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 My Capsule
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| Name: | Eunice Kennedy Shriver |  | | Gender: | F | | E-mail: | Private | | Address 1: | Private | | Address 2: | Private | | City: | Private | | State/Province: | MA | | Zip/Postal Code: | Private | | Country: | USA |
| Birth Date: | 1921-07-10 | | Birth City: | Brookline | | Birth State/Province: | MA | | Birth Country: | USA |
Born Eunice Mary Kennedy in Brookline, Massachusetts, she was the fifth of nine children of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. and Rose Kennedy (née Fitzgerald).
She was educated at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, Roehampton, London, England; and Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York. After graduating from Stanford University with a Bachelor of Science degree in sociology in 1943, she worked for the Special War Problems Division of the State Department. She eventually moved to the Justice Department as executive secretary for a project dealing with juvenile delinquency. She served as a social worker at the Federal Industrial Institution for Women for one year before moving to Chicago in 1951 to work with House of the Good Shepherd women's shelter and Chicago Juvenile Court.
On May 23, 1953, she married Sargent Shriver in a Roman Catholic ceremony at Saint Patrick's Cathedral in New York City, New York. Her husband served as the U.S. Ambassador to France from 1968 to 1970 and was the 1972 Democratic U.S. Vice Presidential candidate (with George McGovern as the candidate for U.S. President). They had five children: Robert Sargent Shriver III (born April 28, 1954), Maria Owings Shriver (November 6, 1955), Timothy Perry Shriver (August 29, 1959), Mark Kennedy Shriver (February 17, 1964), and Anthony Paul Kennedy Shriver (July 20, 1965). With her husband she had nineteen grandchildren, the second-most of any of the children of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. and Rose Kennedy. (Her brother U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy had eleven children who have produced thirty-two grandchildren.)
As executive vice president of the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation in the 1950s, she shifted the organization's focus from Catholic charities to research on the causes of mental retardation and humane ways to treat it. This interest eventually culminated in, among other things, the Special Olympics movement.
Upon the death of her sister, Rosemary Kennedy, on January 7, 2005, Shriver became the eldest of the four then-surviving children of Joseph and Rose Kennedy. Her sister, Patricia Kennedy Lawford, later died on September 17, 2006, leaving just her brother, U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy, and her sister, former U.S. Ambassador to Ireland Jean Kennedy Smith, as her surviving siblings.
Political career
Shriver actively campaigned for her elder brother, John, during his successful 1960 U.S. presidential election.
In 1968, she helped Burke nationalize the Special Olympics movement and is the only woman to have her portrait appear, during her lifetime, on a U.S. coin – the 1995 commemorative Special Olympics silver dollar.
Her daughter, Maria, is married to actor and politician Schwarzenegger who is currently Governor of California (elected 2003). Shriver, a life-long Democrat, supported her Republican son-in-law's successful bid.
Shriver was a vocal supporter of the pro-life movement. In 1990, Shriver wrote a letter to the The New York Times denouncing the misuse of a quotation by President Kennedy used out of context by a pro-choice group. During the 1992 Democratic presidential campaign of Bill Clinton, Shriver was one of several prominent Democrats – including Governor Robert P. Casey of Pennsylvania, and Bishop Austin Vaughan of New York – who signed a letter to The New York Times protesting the Democratic Party's pro-choice plank in its platform. Shriver was a supporter of several pro-life organizations: Feminists for Life of America, the Susan B. Anthony List, and Democrats for Life of America.
On January 28, 2008, Shriver was present at American University in Washington, D.C., when her brother, U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy, announced his endorsement of Barack Obama's U.S. presidential campaign.
Charity work and awards
In 2008, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development was renamed in honor of Eunice Kennedy Shriver.A longtime advocate for children's health and disability issues, Shriver was a key founder of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), a part of the National Institutes of Health, in 1962, and has also helped to establish numerous other health-care facilities and support networks throughout the country.
In 1982, Shriver founded the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Center for Community of Caring at The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah. The Community of Caring is a grades "K-12, whole school, comprehensive character education program with a focus on disabilities...[that] has been adopted by almost 1,200 schools nationwide and in Canada".
She was awarded the nation's highest civilian award, the (U.S.) Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 1984 by U.S. President Ronald Reagan, because of her work on behalf of those with mental retardation.
For her work in founding the Special Olympics, Shriver received the Civitan International World Citizenship Award. Her advocacy on this issue has also earned her other awards and recognitions, including honorary degrees from numerous universities.
Shriver received the 2002 Theodore Roosevelt Award[15], an annual award given by the National Collegiate Athletic Association to a graduate from an NCAA member institution who earned a varsity letter in college for participation in intercollegiate athletics, and who ultimately became a distinguished citizen of national reputation based on outstanding life accomplishment.
Rare Halo Display: Portrait of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, David Lenz, 2009 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; commissioned as part of the First Prize, Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2006.In 2006 she received a papal knighthood from Pope Benedict XVI being named a Dame of the Order of St. Gregory the Great. Her mother had been created a papal countess in 1950 by Pope Pius XII.
In 2008, the U.S. Congress changed the NICHD’s name to the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
On May 9, 2009, the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery (NPG) in Washington, D.C., unveiled an historic portrait of her, the first portrait the NPG has ever commissioned of an individual who had not served as a U.S. President or First Lady. The portrait depicts her with four Special Olympics athletes (including Loretta Claiborne) and one Best Buddies participant. It was painted by David Lenz, the winner of the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition in 2006. As part of the Portrait Competition prize, the NPG commissioned a work from the winning artist to depict a living subject for the collection. Lenz, whose son, Sam, has Down syndrome and is an enthusiastic Special Olympics athlete, was inspired by Shriver’s dedication to working with people with intellectual disabilities.
Shriver became involved with Dorothy Hamill's special skating program in the Special Olympics after Hamill's Olympics Games ice-skating win.
Later years and death
Shriver, who was believed to have suffered from Addison's disease,[16] suffered a stroke and a broken hip in 2005, and on November 18, 2007, she was admitted to Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, where she spent several weeks.
On August 7, 2009, she was admitted to Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis, with an undisclosed ailment. On August 10 her relatives were called to the hospital.
In the early morning of August 11, 2009, Shriver died at the hospital; she was 88 years old. The immediate cause of her death has not yet been disclosed.
Shriver's family issued a statement upon her death, reading in part,
"Inspired by her love of God, her devotion to her family, and her relentless belief in the dignity and worth of every human life, she worked without ceasing - searching, pushing, demanding, hoping for change. She was a living prayer, a living advocate, a living center of power. She set out to change the world and to change us, and she did that and more. She founded the movement that became Special Olympics, the largest movement for acceptance and inclusion for people with intellectual disabilities in the history of the world. Her work transformed the lives of hundreds of millions of people across the globe, and they in turn are her living legacy. |
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