In her new book, "Ethel Kennedy: The Extraordinary Life and Bold Legacy," daughter Kerry Kennedy writes about a woman who maintained positivity and resilience despite numerous public and private tragedies.
Kerry Kennedy, the daughter of Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Skakel Kennedy, was asked to describe her mother. She replied, "Extraordinarily chic, fun, funny, fully alive."
Kerry says that most people don't know very much about her mom's life. She calls it "a story of wonder and beauty and inspiration."
But not of self-reflection. As Ethel herself said in a 2012 HBO documentary, "Ethel," "Introspection? I hate it."
She grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, the daughter of a self-made millionaire. When she and her college roommate (who happened to be Jean Kennedy) decided that their two families should meet for a ski vacation, Ethel developed a big crush on Robert Kennedy, only to learn he was dating her sister. "Yes, he unfortunately was looking in a different direction," Kerry said.
Not for long! Robert and Ethel were married in 1950. This photo, now appearing on the cover of Kerry Kennedy's loving memoir about her mom, "Ethel Kennedy: The Extraordinary Life and Bold Legacy" (to be published Tuesday), inspired the Taylor Swift song "StarLight." "They had a truly extraordinary love story, but a real partnership," said Kerry.
Their first of 11 children was born in 1951; Kerry is number seven. In all, Ethel Kennedy was pregnant for 99 months, or more than eight years. "Yes, but my mother often would say that if she could do anything differently, she would have more children," Kerry said.
And though Ethel Kennedy grew up in a family of Republicans, she was a Democrat through-and-through.
This photo, taken the night John F. Kennedy was elected president, shows JFK, RFK and Ethel at the family compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts looking at the election returns.
Hyannis Port was the center for Robert and his brothers and sisters growing up. By the time Robert became his brother's attorney general, at age 35, much of the action switched to Hickory Hill, in the Washington suburbs, where Bobby and Ethel's children were included in all aspects of family life. That even meant going to the Attorney General's Office, where her father put a young Kerry on the phone with one of his deputies during a civil rights crisis.
But then, on November 22, 1963, JFK was assassinated. As Ethel said in the documentary, "It was like Daddy had lost both arms. It was six months of just blackness."
Kerry said, "My mother was the opposite. She gave him that space to be able to grieve. But she had all those children at home, and she was going to be there with us, driving the carpools, saying prayers every night."
And by 1964, Robert F. Kennedy would win the race for the U.S. Senate in New York. Just four years later, he would announce his run for the White House, in opposition to President Lyndon Johnson's support for the Viet Nam War.
Asked if Ethel were afraid for her husband, after what happened to his brother, Kerry replied, "Fear was not part of the equation for her. Would have been for me, but it wasn't for her."
When Kerry Kennedy was eight years old, after her father won the California Democratic primary, Robert F. Kennedy was felled by an assassin's bullet. Ethel Kennedy's heart was broken, and yet, Kerry said, "She was getting up the next day and forging ahead. That's how she lived her life. She was mighty."
Ethel threw herself into raising her children; and she founded what's now known as the Robert and Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center, dedicated to fighting oppression at home and around the world.
But she had her fair share of additional sorrows. Her son Michael died in 1997 in a skiing accident. Another son, David, died in 1984 from a drug overdose.
And then there is the controversial topic of Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who not only endorsed Donald Trump for president, but is now a member of his cabinet. Kerry said, "What was really most important to my mother, and to my father and to all of us, is our love. I love Bobby with all my heart. I just disagree with everything he says and does. My mother was like that. She had a comfort level of being on the other side of Bobby, but still being able to love him."
Kerry, who has called for her brother's resignation, says she still loves him: "Of course, I love him. But I don't think that somebody should be the Secretary of Health and Human Services who is saying we shouldn't use vaccines."
In 2014 President Obama honored Ethel Kennedy with the Medal of Freedom for her dedication to Human Rights, calling her "a force for change in her quiet, flashy, unflashy unstoppable way. As her family will tell you – and they basically occupy this half of the room – you don't mess with Ethel."
Ethel Kennedy died on October 10, 2024 at age 96.
"There was so much loss," said Kerry, "so much loss in her life. And then she came out the other side, and with this extraordinary joy. All the last years of her life she kept repeating, aren't we lucky?"
READ AN EXCERPT: "Ethel Kennedy: The Extraordinary Life and Bold Legacy" by Kerry Kennedy
Story produced by Sara Kugel. Editor: Lauren Barnello.