Ethel Kennedy

Ethel Kennedy (born April 11, 1928, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.—died October 10, 2024) was a lifelong advocate for social justice and human rights, who is perhaps best known for the tragedy that helped define her life, including the assassination of her husband, Robert F. Kennedy, and the deaths of 2 of their 11 children.

Early life

Ethel Skakel, the sixth of George and Ann Brannack Skakel’s seven children, was born in Chicago. Her father worked as a railroad clerk, earning about $8 a week (about $150 in 2023 dollars). He teamed up with some coworkers to start a company to process coal by-products. By the time Ethel Skakel was born, her parents were millionaires.

In 1934 the family moved east, settling in Greenwich, Connecticut. Skakel, whose mother was a devout Roman Catholic, attended the Convent of the Sacred Heart in the Bronx before attending Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart in 1945.

Becoming a Kennedy

While at college, Skakel met and ultimately became roommates with Jean Kennedy, a younger sister of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy. In 1945 Skakel, then 17 years old, met Robert Kennedy during a ski trip, but at the time he was seeing her elder sister Patricia Skakel. When that relationship ended, Ethel Skakel and Robert Kennedy began dating.

But Robert wasn’t the only Kennedy who captured the imagination of Skakel; she campaigned for John Kennedy during his 1946 run for U.S. Congress and wrote her college thesis on his book, Why England Slept (1940), a foreign-policy rebuttal to Winston Churchill’s explanation of England’s slow reaction to the rise of Germany in the 1930s. Skakel and Robert Kennedy were married on June 17, 1950; their first child, Kathleen Kennedy, was born the next year.

A life of politics

After earning a law degree from the University of Virginia, Robert Kennedy began a career in public service, working at the Justice Department, as the family settled in the Washington, D.C., area. In 1955 George and Ann Skakel were killed when their private plane crashed.

Robert Kennedy moved into the public spotlight in 1957, when he took on the roll of chief counsel to the Senate Select Committee. By this time, John Kennedy was a senator and, in 1956, had narrowly missed being chosen as Adlai E. Stevenson’s vice presidential running mate. During the 1960 presidential campaign, Ethel Kennedy was an enthusiastic presence on the campaign trail for her brother-in-law. With John Kennedy’s election to the presidency, Robert Kennedy became the U.S. attorney general. By this time, Ethel and Robert Kennedy were parents to seven children and lived in a sprawling 13-bedroom home in McLean, Virginia, known as Hickory Hill.

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Tragedy strikes

Robert and Ethel Kennedy were at home on November 22, 1963, when the news of the assassination of John Kennedy reached them. In the wake of the tragedy, Robert Kennedy took on a significant role in comforting the president’s widow, Jacqueline Kennedy, and becoming a surrogate father to their children, Caroline Kennedy and John F. Kennedy, Jr. He also felt a need to carry on the work that he and his brother had started. In 1964 he was elected to the Senate from New York and quickly became a high-profile advocate for civil rights and an opponent of U.S. Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson’s policy on the Vietnam War.

In 1968 Robert Kennedy announced that he was running for the U.S. presidency. In the early hours of June 5, after claiming victory in the California primary, Robert Kennedy was shot and killed by Sirhan Sirhan. Ethel Kennedy gave birth to their 11th child, Rory Kennedy, six months later.

Later life

Ethel Kennedy vowed that she would never remarry, and, while she was sometimes escorted in public by singer Andy Williams, she largely devoted her life to raising her children as a single mother.

She remained active in a number of social causes that had been special to her husband, including the rights of migrant workers, the rights of Native Americans, and a variety of environmental causes. She founded the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights (now called Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights), which honors exemplary work by journalists and human rights advocates.

Some of Robert and Ethel Kennedy’s children have followed in the Kennedy family tradition of politics, including Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who was Maryland’s lieutenant governor; Joseph Patrick Kennedy II, who served in Congress; and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., whose controversial positions and 2024 presidential election bid have put him at odds with some family members. Sons David Anthony Kennedy died of a drug overdose in 1984 and Michael Lemoyne Kennedy was killed in a skiing accident in 1997.

U.S. Pres. Barack Obama awarded Ethel Kennedy the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor, in 2014. In doing so, he noted:

Ethel Kennedy has dedicated her life to advancing the cause of social justice, human rights, environmental protection, and poverty reduction by creating countless ripples of hope to effect change around the world.