Ethel Kennedy, the widow of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who was shot in 1968, died Thursday at the age of 96 in a hospital after suffering a stroke last week, according to his grandson Joseph Kennedy III in a social media post.
“It is with loving hearts that we announce the passing of our wonderful grandmother, Ethel Kennedy. She passed away this morning following a stroke she suffered last week.” Kennedy said in a post on X.
Considered the matriarch of one of the most prominent families in the United States, Kennedy had 11 childrenincluding the former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.that He suspended his campaign last August to join former president (2017-2021) and Republican candidate, Donald Trump.
Kennedy is known for her defense of human rights at the center she founded a few months after her husband’s death.
Ethel stood by her husband throughout his career and also when he was in a hotel kitchen in 1968 after being fatally shot.
Ethel Skakel met Robert, or “Bobby”, through her Manhattanville College classmate, Kennedy’s sister Jean, in 1945 during a ski trip. Kennedy was dating Ethel’s sister at the time, but later began a relationship with her.
They were married in 1950. Ethel proved to be a good addition to the Kennedy clan. Like them, his family was rich, Catholic and noisy, although Republican.
In 1956, Ethel and Robert were expecting their fifth child and needed a bigger house. Robert’s brother, the future President Johh F. Kennedy sold them Hickory Hill, a 13-room mansion outside Washington, in McLean, Virginia.
family tragedies
Ethel and Robert were devastated when John was murdered in Dallas in 1963. Robert resigned as Attorney General nine months later to successfully run for a seat in the United States Senate, representing New York. In 1968, he decided to run for the Democratic presidential nomination..
Shortly after midnight on June 5 of that year, Kennedy’s motorcade left the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, moments after Kennedy won the crucial Democratic primary. When they left the kitchen, Sirhan Sirhan, a 24-year-old Jordanian-Palestinian, shot Kennedy. . He claimed that Kennedy’s support for Israel was his motivation and that he remains in prison to this day.
Ethel, pregnant with the couple’s eleventh child, had become separated from her husband in the crowd, but managed to reach him as he lay on the kitchen floor. Kneeling, she speaks to him in a low voice and tries to scare away the photographers..
She did not leave his side until his death in the early hours of June 6.
Ethel Kennedy also suffered other family dramas. Her parents died in a plane crash in 1955 and she lost a brother in a plane crash in 1966.
His son David died of a drug overdose in 1984.while his son Michael died in a skiing accident in 1997.
RFK Jr. had drug problems that led to an arrest on heroin charges and in 2019, his granddaughter Saoirse died after an apparent overdose.
In 2002, andI Ethel’s nephew, Michael Skakel, was convicted of the murder of 15-year-old Martha Moxley 27 years earlier, in a case featured in a series of television documentaries.
Ethel championed many of the causes championed by her late husband, including theuh against poverty, social justice and environmental protection. Among his most notable projects are the cleanup of the Anacostia River in Washington and the restoration of the Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood in New York.
In 2014, President Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedomd. “She is a symbol of enduring faith and hope, even in the face of unimaginable loss and pain,” Obama said at the ceremony. “As her family will tell you… Ethel is not to be disturbed.”
During an interview with the BNC In 2014, she was asked what inspired her, Ethel He said, “First, Bobby and his life, and of course, Jack.”
