Eunice Mary Kennedy Shriver (July 10, 1921 – August 11, 2009) was an American philanthropist and a member of the Kennedy family. She was the founder of the Special Olympics, a sports organization for persons with intellectual disabilities. For her efforts on behalf of disabled people, Shriver was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1984.
She was a sister of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, U.S. Senators Robert F. Kennedy and Edward Kennedy, Rosemary Kennedy, and U.S. Ambassador to Ireland Jean Kennedy Smith, mother of journalist and author Maria Shriver, sister-in-law of Jacqueline Kennedy as well as the mother-in-law of Arnold Schwarzenegger. She was married to Sargent Shriver, who was the United States Ambassador to France and was one of the two Democratic nominees for Vice President of the United States in 1972.
Early life, education, and early career
Eunice Mary Kennedy was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, on July 10, 1921. She was the fifth of nine children of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., and Rose Fitzgerald. Her siblings included U.S. President and Senator John F. Kennedy, U.S. Attorney General and U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy, U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy, and U.S. Ambassador to Ireland Jean Kennedy Smith.
Eunice Kennedy was educated at the Convent of The Sacred Heart, Roehampton (in London), and Manhattanville College. After graduating from Stanford University in 1943 with a Bachelor of Science degree in sociology, she moved to Washington, D.C. and worked for the Special War Problems Division of the U.S. State Department. Kennedy eventually moved to the U.S. Justice Department as executive secretary for a project dealing with juvenile delinquency. During her time in Washington, she shared a townhouse in Georgetown with her brother John, then a U.S. Congressman. Kennedy served as a social worker at the Federal Industrial Institution for Women for one year before moving to Chicago in 1951 to work with the House of the Good Shepherd women's shelter and Chicago Juvenile Court.
Charity work and awards
Shriver became executive vice president of the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation in 1957. She shifted the organization's focus from Catholic charities to research on the causes of intellectual disabilities, and humane ways to treat them. This interest eventually culminated in, among other things, the Special Olympics movement.
A long-time advocate for children's health and disability issues, Shriver championed the creation of the President's Panel on Mental Retardation in 1961. The panel was significant in the movement from institutionalization to community integration in the US and throughout the world. Shriver was a key founder of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), a part of the National Institutes of Health in 1962. She has also helped to establish numerous other university programs, government initiatives, health-care facilities, and support service networks throughout the country.
In 1962, Shriver founded Camp Shriver, a camp for children with special needs that was held on her Maryland farm. Camp Shriver later evolved into the Special Olympics. Shriver founded the Special Olympics in 1968. That year, the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation helped to plan and fund the First International Special Olympics Summer Games, held in Chicago, Illinois. In her speech at the opening ceremony, Shriver said, "'The Chicago Special Olympics prove a very fundamental fact, the fact that exceptional children — children with mental retardation — can be exceptional athletes, the fact that through sports they can realize their potential for growth.'" Special Olympics Inc. was established as a nonprofit charity in 1968; since that time, nearly three million athletes have participated.
In 1969, Shriver moved to France and pursued her interest in intellectual disability there. She started organizing small activities with Paris organizations, mostly reaching out to families of kids who had special needs to provide activities for them, laying the foundation for a robust international expansion of the Special Olympics in the late 1970s and 1980s.
In 1982, Shriver founded the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Center for Community of Caring at University of Utah, Salt Lake City. The Community is a "grades K-12, whole school, comprehensive character education program with a focus on disabilities... adopted by almost 1,200 schools nationwide and in Canada".