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Eunice Kennedy Shriver and her family at their best
By: Raechal Leone
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Mon, 08/10/2009 - 17:17
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Privileged, but generous. Powerful, yet willing to empower others.
Eunice Kennedy Shriver represented the very best of the Kennedy family and why we're still fascinated by them.
The sister of former President John F. Kennedy died Tuesday at 88, with her extended family at her side. We shouldn't have expected anything less from a woman who's defining achievement — the creation of the Special Olympics in 1968 — was inspired by a member of her famously tight-knit family.
Shriver's experience with her mentally disabled sister, Rosemary Kennedy, led her to host Camp Shriver, a small-scale version of what would eventually become the Special Olympics, in her backyard beginning in 1962. Today, the camp's grown into an event that brings together 3 million people in 200 countries each year.
All of us have a soft spot for some cause or issue, and we usually do something simple about it, if we do anything at all. We send in $5 or volunteer a couple hours a week or a month, whatever we can squeeze in.
If you're a Kennedy, you have the capability and the responsibility of doing more. As Sen. Ted Kennedy said in a statement following her death, "She understood deeply the lesson our mother and father taught us — much is expected of those to whom much has been given."
It would have been much easier for Ted Kennedy himself to take his chunk of the family fortune and hang out in New York or London on wherever, running his own business with family connections, or ... nothing at all. But he chose to spend the last 47 years and counting in the U.S. Senate, under serious scrutiny.
Of course, he was just following in the footsteps of his brother, Bobby. No one would have faulted the attorney general for stepping out of the national spotlight after his brother was assassinated. Instead, he ran for president himself and helped bring some measure of peace to people following another tragic assassination — that of Martin Luther King Jr.
This is what makes us forgive members of the Kennedy family when they screw up, and they inevitably do, because they're human. We know that they're always fighting for people less fortunate than themselves, so often lending using their influence to give a voice to people without one.
Eunice Kennedy Shriver was no different. Before she started the Special Olympics, she was a social worker in West Virginia and directed a foundation dedicated to her late brother, Joseph P. Kennedy Jr.
She did all that, even though she came from a wealthy family, and was married to a man so successful he was George McGovern's running mate in the 1972 presidential election. She could have thrown herself into taking care of her home and family (five children!) and been content as a socialite in the city of her choice.
But that's not the way Eunice Kennedy Shriver or the Kennedys do things, and for that, we love them.
Raechal Leone is TheLoop21.com's senior editor and writes the Inside the Loop blog.
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