Eunice Kennedy Shriver dies aged 88

PRESIDENT John F Kennedy’s sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who carried on the family’s public service tradition by founding the Special Olympics and championing the rights of mentally disabled people, died early yesterday surrounded by relatives at a Hyannis hospital. She was 88.

Shriver had suffered a eries of strokes in recent years and died at Cape Cod Hospital, her family said in a statement. Her husband, her five children and all 19 of her grandchildren were by her side, the statement said.

“She was the light of our lives, a mother, wife, grandmother, sister and aunt who taught us by example and with passion what it means to live a faith-driven life of love and service to others,” the family said.

The hospital is near the Kennedy family compound, where her sole surviving brother, Senator Edward Kennedy, has been battling a brain tumour.

Senator Kennedy said his earliest memory of his sister was as a young girl “with great humour, sharp wit, and a boundless passion to make a difference”.

“She understood deeply the lesson our mother and father taught us – much is expected of those to whom much has been given,” he said in a statement.

“Throughout her extraordinary life, she touched the lives of millions, and for Eunice that was never enough.”

President Barack Obama said Shriver will be remembered as “a champion for people with intellectual disabilities, and as an extraordinary woman who, as much as anyone, taught our nation – and our world – that no physical or mental barrier can restrain the power of the human spirit”.

As celebrity, social worker and activist, Shriver was credited with transforming America’s view of the mentally disabled from institutionalised patients to friends, neighbours and athletes. Her efforts were inspired in part by the struggles of her mentally disabled sister, Rosemary.

Her family members said in the statement: “We have always been honoured to share our mother with people of goodwill the world over who believe, as she did, that there is no limit to the human spirit.”

Shriver was also the sister of Senator Robert F Kennedy, the wife of 1972 vice presidential candidate and former Peace Corps director R Sargent Shriver, and the mother of former NBC newswoman Maria Shriver, who is married to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

With Eunice Shriver’s death, Jean Kennedy Smith becomes the last surviving Kennedy daughter.

Schwarzenegger said his mother-in-law “changed my life by raising such a fantastic daughter, and by putting me on the path to service, starting with drafting me as a coach for the Special Olympics”.

When her brother was in the White House, she pressed for efforts to help troubled young people and the mentally disabled. And in 1968, she started what would become the world’s largest athletic competition for mentally disabled children and adults. Now, more than one million athletes in m 160 countries participate in Special Olympics meets each year.

When well into her 70s, Shriver remained a daily presence at the Special Olympics headquarters in Washington.

Shriver was born in Brookline, the fifth of nine children to Joseph Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. She earned a sociology degree from Stanford University in 1943 after graduating from a British boarding school while her father served as ambassador to England.

In 1953, she married Shriver. He became JFK’s first director of the Peace Corps, he was George McGovern’s vice-presidential running mate in 1972, and ran for president himself briefly in 1976.