Ethel Kennedy, social activist and wife of Robert F. Kennedy, has died

BOSTON, Mass. (AP) – Ethel Kennedy, the wife of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, who raised their 11 children after his assassination and then spent decades supporting social causes and the family's legacy, died Thursday surrounded by her family, she said. She was 96.

“It is with our hearts full of love that we announce the passing of our great grandmother,” Joe Kennedy III wrote on X. “She died this morning as a result of a stroke she suffered last week.”

“In addition to her life's work for social justice and human rights, our mother leaves behind nine children, 34 grandchildren and 24 great-great-grandchildren, as well as numerous nieces and nephews, all of whom love her very much,” the family statement said.

President Joe Biden called her “an American icon — a matriarch of optimism and moral courage, a symbol of resilience and service.”

“For over 50 years, Ethel traveled, marched, boycotted and advocated for human rights around the world with her iron will and grace,” Biden said.

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

Ethel Kennedy, the daughter of a millionaire who married the future senator and attorney general in 1950, had suffered more deaths by the age of 40, as the whole world could see, than most people would in a lifetime.

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

Her parents died in a plane crash in 1955, and her brother died in a plane crash in 1966. Her son David Kennedy overdosed, son Michael Kennedy died in a skiing accident and his nephew John F. Kennedy Jr. died in a plane crash. Another nephew, Michael Skakel, was found guilty of murder before the Connecticut Supreme Court ultimately overturned his conviction. And in 2019, her granddaughter Saoirse Kennedy Hill apparently died of an overdose.

“You wonder how much is expected of this family,” family friend Philip Johnson, founder of the Robert F. Kennedy Foundation, told the Boston Herald after Michael Kennedy’s death.

Ethel Kennedy lived by faith and devotion to family.

“She was a devout Catholic and communicated daily, and we are comforted to know that 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 family statement said.

Ethel's mother-in-law, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, initially wondered how she would deal with so much tragedy.

“I knew how difficult it would be for her to raise this large family without the leadership and influence that Bobby would have given her,” Rose recalls in her memoir, “Times to Remember.” “And of course she was clearly aware of that. But she didn’t give in.”

Ethel Kennedy founded the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights shortly after her husband's death and advocated for causes such as gun control and human rights. She rarely spoke about her husband's murder. When her filmmaker daughter Rory brought it up in the 2012 HBO documentary “Ethel,” she couldn't communicate her grief.

“When we lost Dad…” she began, then burst into tears and asked her youngest daughter “to talk about something else.”

Many of their descendants became well known. Daughter Kathleen became Lieutenant Governor of Maryland; Joseph represented Massachusetts in Congress; Courtney married Paul Hill, who was wrongly convicted of a bombing of the Irish Republican Army; Kerry became a human rights activist and president of the RFK Center; Christopher ran for governor of Illinois; Max worked as a prosecutor in Philadelphia and Douglas reported for Fox News Channel.

Her son, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., also became a national figure — first as an environmental lawyer and more recently as a conspiracy theorist who spread false theories about vaccines. He ran for president as an independent after briefly challenging Biden, and his name remained on the ballot in several states after he suspended his campaign and endorsed Donald Trump.

Ethel Kennedy did not publicly comment on her son's actions, although several other family members denounced him.

Decades earlier, she seemed to benefit from her in-laws' growing power, enthusiastically supporting the 1960 election campaign and hosting some of the era's most well-attended parties at her Hickory Hill estate in McLean, Virginia, including one attended by historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. was pushed into the swimming pool fully clothed. In keeping with Kennedy's spirit, she was also an extremely competitive tennis player.

“The petite and peppy Ethel, who doesn't look like an outdoorsy type at all, believes outdoor activities are so important for the children that she has arranged her busy schedule as a cabinetmaker so that she can personally take them on two daily trips.” , the Washington Post reported in 1962.

As she accompanied her husband on a goodwill tour around the world, she said it was important for Americans to meet ordinary people abroad.

“People have a strong preference for Americans,” she told the Post. “But the communists were so vocal that it was a surprise to some Asians to hear America’s point of view. It’s good for Americans to travel and get our point across.”

She split her time between homes in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, and Palm Beach, Florida, after Hickory Hill, which they purchased from John and Jackie Kennedy in 1957, sold in 2009 for $8.25 million.

Born Ethel Skakel on April 11, 1928, she grew up in a 31-room English mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut, the sixth of seven children of coal magnate George and Ann Brannack Skakel. She met Robert Kennedy through his sister Jean, her roommate at Manhattanville College.

The newlyweds moved to Charlottesville, Virginia, where he completed his final year of law school at the University of Virginia and helped expand her worldview by introducing her to people like Ralph Bunche, the first person of color to win the Nobel Peace Prize. They concluded that the safest place for him to stay during his visit was their home.

“He was so charming and didn’t complain, but they were throwing things at our house all night. It was so unthinkable and outrageous, but you got a small taste of what black people in our country were going through at the time,” she said in the documentary.

Robert Kennedy became chief counsel to the Senate Select Committee in 1957 and was appointed attorney general by his brother in 1960.

She supported his successful 1964 campaign for the US Senate in New York and his subsequent presidential candidacy. Pregnant with the eleventh child when he was shot by Sirhan Sirhan, her look of shock and horror was captured in images that remained indelible decades later.

The assassination traumatized the family, especially son David Kennedy, who was just 12 years old when he watched the news in a hotel room. He never recovered and struggled with addiction for years before overdosing in 1984.

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

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

On the 40th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., she visited Indianapolis, where a monument commemorates the speech her husband gave that evening in 1968, credited with preventing unrest in the city.

“Of all the Kennedy women, she was the one I ended up admiring most,” Harry Belafonte wrote of her. “She didn’t play. She looked at you and immediately understood what it was about. In the years to come, when Bobby rejected something we thought he should do for the movement, I often turned to Ethel. 'We need to talk to him,' she said, and she did.”

In 2008, she, along with her brother-in-law Ted Kennedy and niece Caroline Kennedy, supported Senator Barack Obama for president and compared him to her late husband. She later went to the Obama White House to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom and meet Pope Francis. Obama called her “a dear friend with a passion for justice, an irrepressible spirit and a great sense of humor.”

“She touched the lives of countless people around the world with her generosity and grace and was a symbol of enduring faith and hope even in the face of unimaginable grief,” Obama said on social media, one of many high-profile eulogies.

Obama and former President Bill Clinton held hands as they climbed the stairs to lay a wreath at President Kennedy's gravesite on the 50th anniversary of his death. Clinton remembered her Thursday as a “fierce fighter for justice and equality” who built “one of the most effective human rights organizations in the world.”

The center she founded still promotes human rights through litigation, advocacy, education and inspiration, and presents annual awards to journalists, authors and others who have made significant contributions to human rights.

She was also active in the Coalition of Gun Control, the Special Olympics and the Earth Conservation Corps. And she appeared in person, participating in a demonstration in support of higher wages for farm workers in Florida in 2016 and a hunger strike against the Trump administration's immigration policies in 2018.

“It was found wherever human dignity was at stake, from pickets to prisons, in every corner of the map,” Clinton said. “She was fearless and tireless, a true force of nature, guided by the teachings of her faith. “Call us all to serve others.”