Members of the Kennedy family gather for funeral of Ethel Kennedy
CENTERVILLE, Mass. — Members of the Kennedy family gathered Monday for the funeral of Ethel Kennedy, wife of the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
Ethel Kennedy, who raised their eleven children after her husband was murdered and remained committed to social causes and the family legacy, died on Thursday at the age of 96.
Monday’s funeral, which was closed to the public, was held at Our Lady of Victory, in Centerville, Massachusetts, about 30 miles north of Boston.
Mourners gathered at the church under a cool gray sky. Ethel Kennedy died after complications related to a stroke earlier this month.
βIn addition to a lifetime of work in social justice and human rights, our mother is survived by nine children, 34 grandchildren and 24 great-great-grandchildren, along with numerous nieces and nephews, all of whom love her dearly,β the family statement said. announce her death.
President Joe Biden called her βan American icon β a matriarch of optimism and moral courage, an emblem of resilience and service.β
The Kennedy matriarch, mother of Kathleen, Joseph II, Robert Jr., David, Courtney, Michael, Kerry, Christopher, Max, Douglas and Rory, was one of the last surviving members of a family generation that included President John F. Kennedy . Her family said she had enjoyed seeing many of her relatives recently before she became ill.
Ethel Kennedy, the daughter of a millionaire who married the future senator and attorney general in 1950, had suffered more deaths by the age of 40, for all the world to see, than most people would in a lifetime.
She was at Robert F. Kennedy’s side when he was fatally shot in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968, just after winning the Democratic presidential primaries in California. Her brother-in-law had been murdered in Dallas less than five years earlier.
Ethel Kennedy founded the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights shortly after her husband’s death, advocating for causes such as gun control and human rights. She rarely spoke about her husband’s murder.