Eunice Kennedy Shriver

Philanthropist

• Born: July 10, 1921
• Birthplace: Brookline, Massachusetts
• Died: August 11, 2009
• Place of death: Hyannis, Massachusetts

Significance: Philanthropist Eunice Kennedy Shriver founded the Special Olympics and persuaded the US government to establish and fund programs promoting children’s health and human development.

Background

Eunice Kennedy Shriver was born Eunice Mary Kennedy on July 10, 1921, in Brookline, Massachusetts, to Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy and Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. The fifth of nine children, she grew up in an affluent and politically prominent family. Her father, a banker and investor, later served as the United States ambassador to Great Britain and a chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Joseph Kennedy placed great emphasis on public service. Three of her brothers would later hold public offices. These included John, who served as the United States Senator from Massachusetts, as well as the thirty-fifth president of the United States. Her brother Robert was the United States Attorney General during the Kennedy and the early Johnson administrations. He would later serve in the United States Senate, representing the state of New York. The third, Edward “Teddy” Kennedy, would likewise become a United States senator from Massachusetts.

During her childhood, Shriver lived in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, and London, England. She was a student at Connecticut's Convent of the Sacred Heart School. Like most of her siblings, Shriver was athletic and engaged in multiple sports, including sailing, tennis, skiing, swimming, and football. She was a close playmate to her oldest sibling, Rosemary, who had Intellectual or Developmental Disability (IDD). In 1941, when Rosemary was in her twenties, she had a prefrontal lobotomy, which left her unable to speak or walk, and she was subsequently institutionalized. Rosemary’s experiences deeply influenced Shriver’s efforts as an IDD advocate and philanthropist.

Shriver attended Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart (later Manhattanville College) and Stanford University. She graduated from the latter in 1943 with a Bachelor of Science in sociology.

Public Service, Advocacy, and Philanthropy

Shriver began her career working a variety of jobs in the public service sector. From 1943 to 1945, she worked with former prisoners of war at the US State Department’s Special War Problems Division. From 1947 to 1948, she was an executive secretary for the US Department of Justice’s National Conference on Prevention and Control of Juvenile Delinquency. In 1950, she was a social worker at a women’s federal penitentiary in West Virginia. In 1951, she moved to Chicago, where she worked first as a social worker for the House of the Good Shepherd, a shelter for women, and then at the Chicago Juvenile Court.

In 1957, Shriver joined the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation, which had been founded nearly a decade earlier to memorialize her oldest brother, a bomber pilot killed in World War II. Although her official title was executive vice president rather than president, she served as the foundation’s director. She established two primary goals for the foundation: to improve the lives of people with IDDs and to identify and prevent IDDs.

In the 1950s and 1960s, people with IDDs often were hidden from society. They typically were institutionalized, and the prevalent medical model was to care for their basic physical needs with little attention to their intellectual, social, or psychological needs. In 1958, Shriver toured the United States and visited institutions that cared for individuals with IDDs. Appalled by the conditions she observed and the treatment of people with IDDs, she persuaded her older brother, President John F. Kennedy, to form the Panel on Mental Retardation (as IDD was known at the time; the term has since come to be considered derogatory) in 1961. Made up of physicians, educators, and members of national associations on IDDs, it investigated how people with such disabilities were treated in the United States. It soon recommended that the government fund research on the prevention of IDDs, establish federal programs in special education, and fund professional development for IDD specialists.

As a result, Congress created the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in 1962. Five years later, a network of more than a dozen IDD research centers was established at major medical schools. These research centers became known as the Eunice Kennedy Shriver Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Centers. In 1971, centers for the study of medical ethics were established at Harvard University and Georgetown University.

In 1962, Shriver also created Camp Shriver, a summer camp for children IDDs at her family’s estate in Maryland. With funding from the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation, the camp provided a wide array of recreational activities, including horseback riding, sailing, swimming, and soccer games. Shriver also invited park district and school officials to visit the camp, to show that children with IDDs could engage in—and benefit—from the same type of activities as other children.

Camp Shriver’s success led to the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation organizing the First International Special Olympics Summer Games in 1968. At the games, which were held that July in Chicago, about a thousand individuals with IDDs from the United States and Canada participated in swimming and track and field events. Later that year, Shriver established the Special Olympics as a nonprofit charitable organization. Games were held every other year, with an increasing number of participants and competitions. The games expanded to other countries, and by 2019, athletes from a record-breaking 195 countries participated in the Special Olympics Games. Shriver served as the chair of the Special Olympics through 1995 and was an honorary chairperson until her death in 2009.

Political Campaigns

Shriver was an active participant in the senate and presidential political campaigns of her three brothers. She likewise assisted in efforts for the vice-presidential candidacy of her husband Robert Shriver in 1972. Shriver extended her support to her-then son-in-law Arnold Schwarzenegger during his successful 2003 campaign for the California governorship. Shriver also promoted a variety of political causes during her lifetime.

Personal Life

Shriver and Robert Sargent Shriver Jr. were married on May 23, 1953. Her husband was a lawyer who later served as the first director of the Peace Corps and of the Office of Economic Opportunity, as well as US ambassador to France. They had five children: Robert Sargent Shriver III, Maria Owings Shriver Schwarzenegger, Timothy Perry Shriver, Mark Kennedy Shriver, and Anthony Paul Kennedy Shriver.

Shriver passed away on August 11, 2009 after a period of declining health. The Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN) posthumously named Shriver its 2017 Arthur Ashe Courage Award recipient for her pioneering efforts with the United States Special Olympics.

Impact

The Special Olympics are Eunice Kennedy Shriver’s most often recognized accomplishment, but an equally significant legacy is that she changed public perceptions of people with IDDs. Her work helped make it possible for them to have greater access to education, health services, and athletic opportunities. In 2007, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development was renamed the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, to honor Shriver for her efforts.

Bibliography

Baranauckas, Carla. “Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Influential Founder of Special Olympics, Dies at 88.” The New York Times, 11 Aug. 2009, www.nytimes.com/2009/08/12/us/12shriver.html. Accessed 12 Feb. 2020.

“Establishment of the NICHD.” Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, US Dept. of Health and Human Services / National Institutes of Health, 30 Dec. 2017, www.nichd.nih.gov/about/history/establishment. Accessed 12 Feb. 2020.

“Eunice Kennedy Shriver.” Eunice Kennedy Shriver: One Woman’s Vision, 2012, www.eunicekennedyshriver.org/bios/eks. Accessed 12 Feb. 2020.

"Eunice Kennedy Shriver." John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/the-kennedy-family/eunice-kennedy-shriver. Accessed 5 Apr. 2023.

"Eunice Kennedy Shriver: 1921-2009" The Los Angeles Times, www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-eunice-kennedy-shriver-pictures-photogallery. Accessed 5 Apr. 2023.

"Eunice Kennedy Shriver” Special Olympics, 2023, www.specialolympics.org/eunice-kennedy-shriver. Accessed 5 Apr. 2023.

McCallum, Jack. “Small Steps, Great Strides.” Sports Illustrated, 8 Dec. 2008, www.eunicekennedyshriver.org/bios/si. Accessed 12 Feb. 2020.

McNamara, Eileen. Eunice: The Kennedy Who Changed the World. Simon & Schuster, 2018.

McNamara. Eileen. “Eunice Kennedy Shriver: The Hidden Kennedy Powerhouse.” The Saturday Evening Post, Jan./Feb. 2019, www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2019/02/eunice-kennedy-shriver-the-hidden-kennedy-powerhouse/. Accessed 20 Jan. 2020.