The matriarch of the Kennedy family in the USA, <a href="https://time.news/whos-robert-f-kennedy-jr-his-aspiration-for-the-presidency-of-the-us-was-revived-due-to-joe-biden/" title="Who's Robert F. Kennedy Jr.? His aspiration for the presidency of the US was revived due to Joe Biden”>Ethel Kennedy, died on Thursday at the age of 96. The widow of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1968, died of complications from a stroke, her family said. “It is with love in our hearts that we announce the passing of our wonderful grandmother, Ethel Kennedy,” her grandson Joe Kennedy III wrote on X’s online service.
Ethel Kennedy was born in Chicago in 1928 as the daughter of an industrialist and met her future husband at the age of 17. Robert F. Kennedy became Attorney General in 1961 in the cabinet of his brother, President John F. Kennedy. In 1968, five years after the assassination attempt on the president, Robert Kennedy also suffered an assassination attempt: he was shot in Los Angeles on the night of June 5, 1968 and died the next day from his injuries.
Robert Kennedy and his wife Ethel with their seven children at the time: Roberts Jr., David, Michael and Joe Jr., Kathleen, Kerry and Mary Courtney © IMAGO / Personalities
At this point he was a promising candidate for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination and also for the victory of the election. Six months after her husband’s murder, Ethel Kennedy gave birth to her eleventh child. She founded the human rights organization named after her husband, which campaigns for freedom of expression around the world.
Ethel Kennedy was the mother of Robert Kennedy Jr. also, who campaigned as an independent candidate for a while that year, but eventually switched to the Republican Donald Trump camp, much to the dismay of most of the Kennedy family.
President Joe Biden called Ethel Kennedy an “American icon.” She had “nerves of steel and a heart of gold” and inspired millions of her family.
Former President Barack Obama praised Ethel Kennedy as an “extraordinary” personality who touched people around the world with her “generosity and grace”. In 2014, Obama awarded Ethel Kennedy the Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States.
She leaves behind nine children, 34 grandchildren and 24 great-grandchildren, her grandson Joe Kennedy III wrote on