Eunice Mary Kennedy Shriver (July 10, 1921- August 11, 2009) was a member of the Kennedy family and helped to found Special Olympics in the 1960s as a national organization. Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, she was the fifth of nine children of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. and Rose Kennedy.
Shriver actively campaigned for her elder brother, U.S. President John F. Kennedy, during his successful 1960 U.S. presidential election.
In 1968, she helped Ann McGlone Burke nationalize the Special Olympics movement and is the only woman to have her portrait appear, during her lifetime, on a U.S. coin – the 1995 commemorative Special Olympics silver dollar.
Her daughter, Maria Shriver, is married to actor and politician Arnold Schwarzenegger who is currently Governor of California (elected 2003).
Death of Eunice Shriver
In the early morning of August 11, 2009, Shriver died at Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis, Massachusetts. The immediate cause of her death has not yet been disclosed, but she was 88 years of age and had suffered from Addison’s Disease for many years. The news of her death was first broadcast on MSNBC’s morning show Morning Joe, following an e-mail to Time magazine guest Mark Halperin
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