Ethel Kennedy, widow of former New York attorney general and senator Robert F. Kennedy, has died. A political force in her own right, sister-in-law of President John F. Kennedy and mother of 11 children, she was 96 years old.
The news was announced by her daughter Kerry Kennedy on social media.
She outlived her husband by 56 years and the mother of the family founded the Center for Justice and Human Rights. Robert F. Kennedy in the months after the assassination of the then presidential candidate in 1968. Respected and loved by generations of Americans and many others around the world. world Ethel Kennedy was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama in 2014.
“You don't mess with Ethel,” President Obama laughed during the White House ceremony, adding, more seriously, that Kennedy's “love of family is matched only by her commitment to her nation.”
On October 8, the family revealed that on October 3, at her Cape Cod home, Ethel Kennedy suffered a stroke and was taken to the hospital. Along with his grandson and former Congressman Joe Kennedy III.
Born April 11, 1928, in Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of Great Lakes Carbon Corporation co-founder and coal tycoon George Skakel, she met Joe and Rose Kennedy's third-eldest son on a family ski trip to Canada in 1945 through her roommate Jean Kennedy College. During this time, Bobby, as his family and friends called RFK, was dating Ethel's sister, Patricia.
Shortly after the meeting, RFK dated Ethel.
Although the couple waited five years to get engaged, they were married in less than six months on June 17, 1950 in Greenwich, Connecticut. Shortly thereafter, when his older brother Jack entered national politics, Bobby followed suit and moved his growing family to Washington.
Ethel Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy at a press conference in Washington, D.C. in the late 1960s.
As an active participant in JFK's successful run for the White House in 1960, Bobby's run for senator in 1964, and other family campaigns, Ethel was a strong supporter of her husband's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968. More than three months pregnant at the time, Ethel was away from RFK, celebrating her victory in the California primary on June 5, 1968, at the now-demolished Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, when her husband was fatally shot. But she was by his side in the hospital when the 42-year-old senator died a day later from gunshot wounds.
The Kennedy family has been portrayed in countless films, television series and stage shows, and Ethel herself appeared as herself in a 1982 episode of the series. Thanks. RFK and youngest daughter Ethel, documentarian Rory Kennedy turned the camera on her mother and her life during the premiere at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival Ethel.
Ethel aired later that year on HBO.
Ethel and Robert F. Kennedy had 11 children, and sons David and Michael died in 1984 and 1997, respectively. Along with Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Rory, Ethel Kennedy left behind a second offspring, former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Kathleen Hartington Kennedy Townsend, Joseph Patrick Kennedy II, Courtney Kennedy Hill, Mary Kerry Kennedy, Christopher George' a Kennedy, Matthew Maxwell Taylor Kennedy and Douglas Harriman Kennedy, as well as their children and grandchildren.
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