Personal Life
On May 23, 1953, she married Sargent Shriver in a Roman Catholic ceremony at Saint Patrick's Cathedral in New York City, New York. Her husband served as the U.S. Ambassador to France from 1968 to 1970 and was the 1972 Democratic U.S. Vice Presidential candidate (with George McGovern as the candidate for U.S. President). They had five children:
- Robert Sargent Shriver III (born April 28, 1954)
- Maria Owings Shriver (born November 6, 1955)
- Timothy Perry Shriver (born August 29, 1959)
- Mark Kennedy Shriver (born February 17, 1964)
- Anthony Paul Kennedy Shriver (born July 20, 1965)
With her husband she had nineteen grandchildren, the second-most of any of the children of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. and Rose Kennedy. (Her brother U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy had eleven children who have produced thirty-two grandchildren.)
As executive vice president of the Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. Foundation in the 1950s, she shifted the organization's focus from Catholic charities to research on the causes of people with intellectual disabilities and humane ways to treat it. This interest eventually culminated in, among other things, the Special Olympics movement.
Upon the death of her sister, Rosemary Kennedy, on January 7, 2005, Shriver became the eldest of the four then-surviving children of Joseph and Rose Kennedy. Her sister, Patricia Kennedy Lawford, died on September 17, 2006, and her brother, U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy, on August 25, 2009, leaving her sister, former U.S. Ambassador to Ireland, Jean Kennedy Smith, as her only surviving sibling.
Read more about this topic: Eunice Kennedy Shriver
Famous quotes containing the words personal and/or life:
“I leave the governor’s office next week, and with it public life ... [which] has been on the whole a pleasant one. But for ten years and over my salaries have not equalled my expenses, and there has been a feeling of responsibility, a lack of independence, and a necessary neglect of my family and personal interests and comfort, which make the prospect of a change comfortable to think of.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Your home is regarded as a model home, your life as a model life. But all this splendor, and you along with it ... it’s just as though it were built upon a shifting quagmire. A moment may come, a word can be spoken, and both you and all this splendor will collapse.”
—Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906)