Eunice Mary Kennedy Shriver
(July 10, 1921 – August 11, 2009)
Eunice Kennedy Shriver was a member of the Kennedy family (one of the most prominent American political families of the 20th century).
Mrs Shriver founded the Special Olympics in the 1960s as a national organization. She helped demonstrate that the mentally disabled can triumph on the field of competition and lead rich and productive lives outside the walls of institutions.
Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, she was the fifth of nine children of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. and Rose Kennedy (née Fitzgerald). Her eight siblings include President Kennedy, former New York Senator Bobby Kennedy and serving Senator Edward Kennedy, who is currently battling brain cancer.
She was educated at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, Roehampton, London, England; and Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York, and attended Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, graduating in 1943 with a Bachelor of Science degree in sociology; after which she went to work for the United States Department of State in the Special War Problems division.
In 1950, she became a social worker at the then-named Federal Industrial Institution for Women in Alderson, West Virginia, and the following year she moved to Chicago, Illinois, to work with the House of the Good Shepherd and the Chicago Juvenile Court.
On May 23, 1953, she married Robert Sargent Shriver, Jr. in a Roman Catholic ceremony at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City, New York. Her husband served as the U.S. Ambassador to France from 1968 to 1970 and was the Democratic U.S. Vice Presidential candidate in 1972 (with George McGovern as the candidate for U.S. President).
Shriver actively campaigned for her elder brother, U.S. President John F. Kennedy, during his successful 1960 U.S. presidential election. In 1968, she helped Ann McGlone Burke nationalize the Special Olympics movement.
Her daughter, Maria Shriver, is married to actor and politician Arnold Schwarzenegger. Although Shriver was a Democrat, she was a vocal supporter of the pro-life movement.
Shriver, who was believed to have suffered from Addison's disease, had several health setbacks in recent years, and on November 18, 2007, she was admitted to Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts; she spent several weeks there.
Shriver died at the Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis, Massachusetts in the early hours of Tuesday morning (Aug. 11th). The immediate cause of her death has not yet been disclosed.
Her husband, her five children and her 19 grandchildren were all with her when she died.
RIP
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