Ethel Skakel Kennedy

From the Skakels to the Kennedys

Ethel Skakel was born on April 11, 1928, in Chicago, the sixth of seven children of George Skakel, founder of the Great Lakes Carbon Corporation, and Ann Brannack Skakel. The family, wealthy and boisterous, moved to Greenwich, Connecticut, where Ethel grew up an accomplished rider and a fierce competitor at every sport she tried. At Manhattanville College she roomed with Jean Kennedy, who introduced her to her brother Robert.

Ethel and Robert F. Kennedy married on June 17, 1950, at St. Mary's Church in Greenwich. Over the next eighteen years they had eleven children: Kathleen, Joseph, Robert Jr., David, Courtney, Michael, Kerry, Christopher, Max, Douglas and Rory. Their home at Hickory Hill in McLean, Virginia, became famous for its chaos of children, dogs, touch football and visiting statesmen.

Loss and Public Life

Tragedy shadowed her long before 1968. Her parents were killed in a plane crash in 1955 and her brother George in another in 1966. On June 5, 1968, she was beside her husband in the kitchen corridor of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles when he was shot after winning the California primary; he died the following day. She was pregnant with their eleventh child, Rory, who was born that December.

Ethel never remarried. Within months of the assassination she founded what is now Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, and for the rest of her life she used the family's name and her own formidable energy for causes from farmworkers' rights to gun control. President Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014. She buried three of her children and a grandchild: David (1984), Michael (1997), Saoirse Kennedy Hill (2019) and, in 2020, her daughter Maeve and grandson Gideon.

Death

Ethel Kennedy died on October 10, 2024, in Boston, at the age of 96, several days after suffering a stroke. At her death she was survived by nine of her eleven children, 34 grandchildren and 24 great-grandchildren, the largest branch of the Kennedy family.

How many children did Ethel Kennedy have?

Ethel and Robert F. Kennedy had eleven children between 1951 and 1968: Kathleen, Joseph, Robert Jr., David, Courtney, Michael, Kerry, Christopher, Max, Douglas and Rory. Rory was born six months after her father was assassinated.

When did Ethel Kennedy die?

Ethel Kennedy died on October 10, 2024, in Boston, at the age of 96, after a stroke. She had been a widow for 56 years and never remarried.