Remembering Eunice Shriver

Eunice Shriver turns 85 years of age, today, making her the oldest surviving child of Rose and Joseph Kennedy. Her famous husband is Sargent Shriver, who was the Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate in 1972, and the Ambassador to France from 1968 to 1970. The Shrivers have 5 children, including Maria Shriver – wife of California Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger.

Eunice actively campaigned for her older brother, John F. Kennedy, during his presidential bid. She also supported Arnold Schwartzenegger’s successful bid for Governor in 2003. Eunice is the only living woman whose face appears on a US coin, the 1995 commemorative Special Olympics silver dollar.

Eunice has been an advocate for those people with special needs and for those people who are handicapped or disabled. She is the Honorary Chairperson of Special Olympics. She is a social worker by trade, and in 1950 she worked as a social worker at Alderson Prison in West Virginia – the same prison Martha Stewart was sentenced to. In 1957 she took over the lead role of the Joseph P. Kennedy Foundation.

Under her leadership of the Joseph P Kennedy Foundation, Eunice was directly responsible for the establishment of Special Olympics in 1968.

Eunice is widely recognized for her work for special needs people, and has been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Ronald Reagon in 1984, The Legion of Honor, and the NCAA Theodore Roosevelt Award. She is also the recipient of the International Olympic Committee Award.

Shriver was directly responsible for the change in thought at the Joseph P Kennedy Foundation. At her bidding, the Foundation moved from looking for ways to prevent mental retardation, to the current philosophy of teaching others to accept those people with intellectual disabilities as contributing members of society. Shriver’s sister Rosemary was mentally retarded.

###

The Washington Post published the following on Friday ...


By Colman McCarthySaturday, July 8, 2006; Page A15

"Hello, my name is Eunice."

"Hello, my name is Eunice."

"Hello, my name is Eunice."
Some of the women looked up from their bowls of oatmeal; some didn't. But the self-introductions went on as Eunice Kennedy Shriver worked her way around the table one Sunday morning at a soup kitchen at Fifth and M Streets NW. It was a January day in the late 1970s, the temperature well below freezing. It was only a little less wintry inside: The furnace in the low-rent building had gone out during the night.

The women with whom Shriver was to share a meal were an assortment of the lost and lonely, the broke and broken. But it wasn't long before the Shriver table throbbed with conversation, much of it spirited. For all any of the homeless women knew or cared, their new table mate, appearing from nowhere and just a tad manic about shaking hands with everyone, was one of them.

Of the dozens of times -- perhaps hundreds going back 40 years -- that I've been in the company of Eunice Shriver, I remember that morning the best. She had called a few days before, asking to come along to the Catholic Worker soup kitchen where I was a volunteer dishwasher. Eunice was intellectually curious about homelessness, then surfacing as a public policy issue. She wanted also to gather information to give to her five children when pushing them to answer the call -- her call, the country's call, God's call -- to service.

Today Eunice Shriver will mark her 85th birthday -- at a dinner at home with her family and friends, after a priest celebrates a Mass of thanksgiving in the living room. Reaching 85 is an odds-defying event considering that twice in the past decade Eunice lay in hospitals critically ill and beyond the ministries of doctors. My friendship with her began in the mid-'60s through her husband, Sargent, for whom I worked and for whom the word ebullient was invented.

Reviewing 40 years, I can't think of any other woman whose commitments to works of mercy and rescue have touched more lives in more parts of the world. Her work with Special Olympics -- the athletic program for people with intellectual disabilities that she began in 1968 and that is now in more than 150 countries with 2.25 million athletes and their families, aided by 500,000 volunteers and coaches -- is the world's largest sports program. A poll taken by the Chronicle of Philanthropy in 1994 reported that Special Olympics ranked first as the nation's most credible nonprofit, well ahead of the Girl Scouts, the Salvation Army and the American Red Cross.

What her energetic and good husband was doing with the Peace Corps in the early 1960s -- inspiring people to give of themselves personally -- Eunice Shriver set out to do for people with mental retardation. After persuading her president brother -- John F. Kennedy -- to involve his administration in the cause, she traveled the world to defeat ignorance and indifference about the disability. Among medical specialists, divisions existed: Problem-describers saw retardation as a genetic or prenatal defect; solution-finders pushed for early intervention and education.
With a sociology degree from Stanford University, Eunice Shriver set out to be a social worker.

Her Roman Catholicism, nourished by the sacraments and the Beatitudes, eased her out of the life of privilege and plenitude into which she was born. It's only speculation, but I believe that Eunice's public life -- the frenzy of endless traveling, fundraising, organizing and cajoling for both the Special Olympics and her lesser-known but equally valuable program, the Community of Caring -- would have burned out long ago had she lacked a grounded spiritual life.

Her public successes were matched by success at home. Given the current cultural drifts, I think the most revolutionary deed anyone can perform is to raise honest, gentle and loving children. The morally driven mothering that Eunice Shriver gave to each of her children has resulted in five adults whose lives, like hers, are marked with public service and free of self-indulgence.

###

Happy Birthday Eunice Shriver!