Ethel Kennedy, the widow of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy who raised their 11 children after he was assassinated and remained dedicated to social causes and the family's legacy for decades, died on Thursday, her family said. She was 96, reports the AP. Kennedy had been hospitalized after suffering a stroke in her sleep on Oct. 3. "It is with our hearts full of love that we announce the passing of our amazing grandmother," Joe Kennedy III posted on X. "Along with a lifetime's work in social justice and human rights, our mother leaves behind nine children, 34 grandchildren, and 24 great-grandchildren, along with numerous nieces and nephews, all of whom love her dearly," the family statement said.
The Kennedy matriarch, whose children were Kathleen, Joseph II, Robert Jr., David, Courtney, Michael, Kerry, Christopher, Max, Douglas, and Rory, was one of the last members of a generation that included President John F. Kennedy. A millionaire's daughter who married the future senator and attorney general in 1950, Ethel Kennedy had endured more death by the age of 40 than most would in a lifetime. She was by her husband's side when he was fatally shot in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968, just after winning the Democratic presidential primary in California. "We are comforted in knowing she is 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 Saoirse; and her great-grandchildren Gideon and Josie," the family said.
She founded the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights soon after her husband's death and advocated for causes including gun control and human rights. She rarely spoke about her husband's assassination. When her filmmaker daughter Rory brought it up in the 2012 HBO documentary Ethel, she couldn't share her grief. "When we lost Daddy..." she began, then teared up and asked that her youngest daughter "talk about something else." Decades earlier, she seemed to thrive on her in-laws' rising power. She was an enthusiastic backer of JFK's 1960 run and during the Kennedy administration hosted some of the era's most well-attended parties at their Hickory Hill estate in McLean, Virginia.
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"Of all the Kennedy women, she was the one I would end up admiring the most," Harry Belafonte would write of her. "She wasn't playacting. She looked at you and immediately got what you were about." She also was active in the Coalition of Gun Control, Special Olympics, and the Earth Conservation Corps. And she showed up in person, participating in a 2016 demonstration in support of higher pay for farmworkers in Florida and a 2018 hunger strike against the Trump administration's immigration policies. (More Ethel Kennedy stories.)
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