Eunice Kennedy Shriver dies

[CrimsonWhite]

(CNN) -- Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the sister of President John F. Kennedy and a champion of the disabled who founded the Special Olympics, died Tuesday, the Special Olympics said. She was 88.

Born on July 10, 1921, in Brookline, Massachusetts, Shriver was the fifth of nine children to Joseph P. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. She emerged from the long shadow of siblings John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy as the founder of the Special Olympics, which started as a summer day camp in her backyard in 1962.

Today, 3.1 million people with mental disabilities participate in 228 programs in in 170 nations, according to the Special Olympics.

Shriver's husband, R. Sargent Shriver, and her five children and their spouses and all of her 19 grandchildren were with her when she died, the Special Olympics said in a statement.

Eunice Kennedy Shriver dies - CNN.com

 

[Xenophon]

RIP, she made a difference for people who needed that difference.

 

[strollingbones]

she will be missed...she did make a difference

 

[Bfgrn]

Eunice had a special relationship with her sister Rosemary, who was mentally handicapped. Eunice dedicated a big part of her life to help those with similar afflictions... she didn't see them as "throw away" human beings, she believed they could be productive members of society...

This was Eunice's eulogy for her sister Rose in 2005...

Eulogy for Rosemary Kennedy
by
Eunice Kennedy Shriver
January 10, 2005

Fr. Frederici

Fr. MacMillan

Thank you all for coming today to pray for and with my sister Rosemary. I loved her so and will miss her forever.

When we were young, Rosemary and I were often together. As you may know, we were a competitive family (pause) so in races and games, Rosie and I were sometimes teammates. Most often, she was my crew in sailing races. Even in competition, she seemed always to have a smile.

I will admit now that I sometimes yelled at Rosie on the water. Many times, when we were headed for the mark, she would let the jib go and turn to me with a smile. “Get the jib Rosemary!” “Rosemary, look the jib is flapping. Pull it in!” “For God’s sake Rosemary, pull in the BLASTED JIB!!” Usually, Rosie would then pull in the jib. Despite my tone, she would never lose her somewhat distant but happy smile.

Mother always appreciated that Rosie and I would race together. “Well done, dear,” she would often say. After one race, Dad asked how I did with Rosie. “We came in 3rd Dad.” “For God’s sake,” he thundered, “Can’t you do better than that?” Off I went, never quite sure how to win, but always sure that Rosie’s smile somehow had a value of its own.

In the years that followed, Rosie and I went to Europe together. We roomed together and had laughs together. We were sisters—she would gain too much weight, and I would lose too much weight; she would write sweet letters to get Dad’s attention, and I would try to get my brothers’ attention; she would love to relax and eat big meals, and I would love to be overly active and race around outdoors. We had many wonderful days.

After Rosemary moved to Wisconsin, Mother and Dad and all of my brothers and sisters wondered how we could support her, but what we didn’t realize is that she would begin a lifetime of supporting us. We talked about Joe JR’s Foundation and agreed to focus it on special schools and special homes. Pat and Jean and Ethel held big fundraisers in L.A. and New York and Washington. Jack launched the great federal efforts—NICHD, The President’s Council on Mental Retardation, The University Affiliated Centers. Bobby worked to close Willowbrook. Teddy has spent 40 years changing the laws of the land. Libraries, Schools, Clinics, and treatments were created. Very Special Arts was born under Jean. Special Olympics was born. We all tried to honor her, to support her, to do what we could.

But the truth of these last 86 years reveals something much different: Rosemary has given us all so much more than we ever gave her. Over those years, Rosie visited my family at Timberlawn and always was the last one out of the pool, showing all the children the remarkable strength of her body. She was always the first to dinner showing us her constant readiness to join together in family fun. She was always at mass, patient and attentive; she always had her rosary and her faith. She worked so hard on her pronunciation, her words. She learned the names of her grand nieces and nephews. When she spoke, she spoke almost always of mother. In short, she was patient and kind; she never judged and always forgave; she never put on airs, loved to look pretty, savored chocolate and made everyone happy. She taught us all that adversity meant nothing—that it could always be fun to be together no matter what.

In Times to Remember, mother wrote, “My faith and my church had great importance for me…Rosemary did not induce me in the least toward doubt. The more I thought, the clearer it became to me that God in his infinite wisdom did have a reason though it was hidden from me, and that in time, in some way, it would be unfolded to me. God wants something different from each of us.”

Perhaps what was hidden has now become more clear to us today. Perhaps, as mother wrote, God’s will for each of us always remains a mystery, but in the last few days, Rosemary’s life has, I believe, become much more clear.

In our family, we loved her and she loved us. At St. Coletta’s, everyone loved her and she loved them—her warmth, her patience, her love of desert, her strength, her smile—these were her gifts, her reason, her life. For each of us, she inspired hope—hope that we could find our way, dreams of a better world, action to achieve it.

Today, in villages and cities all over the world, Rosemary’s name may be little known, but her love is making a difference—to a mother of special child, she is a success story. To a person struggling against misunderstanding and prejudice, she is a model of courage. To a family wondering how to stay hopeful, she is a symbol of the ultimate gift that sustains us all: love itself.

Like mother, the truth is that all of us wonder the meaning of a good life, a successful life, a holy life. Today, Rosie, you are the role model of them all—of goodness, of success, of holiness. You love those you touched, and they loved you. You made us all happy and hopeful. You kept the faith.

Many years ago, I may have skippered us to a third place finish, but Mother and Dad and Joe and Jack and Kathleen and you together now surely know the real order of finish: you are a winner in life, a champion of all that matters.

God bless you Rosemary.

I love you.

 

[Sarah G]

Out of all those strong males in that family, she made her own mark in the world.

Rest in peace.

 

[editec]

She had a long life, one with affluence and a large loving family, too

Naturally she had her share of family tragedies as all of us with large families do.

She created something wonderful that will live beyond her.

All in all, that sounds like a pretty good run to me.

Goodbye, Rosemary.

 

[random3434]

(CNN) -- Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the sister of President John F. Kennedy and a champion of the disabled who founded the Special Olympics, died Tuesday, the Special Olympics said. She was 88.

Born on July 10, 1921, in Brookline, Massachusetts, Shriver was the fifth of nine children to Joseph P. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. She emerged from the long shadow of siblings John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy as the founder of the Special Olympics, which started as a summer day camp in her backyard in 1962.

Today, 3.1 million people with mental disabilities participate in 228 programs in in 170 nations, according to the Special Olympics.

Shriver's husband, R. Sargent Shriver, and her five children and their spouses and all of her 19 grandchildren were with her when she died, the Special Olympics said in a statement.

Eunice Kennedy Shriver dies - CNN.com

She had a long life, and during that lifetime she made a difference to thousands of people.

If any of you have ever witnessed a Special Olympics event, you will never forget it. It's like nothing else, and brings joy to all involved. I even had an ex student make it all the way to Japan for the International Special Olympics, how cool is that!

RIP Mrs. Shriver, and Thank You.

 

[Lonestar_logic]

R.I.P Eunice

 

[Bfgrn]

This tribute was made last year...(3 min. 51 sec.)

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roJqpx_80Kg]YouTube - Eunice Kennedy Shriver Tribute[/ame]

"The ancient Greek definition of happiness was the full use of your powers along lines of excellence."
President John F. Kennedy

 

[anna]

Rip eunice

 

[Soaring]

She added absolutely nothing to our society.

 

[Valerie]

To Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who died Tuesday, people with intellectual disabilities were “our special friends.”

Her friends, now in the millions, became the world’s friends, through the Special Olympics. They became messengers in her campaign to alter the attitudes of skeptical, often callous people about the limits of their capabilities. She understood that mentally retarded children could excel at sports and life.

David Egan is one of her friends. He is 31 and has Down syndrome. A swimmer and soccer and basketball player in the Special Olympics, Egan works in the mailroom of Booz Allen Hamilton in Tysons Corner, Va.

“Her idea became a worldwide movement,” Egan said the other day by phone from his home. “How good is that? For people with disabilities to be on center stage in front of the world? If it wasn’t for Eunice, we wouldn’t be here.”

Where would they be?

“Probably in institutions, mostly,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/12/sports/12sandomir.html

 

[Valerie]

To Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who died Tuesday, people with intellectual disabilities were “our special friends.”

Her friends, now in the millions, became the world’s friends, through the Special Olympics. They became messengers in her campaign to alter the attitudes of skeptical, often callous people about the limits of their capabilities. She understood that mentally retarded children could excel at sports and life.

David Egan is one of her friends. He is 31 and has Down syndrome. A swimmer and soccer and basketball player in the Special Olympics, Egan works in the mailroom of Booz Allen Hamilton in Tysons Corner, Va.

“Her idea became a worldwide movement,” Egan said the other day by phone from his home. “How good is that? For people with disabilities to be on center stage in front of the world? If it wasn’t for Eunice, we wouldn’t be here.”

Where would they be?

“Probably in institutions, mostly,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/12/sports/12sandomir.html

>

Perhaps it was a clear vision of the future, or simply hope, that enabled Shriver to nurture the Special Olympics from fairly modest beginnings at the first World Games in Chicago in the summer of 1968. A thousand athletes competed there — a tiny fraction of the 1.5 million mentally retarded children in the United States, she told the small crowd, “who live in communities where there are no games, no exercise, no competition.”

Four years later in Los Angeles, 2,500 competed; by 1983, there were 4,000. By 1995, in New Haven, there were 7,000, and by 2007, about 7,500 participated in Shanghai. Eventually, the World Winter Games were added. The organization serves 3.1 million athletes in 175 countries and in 2007 took in revenue of $79.9 million

“She was always thinking about what to do next,” said Bobby Doyle, the executive director of the Special Olympics of Arkansas. “We did a program one time, and she did everything with our athletes. But she wanted to know why we didn’t have more; she wanted us to do more, to do another sport, to make it better.”

 

[Bfgrn]

She added absolutely nothing to our society.

Well, you just pushed her tribute to the top of the threads...thanks...


"A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward."
Franklin D. Roosevelt

 

[xsited1]

I wonder if JFK thought she was good in bed?

 

[random3434]

She added absolutely nothing to our society.

I'll make sure and tell all those Special Olympic athletes I've coached and cheered on your thoughtful comments!

 

[Valerie]

Yes, I'm just kidding

 

[random3434]

I wonder if JFK thought she was good in bed?

Sunni man, is that you?

 

[Big Black Dog]

I'm not a big Kennedy fan but this lady did get the Special Olympics started and I think that deserves our appreciation and thanks.

 

[random3434]