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 spent decades thereafter supporting social causes and the family's legacy, died Thursday, her family said. She was 96.

Kennedy was hospitalized after suffering a stroke in her sleep on Oct. 3, her family said.

“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.

The Kennedy matriarch, whose children included Kathleen, Joseph II, Robert Jr., David, Courtney, Michael, Kerry, Christopher, Max, Douglas and Rory, was one of the last remaining members of a 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, by the age of 40, as the whole world saw, suffered more deaths than most 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 he won the Democratic presidential primary in California. Her brother-in-law, President John F. Kennedy, had been assassinated 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 later died of a drug overdose, son Michael Kennedy in a skiing accident and nephew John F. Kennedy Jr. in a plane crash. Another nephew, Michael Skakel, was convicted of murder in 2002, although a judge ordered a new trial in 2013 and the Connecticut Supreme Court overturned his conviction in 2018.

In 2019, she grieved again after her granddaughter Saoirse Kennedy Hill died of an apparent drug 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 through her faith and devotion to family.

“She was a devout Catholic and communicated daily and we are comforted to know that she has been 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 worried about how she would handle 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.”

She 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.”

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 made several trips to the White House during the Obama years, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014 and met Pope Francis in 2015.

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 an IRA bombing; 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, although ultimately not as a liberal in the family tradition. Initially known as an environmental lawyer, he evolved into a conspiracy theorist who spread false theories about vaccines. He ran for president as an independent after briefly challenging President Joe 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. She was an avid supporter of JFK's 1960 campaign and during the Kennedy administration hosted some of the era's most attended parties at her Hickory Hill estate in McLean, Virginia, including one at which historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. attended in full Was pushed into the swimming pool wearing clothes. In the spirit of Kennedy, she was also known as an enthusiastic and highly competitive tennis player and compulsive planner.

“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.

In February of that year, she accompanied her husband on a goodwill tour around the world with stops in Japan, Hong Kong, Italy and other countries. She said it's important for Americans to meet regular 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.”

Kennedy was born Ethel Skakel in Chicago on April 11, 1928, the sixth of seven children of coal magnate George Skakel and devout Roman Catholic Ann Brannack Skakel. She grew up in a 31-room English mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut, and attended Greenwich Academy before graduating from the Convent of the Sacred Heart in the Bronx in 1945.

She met Robert Kennedy through his sister Jean, her roommate at Manhattanville College in New York. They moved to Charlottesville, Virginia, where he completed his final year of law school at the University of Virginia, and then purchased Hickory Hill in 1957 from John and Jacqueline Kennedy, who had purchased it in 1953.

Robert Kennedy became chief counsel to the Senate Select Committee in 1957. He was later appointed attorney general by his brother, newly elected President Kennedy.

She had supported her husband in his successful campaign for the US Senate in New York in 1964 and his subsequent candidacy for president. When she was pregnant with her eleventh child when he was shot dead by Sirhan Sirhan, her shocked and horrified look was captured by photographers in images that remained indelible decades later.

The assassination traumatized the family, especially son David Kennedy, who watched the news in a hotel room. He was just days shy of his 13th birthday and never recovered, struggling for years with addiction problems and an overdose in 1984.

In 2021, she said Sirhan 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.

In April 2008, Ethel Kennedy visited Indianapolis to mark the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. A memorial there commemorated King's death and the speech her husband gave that night in 1968, intended to prevent riots in the city was considered a 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.”

Ethel Kennedy accompanied President Obama and former President Bill Clinton – each holding one of her hands – as they climbed the stairs to lay a wreath at President Kennedy's gravesite during a memorial service marking the 50th anniversary of JFK's death in November 2013.

The nonprofit center she founded remains dedicated to advancing 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.

Hickory Hill sold for $8.25 million in 2009 and Ethel Kennedy split her time between homes in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, and Palm Beach, Florida.