Ethel Kennedy, the widow of Robert F. Kennedy, has died at the age of 96.
She died “from complications related to a stroke suffered last week,” her daughter, Kerry Kennedy, said in a statement via X on Thursday, October 10.
“She was a devout Catholic and a daily communicant, and 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 statement continued. “Please keep our mother in your hearts and prayers.”
Following Kerry’s announcement, several social media users took to the comments section to express their condolences. “I’m so sorry for your loss. Ethel Kennedy was a champion for people with disabilities,” one person commented. Another chimed in, “I met #EthelKennedy as an idealistic college student. As I told her about growing up with her husband’s picture as an ‘Apostle of Freedom,’ she could not have been more gracious as a widow, advocate & leader in her own right. May God bless her legacy & the Kennedy family.”
“Sending my love to you and your family. What a legacy, what a life,” an additional person commented.
Ethel met Robert – who was fondly nicknamed as “Bobby” – because he was the brother of her roommate at Manhattanville College, Jean Kennedy, in 1945. The pair tied the knot in 1950 and stayed together until his death in 1968. They shared 11 children, while two of their sons passed away during her lifetime. Son David Kennedy died of a drug overdose in 1984, and son Michael Kennedy died in 1997 during a ski accident.
She worked as a humanitarian and founded the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights following her husband’s assassination. The organization is now currently being run by Kerry, 65.
In the five decades following Robert’s death, Ethel made sure to honor his legacy by helping the less fortunate.
Ethel also made sure to spend plenty of quality time with her family, and son Robert F. Kennedy Jr. shared a glimpse of what she was like as in her personal life in his 2018 memoir, American Values: Lessons I Learned From My Family.
“My mother … divided the world into friend and foe,” he wrote at the time. “Generally she judged the latter by harsher standards, and yet she sometimes discarded time-honored friendships for minor infractions. I faulted her for being mercurial and arbitrary.”
Robert Jr. added that he and his mother grew closer in the mid-’80s once he got sober following years of addiction struggles. In his memoir, the politician said that Ethel grew thick skin after she experienced many losses over the course of her life.
“Everyone takes their licks,” Robert Jr. recalled Ethel once telling him. “We feel like we ought to be able to write our own scripts to our lives, and sometimes we feel disappointed in God when life rewrites the plot. The key is acceptance and gratitude. We need to practice wanting what we’ve got, not what we wish we had.”
