Ethel Kennedy, the matriarch of the Kennedy family and widow of Robert F. Kennedy, has died at the age of 96 after suffering a stroke, her family said.
“It is with our hearts full of love that we announce the passing of our amazing grandmother,” Joe Kennedy III said on X. “She died this morning from complications related to a stroke suffered last week.”
A civil rights activist, Ethel Kennedy was the last survivor of the fairytale “Camelot” political legacy once led by her brother-in-law, President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jackie Kennedy.
Despite Ethel holding the family together for decades, the Kennedy clan publicly fractured this year after RFK Jr. — a controversial environmentalist — strayed from the family’s liberal tradition and ran an aborted bid for the White House.
Ethel Kennedy, seen here with her late husband, Robert F. Kennedy, has died. AP
Kennedy suffered a fatal stroke at the age of 96. Getty Images
Ethel and Robert Kennedy with seven of their children in 1962. ASSOCIATED PRESSHe then enthusiastically endorsed Republican former President Donald Trump.
Ethel’s life — as that of the Kennedy family — was marked by repeated tragedy.
Her late husband was assassinated while campaigning for the presidency in 1968, leaving her to raise 11 children including Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
In addition to her husband’s death, her parents were killed in a plane crash in 1955 and her brother died in a crash in 1966. Her son David died of a drug overdose and Michael Kennedy, another son, was killed in a skiing accident.
Her nephew, John F. Kennedy, Jr., the son of the slain president, was killed in a plane crash, while a second nephew, Michael Skakel, was convicted of murder in 2002 — a conviction vacated in 2018.
Meanwhile, another brother-in-law, Ted Kennedy, had his presidential aspirations quashed after a fatal car crash in Chappaquiddick on Martha’s Vineyard in 1969 that killed Mary Jo Kapechne.
The Kennedys on their wedding day in 1960. Bettmann Archive
Ethel and Robert Kennedy outside the Senate Chamber on Oct. 13, 1965. AP
Robert and Ethel Kennedy with their children Bobby, Joseph and Kathleen at Kennedy International Airport in New York on July 1, 1964. AP
Ethel Kennedy meeting Martin Luther King III after visiting Coretta Scott King at her Atlanta home on April 8, 1968. ASSOCIATED PRESSShe also buried one granddaughter who died of a drug overdose on the family compound in 2019, and another who died with her son in a freak canoe accident in 2020.
On coping with the deluge of tragedy, she told People in 2012: “I pretty well lived in the moment. And I was blessed with faith.”
Still, Ethel Kennedy carved out her own legacy, founding the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights after her husband’s assassination.
Edward and Ethel Kennedy departing the airport in Los Angeles with the body of Robert Kennedy on June 6, 1968. AP Photo/Harold Filan
Ethel and other members of the Kennedy at Robert Kennedy’s funeral on June 9, 1968. Getty Images
Sen. Edward Kennedy with Ethel Kennedy and five of her children at the grave of President John F. Kennedy in Arlington National Cemetery on Nov. 20, 1970. APShe advocated for human rights and gun control measures through the organization.
Born Ethel Skakel in Chicago on April 11, 1928, the future Kennedy matriarch was one of seven children born to coal magnate George Skakel and Ann Brannack Skake.
She grew up in luxury in a Greenwich, Connecticut, mansion, later graduating from the prestigious Convent of the Sacred Heart in the Bronx.
She met Robert Kennedy through his sister while rooming at Manhattanville College.
Ethel Kennedy had 11 children including RFK Jr. Stephen Lovekin
Ethel Kennedy attending a ceremony at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston on Sept. 20, 2016. Boston Globe via Getty Images
Kennedy playing golf during the RFK Human Rights Golf tournament at Hyannisport Golf Club on Oct. 16, 2015. Steve Heaslip / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
Ethel Kennedy receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama on Nov. 24, 2014. AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, FileShe was at his side when he was gunned down at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
Through the years she rarely spoke about her husband’s assassination.
“Of all the Kennedy women, she was the one I would end up admiring the most,” the late singer and activist Harry Belafonte once said of Ethel Kennedy.
“She wasn’t playacting,” he said. “She looked at you and immediately got what you were about.”
Funeral services have not been announced.
With Post wires
