Bowl of Serial

Mother of Maria Shriver and sister of President John F. Kennedy, Eunice Kennedy Shriver was an advocate for the mentally disabled crowned as the greatest Kennedy legacy for her tireless efforts to the disability rights movement. Eunice died early this  morning in Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis, Mass. She was 88.

Shriver, the sister of President Kennedy and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and the mother of California First Lady Maria Shriver, died early today at Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis, Mass., her family said in a statement.

In a speech last year at the Women’s Conference in Long Beach, Maria Shriver said her mother had had several strokes.

“Eunice was the light of our family,” Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said of his mother-in-law in a statement. “She meant so much, not only to us, but to our country and to the world. She was a pioneer who worked tirelessly for social and scientific advances that have changed the lives of millions of developmentally disabled people all over the world.”

President Obama called Shriver “a champion for people with intellectual disabilities and 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.”

Edward Shorter, author of “The Kennedy Family and the Story of Mental Retardation” (2000), said that “no family has done more than the Kennedys to change negative attitudes about mental retardation.”

The founding of the Special Olympics, which grew out of a summer camp Shriver started at her family farm in suburban Maryland, went a long way toward erasing long-held stigmas that the Kennedy family knew well because Eunice had a sister who was mentally disabled.

With a family foundation behind her and a brother in the White House, Shriver pushed mental retardation onto the national agenda in the early 1960s. The federal money that was unleashed resulted in research breakthroughs and a proliferation of educational programs.

Eunice Kennedy Shriver was a very loving woman with a passion to change the worlds view on people with mental disabilities, she put the love for her sister who had mental retardation into a wonderful breakthrough of research and educational resources for many others who suffered from the same special needs. She will be greatly missed.

via LAT

Related posts:

• Ted Kennedy Died
• U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara has Died
• Golden Girls star Bea Arthur has Died of Cancer
• Farrah Fawcett Died
• Brittany Murphy Died