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President John F. Kennedy's sister, Eunice Kennedy
Shriver, who carried on the family's public service tradition by
founding the Special Olympics and championing the rights of the
mentally disabled, died early Tuesday surrounded by relatives at a
Hyannis hospital. She was 88.

Shriver had suffered a series of strokes in recent years and
died at Cape Cod Hospital, her family said in a statement. Her
husband, her five children and all 19 of her grandchildren were by
her side, the statement said.

"She was the light of our lives, a mother, wife, grandmother,
sister and aunt who taught us by example and with passion what it
means to live a faith-driven life of love and service to others,"
the family said.

The hospital is near the Kennedy family compound, where her sole
surviving brother, Sen. Edward Kennedy, has been battling a brain
tumor.

Sen. Kennedy said his earliest memory of his sister was as a
young girl "with great humor, sharp wit, and a boundless passion
to make a difference."

"She understood deeply the lesson our mother and father taught
us - much is expected of those to whom much has been given," he
said in a statement. "Throughout her extraordinary life, she
touched the lives of millions, and for Eunice that was never
enough."

President Barack Obama said Shriver will be remembered as "as a
champion for people with intellectual disabilities, and as an
extraordinary woman who, as much as anyone, taught our nation - and
our world - that no physical or mental barrier can restrain the
power of the human spirit."

As celebrity, social worker and activist, Shriver was credited
with transforming America's view of the mentally disabled from
institutionalized patients to friends, neighbors and athletes. Her
efforts were inspired in part by the struggles of her mentally
disabled sister, Rosemary.

Peter Collier, author of "The Kennedys, an American Drama,"
called Eunice Shriver the "moral force" of the Kennedy family.

"We have always been honored to share our mother with people of
good will the world over who believe, as she did, that there is no
limit to the human spirit," her family members said in the
statement.

Shriver was also the sister of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, the wife
of 1972 vice presidential candidate and former Peace Corps director
R. Sargent Shriver, and the mother of former NBC newswoman Maria
Shriver, who is married to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
With Eunice Shriver's death, Jean Kennedy Smith becomes the last
surviving Kennedy daughter.

Schwarzenegger said his mother-in-law "changed my life by
raising such a fantastic daughter, and by putting me on the path to
service, starting with drafting me as a coach for the Special
Olympics."


      
A 1960 Chicago Tribune profile of the women in then-candidate
JFK's family said Shriver was "generally credited with being the
most intellectual and politically minded of all the Kennedy
women."


      
When her brother was in the White House, she pressed for efforts
to help troubled young people and the mentally disabled. And in
1968, she started what would become the world's largest athletic
competition for mentally disabled children and adults. Now, more
than 1 million athletes in more than 160 countries participate in
Special Olympics meets each year.

      
"When the full judgment on the Kennedy legacy is made -
including JFK's Peace Corps and Alliance for Progress, Robert
Kennedy's passion for civil rights and Ted Kennedy's efforts on
health care, work place reform and refugees - the changes wrought
by Eunice Shriver may well be seen as the most consequential,"
Harrison Rainie, author of "Growing Up Kennedy," wrote in U.S.
News & World Report in 1993.

      
It was Shriver who revealed the condition of her sister Rosemary
to the nation during her brother's presidency.

      
"Early in life Rosemary was different," she wrote in a 1962
article for the Saturday Evening Post. "She was slower to crawl,
slower to walk and speak. ... Rosemary was mentally retarded."
Rosemary Kennedy underwent a lobotomy when she was 23, though that
wasn't mentioned in the article. She lived most of her life in an
institution in Wisconsin and died in 2005 at age 86.

The roots of the Special Olympics go back to a summer camp
Shriver ran in Maryland in 1963. Shriver would "get right in the
pool with the kids; she'd toss the ball," said a niece, former
Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who volunteered at the
camp as a teen. "It's that hands-on, gritty approach that awakened
her to the kids' needs."

Realizing the children were far more capable of sports than
experts said, Shriver organized the first Special Olympics in 1968
in Chicago. The two-day event drew more than 1,000 participants
from 26 states and Canada.

By 2003, the Special Olympics World Summer Games, held that year
in Dublin, Ireland, involved more than 6,500 athletes from 150
countries. The games are held every four years.

Well into her 70s, Shriver remained a daily presence at the
Special Olympics headquarters in Washington.

      
"Today we celebrate the life of a woman who had the vision to
create our movement," said Special Olympics President and COO
Brady Lum.

      
"In her memory, we will continue to work to bring her powerful
vision to life to change the lives of those with intellectual
disabilities, their families and communities, using sports as the
catalyst for respect, acceptance and inclusion."

      
Juvenile delinquency was another issue that interested Shriver
and spurred her to action. In his 1991 book "The Promised Land:
The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America," author
Nicholas Lemann said the Kennedy administration's juvenile
delinquency commission, "a pet project that had been created to
placate Eunice," became the precursor of the vast federal effort
to improve the lot of urban blacks.

      
After he took office, President Lyndon B. Johnson tapped R.
Sargent Shriver to lead his War on Poverty.

      
Eunice Shriver was the recipient of numerous honors, including
the nation's highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of
Freedom, which she received in 1984. In May, the National Portrait
Gallery installed a painting of her - the first portrait
commissioned by the museum of someone who had not been a president
or first lady.

      
Shriver was born in Brookline, Mass., the fifth of nine children
to Joseph P. Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. She earned a
sociology degree from Stanford University in 1943 after graduating
from a British boarding school while her father served as
ambassador to England.

      
She was a social worker at a women's prison in Alderson, W.Va.,
and worked with the juvenile court in Chicago in the 1950s before
taking over the Joseph P. Kennedy Foundation with the goal of
improving the treatment of the mentally disabled. The foundation
was named for her oldest brother, Joseph Jr., who was killed in
World War II.

      
In 1953, she married Shriver. He became JFK's first director of
the Peace Corps, was George McGovern's vice-presidential running
mate in 1972, and ran for president himself briefly in 1976.

      
Survivors include her husband, who was diagnosed with
Alzheimer's disease in 2003, and the couple's five children: Maria
Shriver, who is married to Schwarzenegger; Robert, a city
councilman in Santa Monica, Calif.; Timothy, chairman of Special
Olympics; Mark, an executive at the charity Save the Children; and
Anthony, founder and chairman of Best Buddies International, a
volunteer organization for the mentally disabled.

      
Mark Shriver once said his parents' actions, not just words,
influenced their children.

      
"In the course of our upbringing, they stressed the importance
of giving back," he said. "But we didn't sit around having family
discussions about it. We learned by what she and my father were
doing."

      
In remembrance of Shriver, the John F. Kennedy Presidential
Library in Boston will make condolence books available for the
public to sign during normal hours.

Gallery

President John F. Kennedy's sister, Eunice Kennedy
Shriver, died early Tuesday. She was 88.

Eunice Kennedy Shriver dead at 88

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