Ethel Kennedy
Ethel Kennedy (née Skakel /ˈskeɪ.kəl/ SKAY-kel 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 (Brannack) Skakel. 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 Kennedy
Early life and education[edit]
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 serves 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.[8] In September 1945, Ethel began her college education at Manhattanville College, where she was a classmate of her future sister-in-law Jean Kennedy.[9] She received a bachelor's degree from Manhattanville in 1949.[10]
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.[8]
Legacy and awards[edit]
In 1981, President Ronald Reagan honored Kennedy with the Robert F. Kennedy medal in the White House Rose Garden.[44] 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.[45] 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."[46][47]