family.

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, her mother-in-law, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, recalled in her memoir, Times to Remember. And, of course, she realised this too, fully and keenly. Yet she did not give way.

She founded the Robert F. Kennedy Centre for Justice and Human Rights soon after husband's death and advocated for causes including gun control and human rights. She rarely spoke about her husband's assassination. When her filmmaker daughter, Rory, brought it up in the 2012 HBO documentary, Ethel, she couldn't share her grief.

When we lost Daddy ... she began, then teared up and asked 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 several trips to the White House during the Obama years, receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014 and meeting Pope Francis in 2015.

Kennedy was born Ethel Skakel on April 11, 1928, in Chicago, the sixth of seven children of coal magnate George Skakel and Ann Brannack Skakel, a devout Roman Catholic. She grew up in a 31-room English country manor house in Greenwich, Connecticut, and attended Greenwich Academy before graduating from the Convent of the Sacred Heart in the Bronx in 1945.

She met Robert Kennedy through his sister Jean, her roommate at Manhattanville College in New York. They moved to Charlottesville, Virginia, where he finished his last year of law school at the University of Virginia, and then in 1957, they bought Hickory Hill from by John and Jacqueline Kennedy, who had bought it in 1953.

Robert Kennedy became chief counsel to the Senate Select Committee in 1957. He later was appointed attorney general by his brother, the newly elected President Kennedy.

She had supported her husband in his successful 1964 campaign for the US Senate in New York and his subsequent presidential bid. Pregnant with their 11th child when he was gunned down by Sirhan Sirhan, her look of shock and horror was captured by photographers in images that remained indelible decades later.

The assassination traumatised the family, especially son David Kennedy, who watched the news in a hotel room. He was just days before his 13th birthday and never recovered, struggling with addiction problems for years and overdosing in 1984.

In 2021, she said Sirhan Sirhan should not be released from prison, a view not shared by some others in her family. Two years later, a California panel denied him parole.

Although Ethel Kennedy was linked to several men after her husband's death, most notably singer Andy Williams, she never remarried.