Ethel Kennedy, widow of Robert Kennedy and matriarch of celebrated political family, dies at 96

Ethel Kennedy, a matriarch of America’s most celebrated political family who carried on her husband Robert F. Kennedy’s fight for civil justice after witnessing his assassination on the night he won the 1968 California Democratic presidential primary, has died at the age of 96.

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

“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 statement added, in part. “Please keep her in your hearts and prayers.”

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

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

“For anyone to achieve something, he must have to show a little courage. You’re only on this earth once. You must give it all you’ve got,” she said following her husband’s 1968 assassination.

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

“She’s an emblem 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 has 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 dedication to public service, resilience, and tragedy.

Though she was born in Illinois, she and the rest of the Skakel family relocated to New England during her childhood years as her father’s energy business boomed. Growing up on a Greenwich, Connecticut, estate, Ethel Skakel led a life of privilege.

That life took her to Purchase, New York’s Manhattanville College, now Manhattanville University, where she became friends with 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 at the Justice Department, and where they soon welcomed a daughter, Kathleen, the first of their 11 children.

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

In the face of her grief, she immersed herself in her growing family. Then came the 1960s, and Ethel Kennedy found herself in the intimate circle of events that would be ingrained in American history.

In 1960, JFK, her brother-in-law was elected president, and he picked his brother, Robert Kennedy, to be attorney general. Then on Nov. 22, 1963, the Kennedy family and the nation were shattered by President Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas, Texas.

But Robert Kennedy’s desire for politics and public service was undimmed. While campaigning for president, Robert Kennedy said of his wife during his victory speech in the Indiana primary that she “has made such a major difference in this campaign and a major difference for me.”

However, two months later, on June 5, 1968, an assassin’s bullet ended Robert Kennedy’s life as he delivered a victory speech at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after winning the California primary. Ethel Kennedy, who witnessed her husband’s murder, was left a widow at the age of 40 with 10 children and pregnant with the couple’s 11th. She would never again marry.

Over the years, she fought against paroling her husband’s assassin, writing to the California Parole Board in 2021, “Bobby believed we should work to ‘tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of the world.'”

“He wanted to end the war in Vietnam and bring people together to build a better, stronger country. More than anything, he wanted to be a good father and a loving husband,” she further wrote. “Our family and our country suffered unspeakable loss due to the inhumanity of one man. We believe in the gentleness that spared his life, but in taming his act of violence, he should not have the opportunity to terrorize again.”

Following her husband’s death, Ethel Kennedy became involved in social causes, including gun control, and started the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center to carry on her husband’s work for justice and human rights.

But tragedy was never far off. In 1984, Ethel Kennedy’s son, David, died of a drug overdose. In 1997, her son, Michael, was killed in a skiing accident. And in 2002, Ethel Kennedy sent a handwritten plea for leniency for her nephew, Michael Skakel, who was sentenced to 20 years to life for the murder of a teenage girl in Greenwich almost 30 years earlier.

Despite her high profile, Ethel Kennedy had an intensely private side, refusing for years to grant interviews. 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, Sen. Ted Kennedy.

In early 2012, Ethel Kennedy, at age 83, was the toast 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 was killed.

While Rory Kennedy never knew her father, she got to know her mother better in the making of “Ethel.”

“Her life has been truly remarkable,” Rory Kennedy said. “In the highs and lows and even the day-to-day, she has lived intensely. You would be hard-pressed to find another like her.”