Ethel Kennedy, widow of Robert Kennedy and matriarch of a famous political family, dies at the age of 96

Ethel Kennedy, a matriarch of America's most famous political family who continued her husband Robert F. Kennedy's fight for civil justice after she witnessed his assassination on the night he won the 1968 Democratic presidential primary in California, is aging died at the age of 96.

“It is with our hearts full of love that we announce the passing of our great grandmother Ethel Kennedy,” former Rep. Joe Kennedy III, her grandson, announced Thursday. “She died this morning as a result of a stroke she suffered last week.”

“In addition to her lifelong work for social justice and human rights, our mother leaves behind nine children, 34 grandchildren and 24 great-grandchildren, as well as numerous nieces and nephews, all of whom love her dearly,” the statement reads in part. “Please keep her in your hearts and prayers.”

According to her family, Ethel Kennedy was hospitalized on October 8 when she suffered a stroke in her sleep.

The mother of seven sons and four daughters – including one with whom she was pregnant when her husband was assassinated – Ethel Kennedy, who never remarried, raised her children to live up to the Kennedy creed espoused by her assassinated brother-in-law , President, John F. Kennedy proclaimed that “of those to whom much is given, much is required.”

“For someone to achieve something, they have to show a little courage. You are only on this earth once. You have to give everything you have,” she said after her husband’s murder in 1968.

When President Barack Obama presented Ethel Kennedy with the Congressional Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, in 2014, he said Kennedy's “love of family is surpassed only by her devotion to her nation.”

“She is a symbol of enduring faith and enduring hope, even in the face of unimaginable loss and unimaginable grief,” Obama said during the White House ceremony. “And she touched the lives of countless people around the world with her generosity and grace.”

Born Ethel Schake in Chicago in 1928, her life was marked by a tireless commitment to public service, resilience and tragedy.

Although she was born in Illinois, she and the rest of the Skakel family moved to New England during her childhood as her father's energy business boomed. Ethel Skakel grew up on an estate in Greenwich, Connecticut and led a privileged life.

That life took her to Purchase, New York's Manhattanville College, now Manhattanville University, where she befriended a fellow student named Jean Kennedy, who introduced her to her brother Bobby – Robert F. Kennedy – the man she married in 1950.

The couple moved to Washington, D.C., where Bobby Kennedy worked as a lawyer in the Justice Department and soon gave birth to a daughter, Kathleen, the first of their eleven children.

Her husband's career was flourishing and her brother-in-law John Kennedy had been elected to the U.S. Senate. But tragedy soon struck Ethel Kennedy. Both of her parents were killed in 1955 when their private plane exploded in mid-air.

In the face of her grief, she devoted herself entirely to her growing family. Then came the 1960s and Ethel Kennedy found herself in the inner circle of events that would become deeply embedded in American history.

In 1960, JFK, her brother-in-law, was elected president and he chose his brother Robert Kennedy as attorney general. Then on November 22, 1963, the Kennedy family and the nation were shocked by the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas, Texas.

But Robert Kennedy's desire for politics and public service was undiminished. During his presidential campaign, Robert Kennedy said of his wife in his victory speech in the Indiana primary that she “made a big difference in this campaign and a big difference for me.”

But two months later, on June 5, 1968, an assassin's bullet ended Robert Kennedy's life as he gave a victory speech at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after winning the California primary. Ethel Kennedy, who witnessed her husband's assassination, became a widow at the age of 40, had ten children and was pregnant with the couple's eleventh child. She would never marry again.

Over the years, she fought to get her husband's killer paroled, writing to the California Parole Board in 2021: “Bobby believed we should work to 'tame the wildness of man and soften the life of the world.' '.”

“He wanted to end the war in Vietnam and bring people together to build a better, stronger country. Above all, he wanted to be a good father and a loving husband,” she continued. “Our family and our country have suffered unspeakable losses because of one man’s inhumanity. We believe in the gentleness that saved his life, but by curbing his violence, he should not have the opportunity to terrorize again.”

After her husband's death, Ethel Kennedy became active in social causes, including gun control, and founded the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center to continue her husband's work for justice and human rights.

But tragedy was never far away. In 1984, Ethel Kennedy's son David died of a drug overdose. In 1997, her son Michael died in a skiing accident. And in 2002, Ethel Kennedy sent a handwritten plea for clemency for her nephew Michael Skakel, who had been sentenced to 20 years to life in prison for the murder of a teenage girl in Greenwich nearly 30 years earlier.

Despite her high profile, Ethel Kennedy had an extremely private side and refused to grant interviews for years. But in 2008 she publicly supported Barack Obama's presidential campaign. The next year, President Obama delivered the eulogy for Ethel Kennedy's brother-in-law, Senator Ted Kennedy.

In early 2012, Ethel Kennedy, at age 83, was the star of the Sundance Film Festival, where family members gathered for the premiere of the documentary “Ethel.” The director who chronicled her life was her youngest daughter, Rory, the baby born six months after Robert Kennedy's assassination.

While Rory Kennedy never knew her father, she got to know her mother better while filming Ethel.

“Her life was truly remarkable,” Rory Kennedy said. “In the ups and downs and even in everyday life, she lived intensely. You’ll be hard-pressed to find another like her.”