Ethel Kennedy

Ethel Skakel Kennedy (born April 11, 1928) is an American human-rights campaigner and widow of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated while running for nomination as Democratic presidential candidate in 1968.

As Ethel Skakel, she was a classmate of Kennedy’s sister Jean at Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart. She and Kennedy married in 1950 and had seven sons and four daughters. Their house, Hickory Hill at McLean, Virginia, became the scene of notably elegant and exclusive parties.

Soon after her husband’s death, she founded the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, a nonprofit charity working to realize RFK’s dream of a just and peaceful world. In 2009, Ethel Kennedy was among the chief mourners at the funeral of her brother-in-law Ted Kennedy. In 2014, President Barack Obama awarded her a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Early life

Ethel Skakel was born in Chicago to businessman George Skakel (1892–1955) and secretary Ann Brannack (1892–1955). She was the Skakels' third daughter and sixth child, having five older siblings, Georgeann, James, George Jr., Rushton, and Patricia, and one younger sister, Ann. George was a Protestant of Dutch descent while Ann was a Catholic of Irish ancestry. Ethel and her siblings were raised Catholic in Greenwich, Connecticut. George Skakel was the founder of Great Lakes Carbon Corporation, now a division of SGLCarbon. She attended the all-girls Greenwich Academy in Greenwich, as well as the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Manhattan.