Thaindian News

Aug 12 (IBNS) President John F Kennedy ’s sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who carried on the family’s public service tradition by founding the Special Olympics and championing the rights of the mentally disabled, passed away Tuesday morning. She was 88.

Shriver, the mother of Maria Shriver, advocated tirelessly for the mentally disabled. Her contributions to the disability rights movement have been called the greatest Kennedy legacy.

Born Eunice Mary Kennedy in Brookline, Massachusetts, she was the fifth of nine children of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. and Rose Kennedy (née Fitzgerald).

She was educated at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, Roehampton, London, England; and Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York, and attended Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, graduating in 1943 with a Bachelor of Science degree in sociology; after which she went to work for the United States Department of State in the Special War Problems division.

In 1950, she became a social worker at the then-named Federal Industrial Institution for Women in Alderson, West Virginia, and the following year she moved to Chicago, Illinois, to work with the House of the Good Shepherd and the Chicago Juvenile Court.

On May 23, 1953, she married Robert Sargent Shriver, Jr. in a Roman Catholic ceremony at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, New York.

Her husband served as the U.S. Ambassador to France from 1968 to 1970 and was the Democratic U.S. Vice- Presidential candidate in 1972 (with George McGovern as the candidate for U.S. President).