Special Olympics Founder Eunice Shriver Dies: Her Biography

Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who is the founder of the Special Olympics and younger sister of President John F. Kennedy, sadly passed away early this morning at the age of 88. According to usatoday.com, she had apparently been hospitalized recently on Cape Cod.

She was born on July 10th, 1921 and was the fifth of nine children. Eunice’s life was full of a lot of heartache. Her eldest brother Joseph was apparently killed in World War II in 1944 and her older sister Kathleen died in a plane crash, only four years after that.

Then assassins gunned down two of her brothers, President Kennedy in 1963 and Robert, who was a presidential candidate at the time, in 1968. Eunice also had a developmentally disabled sister Rosemary, who she loved dearly.

It was for this reason, that Eunice Shriver devoted much of her life to raising money and awareness, to help people with mental disabilities. And in 1956, Eunice became the executive vice president of the Joseph P. Kennedy Foundation.