Ethel Kennedy, who lost her husband, Robert F. Kennedy, and brother-in-law, President John F. Kennedy, to assassins’ bullets, d!ed Thursday, October 10 at age 96.
Kennedy d!ed 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 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. Ethel’s parents, coal magnate George Skakel and Ann Brannack Skakel, were killed in a 1955 plane crash.
Ethel 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.
Six months after RFK was killed, Kennedy gave birth to their last child Rory. They had 11 children. 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.
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. Then in 1984, her son David was found dead of a drug overdose in a Palm Beach, Florida, hotel room.
She is survived by 9 children, 34 grandchildren, 24 great-grandchildren.
