Ethel Kennedy, who was beside her husband, former President Robert F. Kennedy, when he was assassinated in 1968, has died at age 96 due to complications related to a stroke, her daughter Kerry Kennedy said in a Thursday post on X.
“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 said. “Please keep our mother in your hearts and prayers.”
Ethel Kennedy was the matriarch of one of the country’s most prominent families and leaned on her devout Catholic faith as tragic family deaths continuously struck the Kennedys. She was a human rights activist, founding the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights shortly after her husband’s assassination.
She served on the board of an organization that sought to improve the quality of life for those in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood and was an honorary co-chairwoman of the National Coalition to Ban Handguns. In 2014, former President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Throughout immense personal tragedy, such as her parents passing in 1955, her brother-in-law and her husband’s assassinations, the death of two of her children, the death of her nephew and his wife, the suicide of her daughter-in-law, the accidental overdose of her granddaughter, and the tragic canoeing accident that killed her granddaughter and great-grandson, Ethel Kennedy held fast to her faith.
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In an interview with People in 2012, she said she wasn’t one for introspection.
“I pretty well lived in the moment. And I was blessed with faith,” she said.
