Who is Eunice Kennedy Shriver

Eunice Kennedy Shriver was Executive Vice President for the Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. Foundation and the Founder and Honorary Chairperson of Special Olympics. For more than three decades, her work involved improving the lives of individuals with intellectual disabilities.

She was born in Brookline, Massachusetts to Joseph P. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, the fifth of nine children. Her brothers included Senators Ted and Robert Kennedy and President John F. Kennedy. But, it was her older sister Rosemary, who was intellectually challenged, that was the impetus for Eunice's founding of Special Olympics. Rosemary died in 2005.

Her sister, Patricia Kennedy Lawford, died in 2006, leaving just her brother, U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy, and her sister, former U.S. Ambassador to Ireland Jean Kennedy Smith, as her surviving siblings.

The Joseph P. Kennedy Foundation was established in 1946 as a memorial to her oldest brother, who was killed in World War II. It's mission is to identify the causes of intellectual disabilities and to improve the ways society deals with this issue.

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Eunice was married for 56 years to Robert Sargent Shriver, Jr. (1915 - 2011). Sargent Shriver was also a man of lifelong public service, including social programs and organizations like Head Start, VISTA, Job Corps, Community Action, Upward Bound, Foster Grandparents, Special Olympics, the National Center on Poverty Law, Legal Services, and the Peace Corps.

He is well known for being the first director of the Peace Corps under President Kennedy. Shriver also ran the War on Poverty during Lyndon Johnson's presidency. In 1972, Shriver was nominated by the Democratic Party as a candidate for Vice President with presidential candidate Senator George McGovern. He has been President and Chairman of the Board of Special Olympics and through his leadership, greatly expanded its programs internationally. Sargent Shriver died in 2011 after a long battle with Alzheimers.

Eunice and Robert had five children:

Robert Sargent Shriver III - (born 1954), an American activist, attorney, journalist and a Democrat member of the Santa Monica City Council in Santa Monica, California.

Maria Shriver - (born 1955), an award-winning American journalist and author, and the First Lady of California. She is married to actor and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Timothy Shriver - (born 1959) is Chairman and CEO of Special Olympics.

Mark Shriver - (born 1964) is a United States Democratic Party politician who served as a member of the Maryland House of Delegates for two consecutive terms, from 1995 to 2003. He currently serves as the Vice President and Managing Director of US Programs for the charity Save the Children.

Anthony Shriver - (born 1965) is an American activist for people with intellectual disabilities. In 1989, he founded Best Buddies International, an international organization that helps people with intellectual disabilities to find employment and social opportunities.

Through Eunice's efforts, the Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. Foundation shifted focus from Catholic charities to research on the causes of mental retardation and humane ways to treat it. Thus, the Special Olympics movement was born.

"We've got to be so proud of what our special friends do and their future," said Shriver, "Their possibility of really bringing to the world something that really resembles peace and hope and faith and love that's what they can do."

Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Special Olympics website.

Photo Credit: Eunice Kennedy Shriver / David Lenz, 2009 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; Commissioned as part of the First Prize, Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2006