Ethel Kennedy, social activist and widow of Robert F. Kennedy, dies at 96

Ethel Kennedy, the widow of Robert F. Kennedy and a mainstay of one of America's most famous and star-crossed political families, has died. She was 96.

She died this morning from complications related to a stroke she suffered last week, according to her daughter, Kerry Kennedy.

Athletic, fashionable and devoutly Catholic, the former Ethel Skakel married into a family that produced congressmen, ambassadors and other top government officials. Her husband served as attorney general, New York senator and presidential hopeful, until his assassination in 1968.

She took her children to see their father lead Senate hearings into labor-union racketeering, stayed with him in Washington as the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis lurched toward nuclear war, and mourned with him after the assassination of his brother, President John F. Kennedy, in 1963. She campaigned regularly with him during his ultimately tragic run for the presidency in 1968.

Raising their seven sons and four daughters at their Hickory Hill estate in McLean, Virginia, she maintained a disciplined family routine while earning a reputation as a socialite for lively parties attended by politicians, actors and artists.

Robert Kennedy, shy and prone to moodiness and pessimism, found the "reassurance and security" he needed in his wife, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. wrote in Robert Kennedy and His Times (1978).

"She awakened his sympathy and his humor and brought him out emotionally," Schlesinger wrote. "He never had to prove himself to her. Ethel gave him unquestioning confidence, unquenchable admiration, unstinted love."

Ethel was with her husband on June 5, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles where, just past midnight, he gave a victory speech after winning California's Democratic primary.

Leaving the ballroom packed with exultant supporters, Robert Kennedy was struck by three bullets, fired by Sirhan Sirhan. In photographs seared in history, Ethel, in a sleeveless dress, is seen kneeling down to whisper to her dying husband and imploring onlookers to back up to give him some air.

She was at his bedside at the Hospital of the Good Samaritan when he died almost 26 hours later, on June 6, 1968, at age 42. Ethel at the time was pregnant with their 11th child, daughter Rory.

Never Remarried

A widow at 40, Ethel stayed on at Hickory Hill, quizzed her children on current affairs and took them on vacations at their summer home in the Kennedy compound at Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. She never remarried and was helped by Ena Bernard, the Costa Rica-born nanny who served the family for almost 45 years.

She couldn't escape the maelstrom of tragedy that beset the family after the death of her husband, whom she referred to as "daddy."

Their third son, David, died of a drug overdose at age 28 in 1984. Their fourth son, Michael, was killed in a skiing accident in 1997 at age 39. Ethel lost her parents and a brother in separate plane crashes. In 2020, her granddaughter Maeve McKean, a public health and human rights lawyer, died along with her son, Gideon, in a canoe accident in the Chesapeake Bay.

"My mother has had more tragedy in her lifetime than anyone should," Kerry Kennedy, a human rights lawyer and activist, wrote in 2023. "But her spirit has proven indomitable. For the last five and a half decades, I have watched her become a political force in her own right."

Ethel Kennedy attributed her coping ability to her children and her faith.

"Nobody gets a free ride," she said in the 2012 documentary Ethel, which was directed and produced by daughter Rory. "So have your wits about you, dig in, and do what you can because it might not last."

Family Schism

Late in life, Ethel Kennedy saw the political views and ambitions of another of her sons, Robert Kennedy Jr., open a family schism.

A longtime environmental lawyer, Robert Kennedy peddled conspiracy theories about topics including supposed medical harms caused by vaccines. He declared his candidacy for president in 2024 "- first as a Democrat, then as an independent "- raising concerns that he would undermine the reelection bid of the Democratic incumbent, Joe Biden.

That was a step too far for four of his siblings. Denouncing his candidacy in an October 2023 joint statement, they said, "Bobby might share the same name as our father, but he does not share the same values, vision or judgment."

Nine months later, when Robert suspended his own campaign and endorsed Republican Donald Trump, five of his siblings released a statement calling the move "a betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold most dear. It is a sad ending to a sad story."

Ethel Skakel was born on April 11, 1928, in Chicago, the daughter of a wealthy Republican businessman.

Her mother, the former Ann Brannack, was a devout Catholic. Her father, George Skakel, a Protestant, was a railroad clerk who earned $8 a week before co-founding Great Lakes Coal & Coke Co., which later became Great Lakes Carbon Corp., according to a profile on the website of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

In 1934, the family settled in Greenwich, Connecticut, where Ethel and her six siblings lived in a 31-room manor house. An avid horse rider and sailor, she attended the Greenwich Academy as well as the Convent of the Sacred Heart in the Bronx before entering Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart. There she was roommates with Jean Kennedy, Robert's sister.

Jean's Brother

In 1945, Ethel Skakel joined Jean Kennedy on a skiing trip and was introduced to Robert, who was dating Ethel's elder sister, Pat, at the time. After their relationship ended, Ethel began dating him.

Forsaking her Republican roots, she campaigned for Robert's brother, John F. Kennedy, in his run for Congress in 1946, a role she would repeat more than a decade later when he won the presidency.

She graduated in 1949 with a degree in English and married Robert Kennedy the following year.

They moved to Charlottesville, Virginia, while Robert Kennedy completed his final year of law school at the University of Virginia, and then settled in Washington, where he worked for the Justice Department. With a growing family, they purchased the 13-bedroom, six-acre property Hickory Hill from John and Jackie Kennedy in 1956.

In their new home, Ethel Kennedy populated the estate with a range of animals, including horses, goats, 16 dogs and a sea lion in the swimming pool. She was even sued as a horse thief after taking a maltreated animal from a nearby property. A jury found in her favor.

In later years, Ethel Kennedy traveled the world for human-rights causes and helped Barack Obama in his run for the White House by hosting a fundraising dinner at Hickory Hill in 2008. She continued her work as the founder of the Washington-based Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights and was active in the Coalition of Gun Control, Special Olympics and the Earth Conservation Corps.

Other well-known children of Ethel and Robert include Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a former lieutenant governor of Maryland, and Joseph Kennedy II, a former US representative.