According to her relatives, she had a stroke last week while she was sleeping and was admitted to the hospital.
Sen. Robert F. Kennedy’s wife, Ethel Kennedy, passed away on Thursday, according to her family. She raised their 11 children after his assassination and stayed committed to social causes and the family’s legacy for decades after that. She was ninety-six.
According to her relatives, Kennedy was admitted to the hospital on October 3 after having a stroke while she was asleep.
Joe Kennedy III said on X, “With hearts full of love, we announce the passing of our amazing grandmother.” “She passed away this morning due to complications from a stroke she had last week.”
The family statement read, “Our mother leaves behind nine children, 34 grandchildren, and 24 great-great grandchildren along with numerous nieces and nephews, all of whom love her dearly, in addition to a lifetime of work in social justice and human rights.”
One of the last people from a generation that includes President John F. Kennedy was the Kennedy matriarch, whose children were Kathleen, Joseph II, Robert Jr., David, Courtney, Michael, Kerry, Christopher, Max, Douglas, and Rory. Prior to being unwell, her family reported that she had recently loved seeing many of her relatives.
By the time she was forty, Ethel Kennedy, the daughter of a millionaire, had suffered more deaths for the world to witness than most people would in their lifetimes. She married the future senator and attorney general in 1950.
Shortly after winning the Democratic presidential primary in California, on June 5, 1968, she was with Robert F. Kennedy when he was shot and killed in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Less than five years prior, President John F. Kennedy, her brother-in-law, had been slain in Dallas.
Her brother perished in a 1966 plane tragedy, and her parents perished in a 1955 crash. Later, her nephew John F. Kennedy Jr. perished in a plane disaster, her son Michael Kennedy perished in a skiing accident, and her son David Kennedy overdosed on drugs. Michael Skakel, another nephew, was convicted of murder in 2002; however, the Connecticut Supreme Court overturned his conviction in 2018 after a court ordered a new trial in 2013.
After her granddaughter Saoirse Kennedy Hill passed away in 2019 from what appeared to be a heroin overdose, she was once again in mourning.
Following Michael Kennedy’s passing, family friend Philip Johnson, the founder of the Robert F. Kennedy Foundation, told the Boston Herald, “One wonders how much this family must be expected to absorb.”
Through her faith and her love for her family, Ethel Kennedy was able to support herself.
We find solace in the fact that she is now reunited with her beloved 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. She was a devoted Catholic and a daily communicant. Kindly remember our mother in your thoughts and prayers,” the family added in the statement.
At first, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, Ethel’s mother-in-law, was concerned about how she would cope with so much tragedy.
In her biography, Times to Remember, Rose noted, “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.” Of course, she was also acutely and completely aware of this. But she refused to back down.
Shortly after her husband’s passing, she established the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights and promoted human rights and gun control. She seldom ever mentioned her husband’s murder. She was unable to express her sorrow when Rory, her filmmaker daughter, brought it up in the 2012 HBO documentary Ethel.
She started by saying, “When we lost Daddy …” before sobbing and requesting that her youngest daughter “talk about something else.”
Comparing Sen. Barack Obama to her late husband, she endorsed him for president in 2008 along with her brother-in-law Ted Kennedy and niece Caroline Kennedy. During the Obama administration, she visited the White House multiple times, meeting Pope Francis in 2015 and winning the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014.
Many of her children went on to become famous. Christopher ran for governor of Illinois; Max worked as a prosecutor in Philadelphia; Douglas reported for Fox News Channel; Courtney married Paul Hill, who had been wrongfully convicted of an IRA bombing; Kerry became a human rights activist and president of the RFK Center; Joseph represented Massachusetts in Congress; and daughter Kathleen became lieutenant governor of Maryland.
Despite not being a liberal in the family tradition, her son Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also rose to national prominence. He began his career as an environmental lawyer before turning into a conspiracy theorist who propagated untrue vaccine myths. After temporarily running against President Joe Biden, he decided to run for president as an independent. His name continued to appear on ballots in several states even after he halted his campaign and endorsed Donald Trump.
Several other family members condemned her son’s behavior, but Ethel Kennedy remained nothing about it.
She appeared to flourish on her in-laws’ growing influence decades ago. Her Hickory Hill mansion in McLean, Virginia, held some of the most popular parties of the Kennedy administration, including one where historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. was shoved fully clothed into the swimming pool. She was a fervent supporter of JFK’s 1960 campaign. She was also a devoted and fiercely competitive tennis player and a compulsive planner, in true Kennedy fashion.
The Washington Post wrote in 1962 that “Ethel, a charming and lively woman who doesn’t appear to be the outdoorsy type, thinks outdoor activity is so important for the children that she has arranged her busy Cabinet-wife schedule so she can personally take them on two daily outings.”
She went on a global goodwill trip with her husband in February of that year, visiting Japan, Hong Kong, Italy, and other nations. Meeting regular people abroad is crucial for Americans, she said.
“Americans are clearly liked by people,” she told the Post. However, some Asians were surprised to hear America’s perspective because the Communists had been so outspoken. It is beneficial for Americans to travel and share our perspective.
Kennedy, the sixth of seven children born to coal tycoon George Skakel and pious Roman Catholic Ann Brannack Skakel, was born Ethel Skakel in Chicago on April 11, 1928. Before graduating from the Convent of the Sacred Heart in the Bronx in 1945, she attended Greenwich Academy and grew up in a 31-room English country manor estate in Greenwich, Connecticut.
She lived with Robert Kennedy at Manhattanville College in New York, where she met him through his sister Jean. After relocating to Charlottesville, Virginia, where he completed his final year of law school at the University of Virginia, they purchased Hickory Hill from John and Jacqueline Kennedy in 1957. The Kennedys had previously purchased the property in 1953.
In 1957, Robert Kennedy was appointed the Senate Select Committee’s lead lawyer. Later, his brother, the recently elected President Kennedy, named him attorney general.
She’d backed her husband’s successful 1964 U.S. Senate race in New York and his subsequent presidential campaign. She was expecting their eleventh child when Sirhan Sirhan shot him down, and photographers captured her horrified and shocked expression in pictures that would stick with her for decades.
David Kennedy, the son who saw the news in a hotel room, was particularly shocked by the assassination. Days before his thirteenth birthday, he overdosed in 1984 and struggled with addiction for years before ever fully recovering.
She disagreed with several of her family members in 2021 when she stated that Sirhan Sirhan shouldn’t be allowed to leave prison. A California panel refused him parole two years later.
Ethel Kennedy never remarried, despite being connected to a number of men following the death of her husband, most notably singer Andy Williams.
On the 40th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, Ethel Kennedy traveled to Indianapolis in April 2008. There, a monument honored King’s passing and her husband’s speech from that evening in 1968, which was said to have prevented unrest in the city.
Harry Belafonte would write of her, “She was the one of all the Kennedy women that I would end up admiring the most.” She was performing, not pretending. She saw what you were about the moment she laid eyes on you. In the ensuing years, I would frequently present my case to Ethel when Bobby refused to do anything we wanted him to do for the movement. She would say, “We need to speak with him,” and she would.
During a November 2013 commemoration of the 50th anniversary of JFK’s passing, Ethel Kennedy accompanied President Obama and former President Bill Clinton, who each held one of her hands, as they ascended stairs to place a wreath at President Kennedy’s gravesite.
Her nonprofit institute, which annually rewards journalists, writers, and others who have made noteworthy achievements to human rights, is still committed to promoting human rights by advocacy, education, inspiration, and litigation.
She was also involved with the Earth Conservation Corps, Special Olympics, and the Coalition of Gun Control. She also physically participated in a hunger strike against the Trump administration’s immigration policy in 2018 and a demonstration in 2016 calling for increased wages for Florida farmworkers.
Ethel Kennedy split her time between residences in Palm Beach, Florida, and Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, after Hickory Hill sold for $8.25 million in 2009.
