Ethel Kennedy, Philanthropist and Widow to Robert F. Kennedy, Dead at 96

Ethel Kennedy, the widow of Robert F. Kennedy, died Thursday after complications from a stroke, the Kennedy family announced on X. She was 96.

“It is with our hearts full of love that we announce the passing of our mother, Ethel Kennedy,” read the family statement, shared by Ethel’s daughter Kerry Kennedy, her grandson Rep. Joe Kennedy III, and others. “She died this morning from complications related to a stroke suffered last week.”

After the tragic assassinations of her husband and her brother-in-law, President John F. Kennedy, Kennedy spent her life as a philanthropist, founding the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Foundation months after her husband’s death. She was awarded in 2014 the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama. 

Kennedy and her husband Bobby had 11 children — Kennedy was pregnant with their eleventh child, Rory, when her husband was assassinated in 1968. Kennedy was with her husband when he was shot by Sirhan Sirhan as he walked through the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel while in California campaigning for the presidency. 

Kennedy was born in Chicago, Illinois, and was raised in Greenwich, Connecticut, by her parents, coal magnate George Skakel and his wife Ann Brannack. Her parents died tragically in an airplane crash in 1955. 

Kennedy spent much of the end of her life at her home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, one of the three homes that make up the Kennedy Compound. She and her husband moved into the home in 1955, next to the house Bobby grew up in, and behind the house that his brother John and his wife Jaqueline would later buy. Kennedy hosted the Robert F. Kennedy Golf Tournament on the Cape each year, and was a staple at the town July 4th parade. 

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Kennedy is the mother of former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Though many of RFK Jr.’s siblings spoke out about his run for the presidency, calling it “perilous,” as well as his subsequent support for Republican nominee Donald Trump, calling it a “betrayal,” Kennedy never spoke publicly about her son’s failed run for office. 

The family’s statement about Kennedy’s death continues, “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. She was a devout Catholic and a daily communicant, and we are comforted in knowing she is reunited with the love of her life, our father, Robert F. Kennedy; her children David and Michael; her daughter-in-law Mary; her grandchildren Maeve and Saoirse; and her great-grandchildren Gideon and Josie.”