Obituary for Ethel Kennedy | The Kennedys

Ethel Kennedy, who has died aged 96, was one of America's most active and well-known political wives of the 20th century. When her husband, Robert F. Kennedy, ran for the Senate and then for the presidency, she helped him raise their children. The eleventh and last of them, their daughter Rory, was born after Bobby was murdered in 1968. Beginning in the 1970s, Ethel became involved in social causes and most recently served as co-chair of the Coalition of Gun Control.

Her life had previously been marked by tragedy when her parents died in a plane crash in 1955. Her brother-in-law, President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated in 1963. Two of their children died prematurely – David from a drug overdose at age 28 in 1984 and Michael was in a skiing accident in 1997 when he was 39. Her husband was shot dead at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after winning the California primary for the US presidential election.

Buoyed by a strong Catholic faith, she remained, in the opinion of writer Hays Gorey, “an incorrigibly cheerful widow” who never allowed gloom to descend on the frenetic lifestyle that had always existed at Hickory Hill, the family home in McLean, Virginia , prevailed . The field was littered with soccer balls and tennis rackets, and no one was allowed to sit around and mope.

Ethel used sports to promote her husband's legacy and raise money for the numerous charities that came under the umbrella of the Robert Kennedy Foundation, which also manages what is now called the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights. This led to the creation of a memorial tennis tournament in Forest Hills, New York, a pro-celebrity event held on the eve of the US Open for several years in the 1970s.

Born in Chicago, Ethel was the sixth of seven children of Ann (née Brannack), a devout Catholic, and George Skakel, who went from an $8-a-week job as a railroad clerk to selling coal and starting a company called Great Lakes Coal & Coke . When Ethel was five years old, the family moved east, eventually settling in Connecticut, where she attended Greenwich Academy. While studying at Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart in New York, she became friends with Jean Kennedy, Bobby's sister. Meanwhile, Bobby – whom Ethel met on a ski trip to Quebec in 1945 – was dating Ethel's sister Patricia. When they separated, Ethel began the partnership that would define her life.

Ethel campaigned for John F. Kennedy when he ran for Congress in Massachusetts in 1946. She married his younger brother in 1950 and their first child, Kathleen, was born the following year.

“They had a wonderful relationship, full of banter and quick wit,” recalled Donald Dell, a US Davis Cup captain in the 1960s who played tennis with the couple and became a family friend. “Ethel was picking on Bobby the whole time and he was doing as good as he could. But he was always very protective of her and she was extremely loyal to him.”

When JFK ran for Senate in 1952, Bobby managed the campaign. Throughout the remainder of the 1950s, Ethel assisted Bobby in his climb up the political ladder, and when JFK entered the White House in 1960, Bobby was appointed attorney general.

The assassination of JFK in 1963 changed Bobby and Ethel's lives suddenly. Bobby continued the Kennedy story by running successfully for the Senate in 1964 and then deciding to enter the presidential campaign himself in 1968.

Early in the campaign, in March, came the startling news that President Lyndon B. Johnson had decided not to run for a second term. It immediately made Bobby Kennedy a hot favorite for the Democratic nomination and, in many people's eyes, the presidency. But that dream died after shots were fired in the kitchen of the Los Angeles hotel in June.

As Ethel tirelessly dealt with her bereavement, she drew on a wide and diverse range of “friends,” as she used to call them, to further her charitable work. Sidney Poitier, Sammy Davis Jr. and Charlton Heston were among the celebrities who were always available when she called. A friend remembers calling Heston, whom she always called Chuckles, to get him to persuade Roy Emerson, the Wimbledon champion, to enter her tournament. “In return, I’ll star in one of your films,” she joked. “But I don’t want a maid role – I want some love interest!”

In the years following her husband's death, there was some speculation about a possible “love affair” between Ethel and singer Andy Williams. This gossip continued until she announced her decision never to marry again, citing her Catholic views.

In a later era, a new generation was drawn into the Kennedy lifestyle. Country music star Taylor Swift was 23 years old when she spent time with the then-84-year-old widow at the family estate in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, in 2012. Swift declined to go swimming because some of her friends didn't bring their swimsuits. “When you're so considerate, you run the risk of being boring,” said Ethel. “Come on, get in the water!”

“So I got in,” Swift said. “I understood it as a metaphor for life. You have to jump in; You have to take your chances. Ethel taught me that.”

In May 2014, the Benning Road Bridge, which connects Washington DC to Anacostia, Maryland, was renamed the Ethel Kennedy Bridge in recognition of its decades of work to improve the lives of young people living along the Anacostia River, said to be among the most polluted in America. To get the project started in 1992, Ethel waded in to retrieve old tires and debris from the water.

Kennedy's most recent headline-grabber was her son Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who dropped out of the presidential race first as a Democrat and then as an independent. Ethel is survived by him, four other sons, Joseph, Christopher, Max and Douglas, and four daughters, Kathleen, Courtney, Kerry and Rory.