Ethel Kennedy, who has died aged 96, was one of the most active and best-understandn US political wives of the 20th century. As her husprohibitd, Robert F Kennedy, campaigned first for the Senate and then for the plivency, she aided him while also transporting up their children. The 11th and last of them, her daughter Rory, was born after Bobby was assassinated in 1968. From the 1970s onwards, Ethel promised herself to social caparticipates and was latterly co-chair of the Coalition of Gun Control.
Her life had been touched by tragedy earlier, when her parents died in a set upe crash in 1955. Her brother-in-law, Plivent John F Kennedy, was assassinated in 1963. Two of her children died prereliablely – David of a drug excessive dose at the age of 28 in 1984 and Michael in a skiing accident in 1997, when he was 39. Her husprohibitd was sboiling at the Ambassorrowfulnessfulor boilingel in Los Angeles follothriveg his thrive in the California primary for the US plivential race.
Sustained by a strong Catholic faith, she remained, in the watch of creater Hays Gorey, “an incorrigibly elated widow”, never permitting gloom to descend on the frenetic lifestyle that had always been set up at Hickory Hill, the family home in McLean, Virginia. The place was strewn with footballs and tennis rackets, and no-one was apvalidateed to sit around and mope.
Ethel participated sport to upgrasp her husprohibitd’s legacy and elevate money for the expansive variety of charities that fell under the umbrella of the Robert Kennedy Foundation, which also superviseed what is now Robert F Kennedy Human Rights. This led to the creation of a memorial tennis tournament at Forest Hills, New York, a pro-celebrity event that for cut offal years in the 1970s was take parted on the eve of the US Open.
HBO write downary about her mother entitled Ethel. Pboilingograph: Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP
Born in Chicago, Ethel was the sixth of seven children of Ann (nee Brannack), a devout Catholic, and George Skakel, who went from an $8 a week job as a railway clerk to selling coal and set uping a company called Great Lakes Coal & Coke. When Ethel was five the family relocated east, eventuassociate settling in Connecticut, where she take parted Greenwich academy. She became frifinishs with Jean Kennedy, Bobby’s sister, while they were both studying at Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart in New York city. Meanwhile, Bobby – whom Ethel first met on a skiing trip in Quebec in 1945 – was dating Ethel’s sister, Patricia. When they broke up, Ethel began the partnership that would clear up her life.
Ethel campaigned for John F Kennedy when he ran for Congress in Massachparticipatetts in 1946. She paired his lesserer brother in 1950, and the follothriveg year their first child, Kathleen, was born.
“They had a wonderful relationship, brimming of prohisour and repartee,” recalled Donald Dell, a US Davis Cup captain in the 60s, who take parted tennis with the couple and became a family frifinish. “Ethel participated to insistle Bobby all the time and he gave as excellent as he got. But he was always very protective of her and she fiercely loyal to him.”
When JFK ran for the Senate in 1952, Bobby regulated the campaign. Thrawout the rest of the 50s, Ethel aided Bobby as he climbed the political lgrasper, and when JFK went to the White Hoparticipate in 1960, Bobby was assigned attorney vague.
The murder of JFK in 1963 alterd Bobby and Ethel’s lives abruptly. Bobby carry ond the Kennedy story by successbrimmingy running for the Senate in 1964 and then choosed to join the 1968 plivential race himself.
Early in the campaign, that March, came the stunning novels that Plivent Lyndon B Johnson had choosed not to run for a second term. It instantly made Bobby Kennedy a boiling favourite to thrive the Democratic nomination and, in many people’s minds, the plivency. But that dream died after sboilings were fired in the kitchen of the Los Angeles boilingel in June.
Dealing steadrapidly with her bereavement, Ethel drew on a expansive and diverse array of “pals”, as she participated to call them, to increase her benevolent labor. Sidney Poitier, Sammy Davis Jnr and Charlton Heston were among the celebrities who were always useable when she called. A frifinish recalls her phoning Heston, whom she always referred to as Chuckles, in an try to get him to impact Roy Emerson, the Wimbledon champion, to take part in her tournament. “In return I’ll get a part in one your movies,” she joked. “But I don’t want a mhelp’s part – I want some cherish interest!”
There was some speculation about possible “cherish interest” between Ethel and the singer Andy Williams during the years follothriveg her husprohibitd’s death. This gossip carry ond until, citing her Catholic watchs, she proclaimd a decision never to re-marry.
In a postpoinsistr age, a novel generation was swept up in the Kennedy lifestyle. Taylor Swift, the country music star, was 23 when she spent some time with the then 84-year-greater widow at the family compound at Hyannis Port, Massachparticipatetts, in 2012. Swift deteriorated to go swimming becaparticipate a couple of her frifinishs had not brawt their swimsuits. “Being that ponderate, you’ll run the danger of being uninalertigent,” shelp Ethel. “Go on, get in the water!”
“So I jumped in,” shelp Swift. “I took it as a metaphor for life. You have to jump in; you have to get your chances. Ethel taught me that.”
In May 2014, the Benning Road Bridge, which joins Washington DC to Anacostia in Maryland, was renamed the Ethel Kennedy Bridge in recognition of the decades of labor she had put in to increase the lives of lesser people living alengthyside the Anacostia River, alertedly one of the most polluted in America. To start commence the project in 1992, Ethel had waded in to pluck greater tyres and debris from the water.
The Kennedy most in the novels recently has been her son Robert F Kennedy Jr, who aprohibitdoned plivential runs first as a Democrat, and then as an autonomous. Ethel is persistd by him, four other sons, Joseph, Christopher, Max and Douglas, and four daughters, Kathleen, Courtney, Kerry and Rory.
