Ethel Kennedy, matriarch of the famous family, dies at 96

Ethel Kennedy, who lost her husband, Robert F. Kennedy, and brother-in-law, President John F. Kennedy, to assassins’ bullets, and who channeled her grief into raising her 11 children and pursuing a lifetime of public service, died Thursday. She was 96.

Kennedy died from complications from a stroke she suffered last week, former Rep. Joe Kennedy III, D-Mass., a grandson, said in a statement posted on X.

“It is with our hearts full of love that we announce the passing of our amazing grandmother, Ethel Kennedy,” the former congressman said.

Joe Kennedy wrote that his grandmother “was a devout Catholic and a daily communicant.”

“We are comforted in knowing she is reunited with the love of her life, our father, Robert F. Kennedy,” he wrote.

“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.”

Kennedy died some six weeks after her third child, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., ended his presidential campaign and outraged his Democratic family by endorsing former President Donald Trump.

Born Ethel Skakel on April 11, 1928, in Chicago, Kennedy’s life was marked by tragedy even before Sirhan Sirhan made her a widow in 1968 by gunning down her husband while he was running for president.

Kennedy’s parents, coal magnate George Skakel and Ann Brannack Skakel, were killed in a 1955 plane crash.

Kennedy met her future husband in 1945 at a ski resort in Quebec. At the time, he was dating her older sister, Patricia, according to an official biography at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

Five years later, “Bobby and Ethel” were married, and their first child, Kathleen, was born on July 4, 1951.

By 1956, the young couple was living with their growing family in the sprawling Virginia mansion they bought from JFK. Meanwhile, Robert F. Kennedy’s public profile was on the rise as chief counsel to the Senate Select Committee. 

Like the rest of her family, Kennedy took part in JFK’s presidential campaign and, after he was elected in 1960, her husband was appointed attorney general.

Following JFK’s assassination, Robert F. Kennedy ran successfully for the United States Senate from New York. Then in 1968, he launched his own presidential campaign with his wife’s blessing.

“Kennedy’s wife, always his most fervent believer, was the most consistent advocate of a race for the White House, ” RFK biographer Evan Thomas wrote in “Robert Kennedy: His Life.” “If she harbored private thoughts of becoming a widow, she did not discuss them.”

Six months after RFK was killed, Kennedy gave birth to their last child Rory. Around that time, Kennedy founded the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights and threw herself into working for some of the same causes her husband had championed.

For her efforts, Kennedy was awarded in 2014 the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.

“Ethel Kennedy was a dear friend with a passion for justice, an irrepressible spirit, and a great sense of humor,” Obama posted on X. “She touched the lives of countless people around the world with her generosity and grace, and was an emblem of enduring faith and hope, even in the face of unimaginable grief.”

Kennedy never remarried, although in the 1970s she was often seen on the arm of singer Andy Williams, a family friend who denied they were romantically involved.

In the years after RFK’s assassination, Kennedy’s life was marked by more misfortune.

In 1997, her son Michael died in a skiing accident. Earlier, in 1984, her son David was found dead of a drug overdose in a Palm Beach, Florida, hotel room.

In 2002, Kennedy’s nephew Michael Skakel was tried and convicted for the 1975 murder of his then-neighbor Martha Moxley. He was released in 2013 when a judge agreed that Skakel’s former attorney failed to defend him adequately.

And in 2019, Kennedy’s 22-year-old granddaughter, Saoirse Kennedy Hill, died of a drug overdose.

Joe Kennedy, in his statement, said his grandmother also lost her daughter-in-law Mary, granddaughter Maeve, and great-grandchildren Gideon and Josie.

Kennedy’s private pain over the death of her husband was thrust back into the public domain in 2021 when a California parole board recommended, for the first time, releasing RFK’s killer.

Then 93, Kennedy objected.

“Our family and our country suffered an unspeakable loss due to the inhumanity of one man,” Kennedy wrote. “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.”

Kennedy was backed by six of her surviving children — Joseph P. Kennedy II, Courtney Kennedy, Kerry Kennedy, Christopher G. Kennedy, Maxwell T. Kennedy and Rory Kennedy.

But two of Kennedy’s other sons, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Douglas Kennedy, said Sirhan had done his time and supported his parole bid.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom agreed with Ethel Kennedy, and in 2022 he blocked Sirhan’s release from prison. And when Sirhan went before the parole board again in March 2023, his bid to be released was denied.