| Human rights activist, widow of US Senator Robert F. Kennedy Date of Birth: 11.04.1928 Country: USA |
Ethel Kennedy, née Skakel, was born in Chicago to George Skakel, a businessman, and Ann Brannack, his former secretary. Her parents died in a plane crash in 1955. She was the third of four daughters and the sixth of seven children. Her older siblings were Georgeann, James, George Jr., Rushton, and Patricia, and her younger sister was Ann. Her father was a Dutch Protestant, and her mother was an Irish Catholic. Her nephew is Ciarán Cuffe, an Irish politician who serves as a member of the European Parliament.
Ethel and her siblings were raised Catholic in Greenwich, Connecticut. Her father founded the Great Lakes Carbon Corporation, now a subsidiary of SGLCarbon. Ethel attended the Greenwich Academy for Girls and graduated from the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Manhattan in 1945.
In September 1945, Ethel enrolled at Manhattanville College, where she was a classmate of her future sister-in-law, Jean Kennedy. She first met Jean's brother, Robert F. Kennedy, on a ski trip to Mont-Tremblant Resort in Quebec in December 1945. Robert Kennedy initially dated Ethel's older sister, Patricia, but after that relationship ended, he began dating Ethel.
Ethel actively campaigned for Robert's older brother, John F. Kennedy, in his 1946 campaign for the United States Congress in Boston. She wrote her college thesis on his book, "Why England Slept." She graduated from Manhattanville in 1949.
Robert Kennedy and Ethel Skakel were engaged in February 1950 and married on June 17, 1950, at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Greenwich. They purchased Hickory Hill, an estate in McLean, Virginia, from Robert's brother, John, and his wife, Jackie.
Throughout the 1950s, Robert F. Kennedy worked in the federal government as a Senate investigator and as counsel. The Kennedys hosted numerous gatherings at their home and were known for their impressive and eclectic guest lists. In 1962, President Kennedy sent Ethel and Robert on a 28-day goodwill tour of 14 countries. Although the trip was labeled unofficial, host nations viewed the couple as surrogates for the President and First Lady.
On November 22, 1963, Ethel learned of President Kennedy's assassination from her husband. She answered a phone call, identified the caller as FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and handed the phone to Robert, who then informed her of the shooting. It was unprecedented for the FBI Director to call the Attorney General's home directly. Ethel was reportedly devastated by the assassination and concerned for her niece and nephew.
Ethel urged her husband to enter the Democratic primary for the 1968 presidential election. Biographer Evan Thomas called her "the steadiest supporter of the White House race" run by RFK.
Shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was fatally shot by Sirhan Sirhan and died early the next morning at the age of 42. President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a national day of mourning. On June 19, Ethel sent Johnson a handwritten note, thanking him and his wife, First Lady Lady Bird Johnson, for their assistance to her and the Kennedy family. Following her husband's assassination, Ethel Kennedy publicly stated that she would never remarry. She was briefly a frequent companion of singer and family friend Andy Williams at dinners, parties, and the theater.
Robert and Ethel Kennedy had 11 children (seven sons and four daughters) over the course of their nearly 18-year marriage: Kathleen, Joseph, Robert Jr., David, Courtney, Michael, Kerry, Christopher, Max, Douglas, and Rory, who was born after Senator Kennedy's assassination. Kathleen served as Lieutenant Governor of Maryland from 1995 to 2003, Joseph was a U.S. Representative for Massachusetts's 8th congressional district from 1987 to 1999, and Robert Jr. sought the presidency in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Two of the Kennedy sons, David and Michael, died tragically; David from a drug overdose in 1984 and Michael in a skiing accident in 1997.
Kennedy sold Hickory Hill for $8.25 million in December 2009. During the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries, she endorsed Barack Obama. She actively supported and fundraised at Hickory Hill for numerous political figures, including Virginia gubernatorial candidate Brian Moran. Kennedy hosted a $6 million fundraising dinner for Obama at Hickory Hill in June 2008. The $28,500-a-plate dinner was headlined by former Democratic presidential candidate and DNC Chairman Howard Dean.
In 2012, Kennedy starred in a documentary film about her life, directed by her youngest child, daughter Rory. The documentary, titled "Ethel," chronicles Kennedy's early political involvement, her life with Robert F. Kennedy, and the years following his death when she raised eleven young children as a single mother. It features interviews with Ethel and her children interspersed with family videos and archival photographs.
In 1981, President Ronald Reagan awarded Kennedy the Robert F. Kennedy Medal at the White House Rose Garden. In 2014, the Anacostia River Bridge in Washington, D.C., was renamed the Ethel Kennedy Bridge in her honor in recognition of her environmental and social activism in the District of Columbia. Also in 2014, Kennedy was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama for her commitment to "advancing the cause of social justice, human rights, environmental protections, and reducing poverty by creating countless ripples of hope for change throughout the world."