Eunice Kennedy Shriver Dead: A Life in Activism
by ERICA LIEPMANN, Causecast Editor
Eunice Kennedy Shriver is best known as part of one of America’s most influential political families – sister of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy and mother of Maria Shriver, the wife of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. With her death, Shriver leaves behind a legacy of activism for mentally disabled people the world over.
Through her experiences with her mentally handicapped older sister, Rosemary Kennedy, Eunice Kennedy Shriver became committed to the cause of advocacy for her sister and other mentally disabled people like her. In the 1960s, mental retardation was a source of shame for families, in large part due to the belief that parents were at fault for their child’s abnormality. Standing by their sister, the Kennedy siblings worked to change the national perception of mentally handicapped people.
As a dedicated supporter of people with disabilities, Shriver used her political know-how to establish the Special Olympics over 40 years ago. The Special Olympics is an international nonprofit organization that creates a social community for mentally disabled people through athletic competitions. The competitions are also personally rewarding for individual competitors, boosting their self-image in a positive way. Like the traditional Olympic Games, the Special Olympics World Games take place every two years, with disabled athletes participating from nations all over the world.
The Special Olympics organization has long viewed respect for the disabled as a question of upholding human rights, often withheld from the disabled as a persecuted minority among the world population. At the February 2009 Special Olympics Winter Games, Vice President Joe Biden echoed this sentiment with his declaration that advocacy for the mentally handicapped is a civil rights movement. Thanks to the movement catalyzed by Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the perception of the mentally disabled has changed drastically in the last 40 years, a feat for which her legacy will live on.
Photo from Wikipedia Commons.
- Posted by Causecast
Related causes: Human Rights, Community
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Hers has thus far been a life of privilege, but that privilege was used to serve the greater good, as she had done great work and given many cash advances to good causes. The world needs more like Eunice Kennedy.Read more http://personalmoneystore.com/moneyblog/2009/08/07/eunice-kennedy-shriver/
Eunice Kennedy has been hospitalized, and is reportedly dead. Eunice Kennedy, better known as Eunice Kennedy Shriver, is the wife of Robert Sargent Shriver, and the sister of John F. Kennedy, and therefore Robert, Rose, and Edward. She helped found the Peace Corps and the Special Olympics, and her oldest daughter, one of five children she had with Robert, is First Lady of California, Maria Shriver, who married Arnold Schwarzenegger. Hers has thus far been a life of privilege, but that privilege was used to serve the greater good, as she had done great work and given many cash advances to good causes. The world needs more like Eunice Kennedy.