Ethel Kennedy, the widow of the late Democratic senator and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, died Thursday from complications related to a recent stroke. She was 96.
She was the matriarch of one of the largest American political families in U.S. history, which had a major foothold in Palm Beach history and society.
Mrs. Kennedy’s children and grandchildren confirmed her passing on social media, sharing a statement from the family that noted her “lifetime’s work in social justice and human rights.”The family did not say where Mrs. Kennedy died.
Survivors include her nine children, 34 grandchildren, 24 great-grandchildren and many nieces and nephews.
“She was a devout Catholic and a daily communicant, and we are comforted in knowing she is reunited with the love of her life, our father, Robert F. Kennedy; her children David and Michael; her daughter-in-law Mary; her grandchildren Maeve and Saoirse; and her great-grandchildren Gideon and Josie,” the family said in its statement.
“Please keep her in your hearts and prayers,” they added.
Ethel Skakel became a Kennedy in 1950 when she married Robert F. Kennedy, who would go on to become U.S. attorney general in the administration of his brother, former President John F. Kennedy, and later a U.S. senator from New York.
Robert F. Kennedy died in the early morning hours of June 6, 1968, after being shot by an assassin following a campaign event in Los Angeles.
Mrs. Kennedy, as so many others in the Kennedy family did, spent a significant amount of time in Palm Beach.
The first Kennedy to buy a home in Palm Beach was patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., who in 1933 bought a 1920s oceanfront mansion at 1095 N. Ocean Blvd. Several others, including Mrs. Kennedy, followed suit.
She for years leased an oceanfront home at 1356 N. Ocean Blvd. in Palm Beach. The house was built in 1966, has four bedrooms and 3,847 square feet of living space. It sits on a quarter-acre on the southwest corner of Seagate Road and North Ocean Boulevard.
"Ethel loves the house," Outback Steakhouse co-founder Tim Gannon told The Palm Beach Post in 2018. "It's like a little palace with chandeliers and high ceilings."
Gannon hosted Mrs. Kennedy's 90th birthday party that year, with a guest list that included many friends and family along with now-President Joe Biden and wife Jill, and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Mrs. Kennedy frequented local businesses including the Prep Shop and Lullabye Shop on Worth Avenue, owned by the late Jesse and Helene Newman. In an article from the Daily News archive, Jesse Newman recalled, “She would only buy button-down oxford shirts and chino pants. She bought them by the carload because she had about five boys.”
She attended grand openings, fundraisers and galas. Mrs. Kennedy was photographed in 2019 perusing the stock at Pierce-Archer art framing shop on South County Road. She would quietly shop at markets in town, wearing tennis whites and occasionally flying under the radar.
"I had the opportunity to meet Ethel 30 years ago when I moved next door to her in Hyannis Port, where we formed an instant friendship," said insurance executive Mark Freitas of Palm Beach, Greenwich, Connecticut, and Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.
"Over the many years I witnessed firsthand her deep faith and great love for family, friends and country. She will forever be remembered for her warm personality, great sense of humor, kind spirit and unwavering loyalty. Today we lost a true national treasure."
"What a great friend Ethel Kennedy was to me and my wonderful husband Brian," said Eileen Burns, whose late husband was trustee of the Kennedy family foundation.
"I remember the Christmas parties singing 'Here Comes Santa Claus' at the top of our lungs, and the Valentine cards were something out of central casting. She had a great sense of humor and a great love for her family and friends. May she rest in peace in the arms of our Lord and be reunited with her husband."
"What an amazing lady she was," said Palm Beach resident Bruce Mazza Langmaid. "We were just with her at the Sailfish Club before we left for the summer. This is so sad."
Carey O'Donnell, a longtime Palm Beach resident, was close lifelong friends with Mrs. Kennedy's niece, Georgeann Skakel Dowdle.
"When she moved to Palm Beach in the early 1990s we were often together at dinners and parties with her gregarious aunt," O'Donnell wrote in an email to the Daily News. "Family was always the priority in Ethel’s life and there was always an abundance of family around her."
When Dowdle became ill, Mrs. Kennedy invited her to move into her North End home. "She took such great care of her niece for the last six months of her life," O'Donnell said.
Mrs. Kennedy was the subject of the 2012 documentary "Ethel," which was led by her daughter Rory Kennedy and looked at Mrs. Kennedy's work on the front lines for civil and human rights, her efforts in the political campaigns of her husband and brother-in-law, and her experiences raising 11 children.
Mrs. Kennedy took an interest in the so-called “JFK bunker,” a Cold War-era fallout shelter on Peanut Island that was built by the U.S. Navy in 1961 for President John F. Kennedy should he need protection during a visit to Palm Beach.
In 2012, she toured the bunker with her son Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and several grandchildren, The Palm Beach Post reported at the time. She told the bunker's manager that her family had "always known (the bunker) was here" but never visited, The Post reported.
"It sounds funny now, but living that way was the norm. We expected to have bomb shelters," she reportedly told the manager of her experiences during the Cold War.
Mrs. Kennedy was a parishioner at St. Edward Catholic Church, where she regularly attended Mass, and which also served as her polling place.
Asked in a 2014 NBC interview what had inspired her, Kennedy said: "First, Bobby and his life, and, of course, Jack."
Yet their deaths weren't the only tragedies in her life. Ethel Kennedy's parents were killed in a plane crash in 1955, and she lost a brother in a 1966 plane crash.
Mrs. Kennedy’s son David died of a drug overdose in Palm Beach in 1984, her son Michael was killed in a skiing accident in 1997, and granddaughter Saorse died at 22 years old of an accidental drug overdose in 2019 at the Kennedy family compound in Hyannis Port.
Her son, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was a candidate for president earlier this year who since bowing out of the race in August has endorsed former President Donald Trump.
Mrs. Kennedy sought to carry on her husband's works with the founding of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights center in Washington, D.C. In 2007, she held an auction to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for that organization, with 110 items that included lunch with actor Richard Gere and breakfast with Alan Greenspan, the former head of the Federal Reserve.
Her work also included many charitable causes. She raised money for ALS research, fighting poverty and supporting social justice and environmentalism.
In 2016, she participated with hundreds of others in a peaceful march through Palm Beach with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, to draw attention to working conditions and wages for farmworkers. She participated in a wheelchair, accompanied by family members.
Mrs. Kennedy helped lead efforts to clean up Washington's Anacostia River and restore New York's Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood. A bridge crossing the Anacostia River is named for her.
In 2014, President Barack Obama awarded Mrs. Kennedy the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
"Ethel has been a force for change in her quiet, unflashy, unstoppable way," Obama said at a 2014 White House ceremony honoring her with the medal. "As her family will tell you — and they basically occupy this half of the room — you don’t mess with Ethel."
Palm Beach Daily News columnist Shannon Donnelly and USA Today contributed to this report.
