A Great Lady & Champion of the Disabled Dies

Eunice Kennedy Shriver
July 10, 1921 – August 11, 2009

"It is my deepest hope that the world can begin to look at our friends with special needs and, for once, tell them, 'Yes, you do belong; yes, you are wonderful; yes, you can be a shining light of hope for the world!"
— Eunice Kennedy Shriver

By Brody Levesque (Washington D. C.) Aug 11th

Hyannis, Massachusetts. August 11th, 2009 | Eunice Kennedy Shriver, aged 88, passed away early Tuesday morning surrounded by her family. Her husband, Sargent Shriver, the founder of the Peace Corps, as well as her five children and all 19 of her grandchildren, were at her bedside. Mrs. Shriver was the fifth of the nine children born to Joseph P. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. Her death leaves her brother, Senator Ted Kennedy, and sister, Jean Kennedy Smith, former U. S. Ambassador to Ireland, as the last two surviving members of an American political dynasty. Senator Kennedy spoke of how deeply his sister had "understood the lesson our mother and father taught us: much is expected of those to whom much has been given."

The Special Olympics, the foundation of which was her greatest accomplishment, was inspired by the plight of her elder sister Rosemary, who was slightly mentally retarded from birth and completely incapacitated by an attempted lobotomy that her father had sought to control her mood swings.

She once said that it was her sister Rosemary's condition and their close relationship that drove her to taking measures that would insure that those afflicted with challenges wouldn't have to suffer unjustly.

When Eunice was young, children and adults with intellectual disabilities were a shame, a secret to be kept, people who were met with discrimination, pity or indifference. While her brothers fought for political office, Eunice fought for Rosemary and everyone like her sister. She spent her whole life trying to change that. And she did. Mrs. Shriver was the driving force behind the creation of the Special Olympics which left an indelible mark on the world in the acceptance and treatment of the mentally challenged.

In 1962, with the endorsement of her brother, President John F. Kennedy, she wrote a ground-breaking article for the Saturday Evening Post in which she described Rosemary's condition and her family's attempts to deal with it. The Special Olympics, which now embraces three million people around the world, started life in 1962. Eunice and her sister, Rosemary, turned out to be one of the most underestimated power couples of the century; two sisters who changed each other, then the world. Rosemary was born with a mild developmental impairment; Eunice, in turn, became a champion for Rosemary and all those with intellectual disabilities.

“If I never met Rosemary, never knew anything about handicapped children, how would I have ever found out?” she said on NPR in 2007. “Because nobody accepted them any place.”

In 1962, Mrs. Shriver, a mother of five, invited 35 mentally disabled boys and girls to a day camp at the Shriver home in Potomac, Maryland, and turned it into an organization that now is 1 million athletes strong in more than 140 countries. The first Special Games were held in July 1968 in Chicago and were attended by athletes from 26 US states as well as from Canada. Four years earlier in 1964 she wrote in an article for Parade magazine, "They should and must be helped, we of the bright, real world must reach out our hands into the shadows, not with trembling emotion but with sure-footed, level-headed assistance.”