| Birth Name: | Ethel Skakel |
| Birth Date: | 11 April 1928 |
| Birth Place: | Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Education: | Manhattanville College (BA) |
| Party: | Democratic |
| Children: | 11 |
| Relatives: | Kennedy family (through marriage) |
Ethel Kennedy ( Skakel ; born April 11, 1928) is an American human rights advocate. She is the widow of U.S. senator Robert F. Kennedy, a sister-in-law of President John F. Kennedy, and the sixth child of George and Ann Skakel ( Brannack). Shortly after her husband's assassination in 1968, Kennedy founded the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, a non-profit charity working to reach his goal of a just and peaceful world. In 2014, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama. She is the oldest living member of the Kennedy family.
Ethel Skakel was born in Chicago, Illinois to businessman George Skakel and his former secretary Ann Brannack.[1] George was the founder of Great Lakes Carbon Corporation, now a division of SGLCarbon.[2] Her parents were killed in a 1955 plane crash.[3] She is the third of four Skakel daughters and the sixth-born of seven children.[4] George was a Protestant of Dutch descent[5] [6] [7] while Ann was a Catholic of Irish ancestry. Her nephew is Ciarán Cuffe, an Irish politician who served as a Member of the European Parliament.
Ethel and her siblings were raised in Greenwich, Connecticut. Ethel attended the all-girls Greenwich Academy, and graduated from the Convent of the Sacred Heart in the Bronx in 1945. In September 1945, Ethel began her college education at Manhattanville College, where she was a classmate of her future sister-in-law Jean Kennedy.[8] She received a bachelor's degree from Manhattanville in 1949.[9]
Ethel first met Jean's brother, Robert F. Kennedy, during a ski trip to Mont Tremblant Resort in Quebec in December 1945. During this trip, Robert began dating Ethel's older sister Patricia, but after that relationship ended, he began to date Ethel. She campaigned for Robert's older brother John F. Kennedy in his 1946 campaign for the United States Congress in Boston, and she wrote her college thesis on his book Why England Slept.
Robert Kennedy and Ethel Skakel became engaged in February 1950 and were married on June 17, 1950, at the Catholic St. Mary Church in Greenwich.[10] The Boston Globe noted that the marriage "unites two large fortunes."[11]
After Robert graduated with his law degree, the couple settled in the Washington, D.C. area and Robert went to work for the Justice Department. In 1956, the Kennedys purchased Hickory Hill, an estate outside Washington in McLean, Virginia, from Robert's brother John and his wife Jacqueline.[12] Robert and Ethel held many gatherings at their home and were known for their impressive and eclectic guest lists.[13] Ethel sold Hickory Hill for $8.25 million in December 2009.[14] [15] The couple also owned a home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts on Cape Cod.[16]
In 1960, Ethel's brother-in-law John F. Kennedy won the presidential election, at which time he appointed Robert to the post of attorney general.[17] In 1962, President Kennedy assigned Ethel and Robert to tour fourteen countries within a 28-day goodwill trip. Though the trip was said to be informal, the host countries viewed her and Robert as stand-ins for the President and First Lady.[18]
On November 22, 1963, Ethel learned of her brother-in-law's assassination from her husband. She had answered the phone, identified the caller as FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and handed the phone to Robert, who then informed her of the shooting. The FBI Director had never called the Attorney General's home before. Ethel was reportedly devastated by the assassination and worried for her niece and nephew.[19]
In 1964, Ethel supported her husband while he campaigned for and won a seat in the United States Senate representing New York.[17] During the campaign, Robert was accused of "carpetbagging" and Ethel made light of the criticism by suggesting this slogan: "There is only so much you can do for Massachusetts."[20] She urged her husband to enter the Democratic primary for the 1968 presidential election. Biographer Evan Thomas portrayed her as Robert's "most consistent advocate of a race for the White House."[21]
See main article: Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was mortally wounded by Sirhan Sirhan at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles and died the following day at the age of 42. President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a national day of mourning. Ethel sent Johnson a handwritten note on June 19, thanking him and his wife, First Lady Lady Bird Johnson, for the help they had given her and the Kennedy family.[22] Following her husband's assassination, Ethel publicly stated that she would never marry again.[23] For a time, she was escorted to dinners, parties, and the theater by singer and family friend Andy Williams.[24]
Robert and Ethel Kennedy had 11 children over nearly 18 years of marriage: Kathleen, Joseph, Robert Jr., David, Mary Courtney, Michael, Kerry, Christopher, Max, Douglas, and Rory,[23] who was born after Senator Kennedy was assassinated.[25] Kathleen served as lieutenant governor of Maryland from 1995 to 2003,[26] Joseph was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from the 8th congressional district of Massachusetts from 1987 to 1999,[27] and Robert Jr. is running for president in the 2024 United States presidential election.[28] [29] [30] [31] Her grandson, Joseph Kennedy III, also served in the U.S. House of Representatives, representing Massachusetts's 4th congressional district from 2013 to 2021. Two of the Kennedys' sons, David and Michael, have died; David died from a drug overdose in 1984, and Michael was killed in a skiing accident in 1997.[17]
See main article: Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights.
Ethel Kennedy founded the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights (now known as Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights)[32] in 1968.[33]
In February 2001, Kennedy visited Rodolfo Montiel and another peasant activist at their jail in Iguala, presenting Rodolfo with the Chico Mendes Award on behalf of the American environmental group, the Sierra Club.[34] In March 2016, Kennedy was among hundreds who marched near the home of Wendy's chairman Nelson Peltz in Palm Beach, Florida, as part of an effort by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a farm workers' group, to convince the company to pay an additional one cent per pound of tomatoes to increase the wages of field workers.[35]
As of September 2018, Kennedy's daughter Kerry was president of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights.[36]
In 1992, Kennedy and her son Michael made a cameo appearance on the NBC sitcom Cheers in Boston.[37] [38]
During the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries, Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama.[39] She publicly supported and held fundraisers at Hickory Hill for numerous politicians that included Virginia gubernatorial candidate Brian Moran.[40] Kennedy hosted a $6-million fundraising dinner for Obama at Hickory Hill in June 2008. The $28,500-a-plate dinner was headlined by former Democratic presidential candidate and DNC chairman Howard Dean.[41]
In 2012, Kennedy appeared in a documentary about her life, directed by her youngest child, daughter Rory. The documentary, entitled Ethel, covers Kennedy's early political involvement, her life with Robert F. Kennedy, and the years following his death when she raised eleven children on her own. It features interviews with Ethel and her children interspersed with family videos and archival photos.[42]
As of 2019, Kennedy resides at the Kennedy Compound in Massachusetts.[43] She is a practicing Catholic who often attends mass.[44]
In 1981, President Ronald Reagan honored Kennedy with the Robert F. Kennedy medal in the White House Rose Garden.[45] In 2014, a bridge over the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C., was renamed the Ethel Kennedy Bridge in her honor, in recognition of her advocacy for environmentalism and social causes in the District of Columbia.[46] Also in 2014, Kennedy was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama for her dedication to "advancing the cause of social justice, human rights, environmental protection, and poverty reduction by creating countless ripples of hope to effect change around the world."[47] [48]