The Kennedy matriarch who became an activist
Ethel Kennedy led a life marked by privilege and glamour, but also tragedy and loss—and she turned it into a life of activism. Her parents died in a plane crash when she was 27, and she lost two sons, to a skiing accident and a drug overdose. When her husband, Robert F. Kennedy, was gunned down while running for president in 1968, Ethel, then a mother of 10 and pregnant once again, was by his side. Stoic in the aftermath of an assassination that rocked the nation, she was named America’s most admired woman that year. She never remarried, but threw herself into raising her children and carrying on her husband’s legacy of public service. Through the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights foundation, she spent decades campaigning for causes such as gun control and poverty alleviation. “Nobody gets a free ride,” she said in a 2012 documentary made by her daughter Rory. “Dig in and do what you can, because it might not last.”
Ethel Skakel was born into “a family not unlike the Kennedys,” said the Los Angeles Times, “big, boisterous, Catholic, and rich.” Her father was a coal magnate who raised the family in a 31-room mansion in Greenwich, Conn. Athletic and fiercely competitive, she attended Manhattanville College, where roommate Jean Kennedy introduced her to her brother Robert on a ski trip; the two married after graduation. When RFK became a counsel for Senate Democrats, the pair moved into a sprawling Northern Virginia estate called Hickory Hill. The home became a magnet for “Washington kingmakers, Hollywood stars, Nobel Prize winners,” said The New York Times. Ethel hosted parties and served as “den mother, ringmaster, chief practical joker, and seasoned political pro”—even providing the crucial push to persuade her husband to run for president.
After his death, she “largely avoided the public eye” as she worked for her causes, said The Boston Globe, “although she never strayed far from it.” A granddaughter overdosed at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, Mass., in 2019; more recently, the family was riven by the presidential run of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., condemned by numerous siblings. Ethel, who continued her advocacy into her 80s and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014, stayed quiet about her son’s candidacy, just as she’d always balked at discussing her husband’s death or other family matters. “All this introspection,” she said in the documentary. “I hate it.” |