By Invoice Trott
WASHINGTON, 2024 (Reuters) – Ethel Kennedy, a long-time human rights advocate who endured a sequence of tragedies that included the assassination of her husband, Robert F. Kennedy, and the premature deaths of two of their 11 kids, died on Thursday on the age of 96, her grandson Joseph Kennedy III mentioned in a social media publish.
“It is with our hearts full of love that we announce the passing of our amazing grandmother, Ethel Kennedy. She died this morning from complications related to a stroke suffered last week,” Kennedy mentioned in a publish on X.
Kennedy, who was a religious Catholic, sought to hold on her husband’s works with the founding of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights heart.
She was the mom of former unbiased presidential candidate and anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who just lately broke from his household’s conventional Democratic affiliation to endorse Donald Trump.
Ethel had been by her husband’s facet all through his profession and was beside him when he lay in a resort kitchen in 1968, mortally wounded by an murderer’s bullet.
Ethel Skakel was launched to Robert, or “Bobby,” by her Manhattanville School classmate – Kennedy’s sister Jean – in 1945 on a ski journey. Kennedy was courting Ethel’s sister on the time however later took up along with her.
They married in 1950 and Ethel proved to be a superb match for the Kennedy clan. Just like the Kennedys, her household was rich, Catholic and boisterous – though Republican.
By 1956 Ethel and Robert had been anticipating their fifth youngster and wanted a much bigger dwelling. Robert’s brother, president-to-be John F. Kennedy, offered them Hickory Hill, a 13-bedroom mansion outdoors Washington in McLean, Virginia, that may turn out to be an annex of the romanticized “Camelot” period of the Kennedy presidency.
Hickory Hill served as a city corridor, mental salon, and zoo, in addition to the scene of many contact soccer video games.
The Kennedys had been recognized for his or her events, which introduced in not solely politicians however athletes, artists, executives, and entertainers starting from Judy Garland to John Lennon. One evening there was a poetry writing contest when Robert Frost was a visitor and on one other Harry Belafonte taught company the right way to dance the twist.
“Hickory Hill was the most spirited social center in Washington,” Arthur M. Schlesinger wrote in “Robert Kennedy and His Times.” “It was hard to resist the raffish, unpredictable, sometimes uncontrollable Kennedy parties.”
Ethel and Robert had been crushed when John was assassinated in Dallas in 1963. Robert resigned as legal professional normal 9 months later to run efficiently for a U.S. Senate seat, representing New York. In 1968 he determined to hunt the Democratic presidential nomination.
Shortly after midnight on June 5 of that yr, Kennedy’s entourage was leaving the Ambassador Resort in Los Angeles moments after Kennedy had gained the essential Democratic main. As they had been exiting through the kitchen, 24-year-old Sirhan Sirhan, a Jordanian-Palestinian, shot Kennedy. He cited Kennedy’s help of Israel as his motive, and stays in jail to today.
Ethel, then pregnant with the couple’s eleventh youngster, had been separated within the crowd from her husband however managed to achieve him as he lay on the kitchen ground. Kneeling, she spoke softly to him and tried to shoo away photographers.
She maintained a near-constant vigil beside him till he died early on June 6. Via all of it, witnesses mentioned Kennedy by no means misplaced her composure.
Ethel Kennedy additionally endured different household tragedies. Her dad and mom had been killed in a aircraft crash in 1955, and he or she misplaced a brother in a 1966 aircraft crash.
Son David died of a drug overdose in 1984, whereas son Michael was killed in a snowboarding accident in 1997. RFK Jr. had drug issues that led to a heroin arrest and in 2019 her granddaughter Saoirse died after an obvious overdose.
In 2002 Ethel’s nephew, Michael Skakel, was convicted of murdering 15-year-old Martha Moxley 27 years earlier in a case that featured in a string of TV documentaries.
Ethel took up many causes championed by her late husband, together with preventing poverty, social justice, and defending the surroundings. Notable tasks included cleansing up Washington’s Anacostia River and restoring New York’s Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood.
In 2014 President Barack Obama gave her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
“She is an emblem of enduring faith and enduring hope, even in the face of unimaginable loss and unimaginable grief,” Obama mentioned on the ceremony. “As her family will tell you … you don’t mess with Ethel.”
Requested in a 2014 NBC interview what had impressed her, Kennedy mentioned: “First, Bobby and his life, and, of course, Jack.”
Rory, the Kennedys’ youngest youngster, made a documentary about her mom in 2012. As Ethel contemplated the tragedies of her life, she mentioned: “Nobody gets a free ride.”
