Eunice Kennedy was born in Brookline, Massachusetts on July 10, 1921, the fifth child of Joseph and Rose Kennedy. Although underweight, frail, and susceptible to illness as a child, Eunice displayed great energy that was rivaled only by her intelligence and precocious nature. Mrs. Kennedy recalled her daughter’s “highly conscientious demeanor” and noted that Eunice mimicked her older brothers, acting as a leader among her younger siblings. Considered by her mother to be the most sensitive, religiously devout, and mature of the Kennedy children, Eunice developed a particularly close bond with her older sister, Rosemary, who had intellectual disabilities. This connection helped foster a lifelong dedication to empowering those who may have otherwise been marginalized by society. Through her work in politics, government, and social activism, Eunice Kennedy Shriver improved the lives of millions of people around the world.
Political Involvement
Born in 1921, the year after women first received the right to vote in federal elections, Eunice Kennedy Shriver never ran for political office. However, she took on pivotal roles in the campaigns of her brothers John, Robert, and Edward, and husband, Sargent – much as her mother had done with her own father and sons.
Eunice, and the rest of the Kennedy family, recruited and coordinated volunteer
hostesses for the tea parties crucial to John’s 1952 senate campaign. Eunice
also organized an elegant reception for 1,500 Irish Catholics to enlist their
support, days before the upcoming election. In later campaigns for her brothers
and husband, Eunice spent months traveling the country to deliver speeches at
luncheons, retirement homes, colleges, fundraisers, and on radio and television
programs. The hectic pace of the campaign suited Eunice’s acutely competitive
drive. Eunice, who had been competing athletically since her youth, recalled,
“I was twenty-four before I knew I didn’t have to win something every day.”
After John’s successful 1960 campaign for the presidency, Eunice required
hospitalization for fatigue and exhaustion, prompting her mother to write “I
have known few people in the world to match her for initiative and energy and
drive. […] She [Eunice] thinks I have a lot of energy, but she amazes me.” Around
this time, Eunice was diagnosed with Addison’s disease.
Service
and Activism
In
1946, Eunice began work as the executive secretary to the Juvenile Delinquency
Committee at the Department of Justice. There, she demonstrated strong
compassion for underprivileged youth. She created policy to prevent teenagers
from dropping out of high school by teaching them trades and vocational skills.
Later, she worked as a social worker at a women’s prison in North Carolina. She
then joined her sisters Patricia and Jean in Chicago, where she worked with
survivors of sexual abuse and teenage mothers who were under the care of the
state. During those years, Eunice attended graduate school for social work at
the University of Chicago and also met Robert Sargent Shriver, Jr. , whom she
married in 1953.
In 1958, Eunice and Sargent traveled across the country to meet leading
philanthropists, researchers, and academics in an effort to improve the Joseph
P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation, which was established in memory of Eunice’s oldest
brother, Joe Jr., who was killed in WWII. With Rosemary in mind, Eunice eventually
decided that the foundation should shift its focus to concentrate on funding
research for children with intellectual disabilities. She spearheaded many of
its initiatives over the decades that followed. During the Kennedy
Administration, Eunice lobbied her older brother and his advisers to create a
national committee on intellectual disabilities. She also suggested developing
an organization similar to a domestic version of the Peace Corps to help those
most in need. When her husband served as the ambassador to France from
1968-1970, Eunice taught a weekly class to 140 intellectually disabled children
in Paris as part of an effort to educate the French citizenry about
intellectual disabilities and compel its leaders to take action.
The
Special Olympics
In 1961, Eunice started a summer camp
for children with intellectual disabilities on the lawn of her Maryland estate.
One year later, she decided that the Kennedy family should publicly acknowledge
Rosemary’s condition for the first time, leading Eunice to write an essay in the
Saturday Evening Post, a very popular weekly magazine. Though
the wording of this article is now outdated, the article was an important
contribution to disability literature. She addressed the prejudices of the
general public surrounding people with intellectual disabilities and urged
funding for medical research, job training, and group homes. Eunice wrote,
“Like diabetes, deafness, polio, or any other misfortune, [intellectual
disabilities] can happen in any family. It has happened in the families of the
poor and rich, of governors, senators, Nobel prizewinners, doctors, lawyers,
writers, men of genius, presidents of corporations – the President of the
United States.”
Through Eunice’s encouragement and the
Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation’s funding, the first Special
Olympics were held in 1968 at Chicago’s Soldier Field and
hosted 1,000 athletes from 26 states and Canada. Today, the Special Olympics
furthers Eunice’s mission of
empowering those with intellectual disabilities and fostering competitiveness
and athleticism on a worldwide scale. In 2019,
nearly 115,000 Special Olympics sports competitions
were hosted around the world, with more than 5.7 million athletes from 200
countries.
In recognition of her tireless efforts to improve and enhance the lives of
people with intellectual disabilities, Eunice was awarded the Presidential
Medal of Freedom by President Ronald Reagan in 1984 and received a papal
knighthood from Pope Benedict XVI in 2006. She died on August 11, 2009 at the
age of 88.
"You are
the stars and the world is watching you. By your presence you send a message to
every village, every city, every nation. A message of hope. A message of
victory: "The right to play on any playing field? You have earned it. The
right to study in any school? You have earned it. The right to hold a job? You
have earned it. The right to be anyone's neighbor? You have earned it."
The days of segregation and separation are over!"
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver
Charge to the Athletes at the Opening Ceremonies of the International Summer
Special Olympics Games, South Bend, Indiana, August 2, 1987
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