Ethel Kennedy, 1928 – 2024

Ethel (Skakel) Kennedy, 96, died on Oct. 10. The widow of Robert F. Kennedy (whom she married in 1950), and sister-in-law to President Kennedy, she founded the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights and worked for the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation. Of JFK’s assassination, she said, “Everyone deals with pain at some point, why dwell on it? There were two and a half years when it seemed like change was possible.” Both of her parents died in a plane crash, of course her husband and brother-in-law were murdered, and two of her eleven children died young (a skiing accident, and a drug overdose). Ethel was also the mother of national embarrassment Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.