The NY Times now reporting that Special Olympics founder Eunice Kennedy Shriver has died at age 88.
Her family said in a statement that Shriver, had died after she was hospitalized in Hyannis, the Massachusetts town on Cape Cod synonymous with the Kennedy dynasty.
"Her work transformed the lives of hundreds of millions of people across the globe and they in turn are her living legacy," the family said referring to her work with the disabled.
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Shriver started the Special Olympics Games in 1968 to foster fitness and self-esteem for those with mental retardation and advocated in Washington for her cause well into her eighties. The event has grown to include 190 nations.
Her concern for the mentally handicapped was attributed to her relationship with older sister Rosemary, who was said to have been mildly retarded and spent the majority of her life in a long-term care facility after a lobotomy.
UPDATED
Here's some more biographical material on Mrs. Shriver from her Wikipedia entry:
A longtime advocate for children's health and disability issues, Shriver was a key founder of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), a part of the National Institutes of Health, in 1962, and has also helped to establish numerous other health-care facilities and support networks throughout the country.
In 1968, Shriver founded the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Center for Community of Caring at The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah.
She was awarded the nation's highest civilian award, the (U.S.) Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 1984 by U.S. President Ronald Reagan, because of her work on behalf of those with mental retardation.[6]
For her work in founding the Special Olympics, Shriver received the Civitan International World Citizenship Award.[7] Her advocacy on this issue has also earned her other awards and recognitions, including honorary degrees from numerous universities.[8][9]
Shriver received the 2002 Theodore Roosevelt Award, an annual award given by the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
In 2008, the U.S. Congress changed the NICHD’s name to the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
On 9 May 2009, the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., unveiled a historic portrait of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the first portrait the Gallery has ever commissioned of an individual who had not served as a U.S. President or First Lady. The portrait of Mrs. Shriver depicts her with four Special Olympics athletes (including Loretta Claiborne) and one Best Buddies participant and was painted by David Lenz, the winner of the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition in 2006. As part of the Portrait Competition prize, the National Portrait Gallery commissions a work from the winning artist to depict a living subject for the collection. Lenz, whose son, Sam, has Down syndrome and is an enthusiastic Special Olympics athlete, was inspired by Mrs. Shriver’s dedication to working with people with intellectual disabilities.
UPDATE #2
Here's material from the Boston.com obituary:
In recent years, breathless news stories chronicling the parties and pregnancies of youth and marriage have given way to dispatches detailing the infirmities of age. In the past decade, she has suffered illnesses, injuries, and hospitalizations, and her husband suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. With her death, only two Kennedy siblings, the senator and Jean Kennedy Smith, remain from the storied clan.
Even in her 80s, awards and honorary degrees continued to steadily arrive for Mrs. Shriver. Three years ago, Pope Benedict XVI named her a dame of the Order of St. Gregory in recognition of her public service.
Her name carried clout in Washington, too. US Senator Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican who often reaches across the political divide to work with Edward Kennedy on healthcare bills, has called Mrs. Shriver ‘‘the nicest person in the whole family,’’ someone deserving of sainthood.
Whenever the two senators hit an impasse because of their different perspectives, Hatch would threaten to call Mrs. Shriver, a tactic he said always worked.
‘‘I would say, ‘Teddy, I’m going to see Eunice.’ He’d say, ‘Oh, don’t do that!’ He knows Eunice likes me. She’d get all, ‘Why are you being mean to that young senator?’’’ Hatch, who is 75, recalled in an interview last year. ‘‘He’d say, ‘Don’t! We’ll work it out’ When I was willing to call Eunice, I was serious.’’
Through the years, relatives inevitably helped define her public image — first her powerful father, then her politician brothers, her daughter, Maria, a former television news anchor, and her son-in-law, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California. But ultimately, Mrs. Shriver’s legacy remains etched in her deeds — and in the photos of her playing touch football barefoot in a dress, welcoming developmentally disabled children to the US embassy in France, and opening numerous events for the Special Olympics.
‘‘When she takes an interest in the problems of mentally retarded children ... she does not give ‘pink teas’ or stage society dances with social friends to raise money,’’ Sargent Shriver wrote of his wife in the Globe on Oct. 15, 1972. ‘‘Instead, she plays with the children themselves; she works with them; she visits their houses; she starts camps for them and then works in the camps herself."