Ethel Kennedy: A Life in Pictures
Her life took a tragic turn when her husband, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated, but she continued to engage in social advocacy and was recognized for her devotion to her family and nation.
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Ethel Kennedy, the widow of Senator Robert F. Kennedy who died on Thursday at 96, was known for displaying grace and resilience after her husband’s murder as well as for her engagement with his political ambitions and the Kennedy family’s legacy.
Outspoken and competitive, Mrs. Kennedy leaned into the political fray and continued to lead a public life, developing a lifelong passion for social advocacy that endured until her death.
Sometimes considered “more Kennedy than the Kennedys” because of her consuming passion for politics, she supported her husband during his rise as a Democratic politician while nurturing their expanding family.
Mrs. Kennedy is often remembered for her strength after his assassination in 1968, when she was pregnant with their 11th child. Her husband passed away in the hospital with her by his side.
The senator’s death was just one tragedy in a life that was punctuated by loss, causing her to lean on her Roman Catholic faith. Yet she kept her humanitarianism, signaling on the day after her husband died that she remained committed to service. “We’re placed on the earth and somehow given a sense of responsibility to give life and love and help to others,” she said then.
For the next 56 years, Mrs. Kennedy remained devoted to her husband’s legacy and the causes he championed. She never remarried, telling People magazine in 1991 that she would consider it adultery.
“How could I possibly do that with Bobby looking down from heaven?” she said.
Here are some snapshots of her life.
Ethel (Skakel) and Robert F. Kennedy were married at St. Mary Roman Catholic Church in Greenwich, Conn., on June 17, 1950. Their path to the altar was unusual: He initially dated her sister Patricia and, at one point, the future Mrs. Kennedy had contemplated becoming a nun.
The Kennedy family taking a walk at Hickory Hill, their home in McLean, Va., in 1959. The estate attracted all comers, from Washington kingmakers and Hollywood stars to neighborhood children.
Mrs. Kennedy stands next to Mayor Robert Wagner of New York and her husband, then the U.S. attorney general, before he announced that he was running for a U.S. senate seat in 1964.
To support her family’s political ambitions, Mrs. Kennedy suppressed a fear of flying that she developed after several family members died in airplane crashes. She is seen disembarking a plane with her husband in 1965.
Mrs. Kennedy on the campaign trail in 1968, when her husband — then a senator for New York — was seeking the Democratic nomination for the presidency. During their marriage, she campaigned tirelessly for him, much of the time while pregnant.
Just days before her husband’s assassination, Mrs. Kennedy greeted supporters in California.
Moments before her husband was assassinated, Mrs. Kennedy stood beside him at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles as he celebrated his victory in the California primary, on June 5, 1968. He died the next day, also with her by his side.
Mrs. Kennedy mourning the death of her husband three days after he was shot, as she stood next to her brother-in-law, Edward M. Kennedy.
On the day of Mr. Kennedy’s funeral and burial, Coretta Scott King, the widow of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., remarked about Mrs. Kennedy, “I don’t see how she has been able to go through this awful experience with so much dignity.”
Mrs. Kennedy remained active with causes that her husband championed during his life. She is seen here in 1973 with Edward M. Kennedy and her niece Caroline Kennedy at the ninth annual Christmas skating party at Rockefeller Center in New York, a program that her husband had started for disadvantaged children.
Mrs. Kennedy at the 1980 Democratic National Convention. Her passion for politics and social activism was evident even after her husband’s death.
Mrs. Kennedy during the annual holiday party in 1988 at the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation in Brooklyn. The nonprofit community development organization was created with the bipartisan backing of her husband and Senator Jacob K. Javits, also of New York.
The Kennedy family gathered on Nov. 22, 1995, at the gravesites of John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., on the anniversary of the former president’s assassination in 1963.
Mrs. Kennedy at the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award ceremony in 2018. She continued to build on her husband’s efforts to promote social justice, and she developed a friendship with Representative John Lewis. When he died two years later, Mrs. Kennedy called him a “man full of fire and ideals.”
Mrs. Kennedy was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in 2014. At the ceremony, Mr. Obama said that Mrs. Kennedy’s “love for her family is matched by her devotion to her nation,” and that “you don’t mess with Ethel.”
Reporting and editing by Clinton Cargill, Kate Christobek, Brent Lewis and Víctor Manuel Ramos.
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