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Eunice Kennedy’s Lasting Legacy

United States of Kennedy

Mon Mar 23 2026

Summary

United States of Kennedy: "Eunice Kennedy’s Lasting Legacy"

Episode Release Date: March 23, 2026
Hosts: George Civeris & Julia Claire
Guest: Eileen McNamara (Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author of Eunice: The Kennedy Who Changed the World)

Episode Overview

This episode of United States of Kennedy spotlights Eunice Kennedy Shriver, a lesser-known but extraordinarily impactful Kennedy sibling. Often overshadowed by her famous brothers, Eunice’s work—particularly in advancing civil rights for those with intellectual disabilities—has revolutionized American social policy and shaped global perceptions. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Eileen McNamara joins George and Julia to discuss Eunice’s colorful life, her uniquely forceful character, and her overlooked contributions that transcend the Special Olympics.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Historical Erasure and Why Eunice Matters

Underrated Legacy: Despite establishing the Special Olympics, Eunice’s achievements are often overlooked—even her Wikipedia page remains scant compared to her brothers' profiles.

“She created a civil rights movement for people with disabilities that has had more impact... than anything that the Kennedy men did in their lifetimes.” – Eileen McNamara [06:19]
Kennedy Gender Divide: Her under-recognition is attributed to being a Kennedy woman in a patriarchal family more focused on their sons' political ambitions.

“Joe Kennedy was a man of his era... his daughters were basically decorative accessories to their brothers’ political careers. And of all the girls, Eunice was not buying it.” – Eileen McNamara [06:19]

Eunice’s Personality & Motivation

Driven by Rage and Justice: Contrary to the “kind heiress” trope, Eunice’s passion stemmed from personal anger and injustice—especially her sister Rosemary’s treatment.

“She did not come into her life’s work out of this feeling of noblesse oblige. She came to it out of her rage about how her sister was treated.” – Eileen McNamara [06:19]
Relentless Force: Known for her demanding nature, irascibility, and high expectations, she routinely startled even seasoned politicians.

“She was hell on wheels. That’s why the Special Olympics, although it’s an enormous accomplishment, is the least of it.” – Eileen McNamara [11:15]
Memorable Anecdote:

“When the planes hit the Pentagon on 9/11... she said, ‘Don’t send anybody home. We have work to do. The work doesn’t stop just because those planes hit the towers and hit the Pentagon.’” [11:15]

Transforming the Kennedy Foundation

From Memorial to Powerhouse: Initially a gesture by Joe Sr. to commemorate his late son, the foundation became a force for disability rights under Eunice’s leadership.

“Eunice hijacked the Kennedy foundation and transformed it into an effective advocacy organization...” – Julia Claire [28:41]
Political Savvy: Eunice used her family’s influence to secure landmark changes (e.g., the first Presidential Commission on mental retardation).

“Jack Kennedy didn’t know who those experts were. Eunice packed that commission with the best people in the country in all kinds of fields. She ran it.” – Eileen McNamara [29:06]

Behind-the-Scenes Power

Political Agency: Though never a public official, Eunice wielded tremendous clout, drafting legislation and mobilizing politicians through sheer force of will.

“She was the definition of impolitic. She, especially in this era, could never survive in politics, but behind the scenes—getting stuff done—yeah, that’s Eunice.” – Eileen McNamara [32:56]
Famously Ruthless: Compared directly to male political bulldogs of her era, she didn’t get credit for her “ruthlessness” because she was a woman.

“If that girl had been born with balls, she would have made a great president.” – Joe Kennedy Sr., as quoted by Eileen McNamara [35:51]

Expanding the Legacy: Beyond Special Olympics

Lasting Policy Impact:
- Established the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, now credited with saving countless premature babies.
  
  “...babies do not die of high line memory [membrane disease]. They live. And they live because of the research that was done at the institute that today is named the Eunice Kennedy Shriver Institute.” – Eileen McNamara [37:16]
- Advocated for intellectual disabilities to be included in the Americans with Disabilities Act, fundamentally shifting federal disability policy.
International Reach: Special Olympics operates in over 200 countries with millions of participants.

“It started as a summer camp in her backyard in 1961... Now it’s in 200 countries, millions of children around the world, millions of volunteers...” – Eileen McNamara [69:05]

Complex Personal & Family Dynamics

Contradictions as a Woman and Mother:
- Publicly promoted traditional family values but lived a life of unconventional female empowerment and career focus.
- Strictly policed her children's behavior to avoid Kennedy family pitfalls, sending her children across the country when they got into trouble.
  
  “She put a continent between her kid and those kids.” – Eileen McNamara [42:05]
- Her marriage to Sargent Shriver was a true partnership in activism—though she “never really wanted to be married” and was inspired by the independence of nuns.
  
  “She wanted to be a nun... because those were the most powerful women that she had experienced in her lives.” – Eileen McNamara [51:13]
Family Loyalty and Limits:
- Privately acknowledged and joked about her father’s infidelities; publicly, she was fiercely loyal and defensive of family reputation.
“Were you to publicly criticize a member of her family for their randy behavior, she would have been down your throat.” – Eileen McNamara [55:53]
Resentment of Being Overlooked:
- Eunice herself pointedly critiqued being ignored:
  
  “‘Isn’t it lovely that after all these years of celebrating the Kennedy men, somebody noticed?’” – Eileen McNamara [32:56]

Evolving Disability Rights and the Special Olympics

Changing Terminology and Attitudes:
- Language and perceptions of disability have evolved since Eunice’s era; her “special friends” language, while dated, reflected her times.
  
  “Would we call it the Special Olympics now? No, they’re not special like she called them then...” – Eileen McNamara [78:55]
Drama at Her Funeral:
- Special Olympians honored her by spontaneously putting medals in her grave, marking the deep global impact she had on their lives.
  
  “There were Special Olympians who took off their gold medal and dropped them into her grave.” – Eileen McNamara [73:10]
Contrast to Family Narrative:
- While her brothers’ legacies often depended on “winning,” Eunice’s legacy was built on “participation is everything”—the foundation of the Special Olympics ethos.
  
  “The Special Olympics is built on the foundation idea that participation is everything.” – Eileen McNamara [74:09]

Complicated Political Legacy

On Abortion and Faith:
- A passionate Catholic and consistently “pro-life,” Eunice also opposed the death penalty and held deep religious convictions that shaped her work.
  
  “She opposes the death penalty, too. She’s a Catholic... She thought that abortion was murder, and that’s the teaching of the Catholic Church, and she accepted that teaching.” – Eileen McNamara [78:55]
Controversy Within the Family:
- Eileen contends that RFK Jr.’s public stances, especially his anti-vaccine work and regressive disability rhetoric, directly betray Eunice’s life’s work.
  
  “There’s lots of ways in which Robert Kennedy Jr. has betrayed his family’s legacy. But I don’t think he’s betrayed anyone more than he has betrayed Eunice...” – Eileen McNamara [76:53]

Notable Quotes & Moments

On her unique power:

“Orrin Hatch told me that he would hear her five minutes before she arrived... She never made an appointment... She just barged past his secretaries and into his office.” – Eileen McNamara [13:10]
On Eunice’s public perception:

“If she had been a man, all those less desirable qualities would have been assets for her.” – Julia Claire [34:37]
On social change without public office:

“She did more in her lifetime than... a number of people that are sitting on Capitol Hill right now.” – Eileen McNamara [32:56]
On Special Olympics origins:

“She went to the local prison and asked them to send her prisoners... In 1961, there was no background check.” – Eileen McNamara [69:05]

Timestamps for Important Segments

[03:39] — Eunice’s introduction and significance
[06:19] — Eunice’s motivation for advocacy and her break with Kennedy tradition
[11:15] — Her relentless personality & staff anecdotes
[13:10] — Political clout and “hell on wheels” stories
[28:41] — The transformation of the Kennedy Foundation
[35:51] — “If that girl had been born with balls, she would have made a Great president”
[37:16] — Lasting policy and medical research impact
[42:05] — Shriver vs. Kennedy family dynamics
[51:13] — On wanting to become a nun and independence
[55:53] — On awareness and response to family scandals
[69:05] — Special Olympics origin and global spread
[73:10] — Special Olympians honoring Eunice at her funeral
[74:09] — The philosophy of participation over victory
[76:53] — RFK Jr.'s betrayal of Eunice's legacy
[78:55] — Evolving disability terminology/politics and Eunice's place in history

Conclusion

Eunice Kennedy Shriver’s legacy stands as a testament to individual agency, passionate advocacy, and the often-overlooked power of women to shape policy and culture. Her relentless energy, unapologetic forcefulness, and deeply held values built institutions and protections for intellectual disabilities that far outlast the political dynasties surrounding her. This episode not only reframes Eunice as the Kennedy “who changed the world,” but inspires a reevaluation of how we remember, reward, and retell the stories of women who make history.

For a more detailed account of Eunice’s life and impact, check out Eileen McNamara’s book, “Eunice: The Kennedy Who Changed the World.”

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Transcript

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Eileen McNamara (6:19)

Well, first of all, to address why she hasn't been recognized for her contributions. She's a Kennedy woman. She is not a Kennedy man. And what drew me to her was I was a reporter or a columnist at the Boston Globe for 30 years. And you can't have a position like that in Boston and not have come across the Kennedys many, many times. And she was a force of nature, Eunice. If you covered a press conference by her, you paid attention, because if you were distracted, she called you up for it. And like you, I think when I started my research, I thought about the Special Olympics, and I had the misunderstanding of Eunice that I thought she was Lady Bountiful, you know, a kind, empathetic heiress who spent her life devoted to children with intellectual disabilities. That is exactly not who Eunice Kennedy Shriver was. She did not come into her life's work out of this feeling of noblesse obliv. She came to it out of her age about how her sister was treated, about how her mother was unable to find services for her daughter who had intellectual disabilities, compounded, of course, by the father's decision to lobotomize her when she was a young woman. And I think that's what fueled her all her life. But from the beginning of her life, Eunice Kennedy Shriver was a voice to be reckoned with. Joe Kennedy was a man of his era, so he focused all his attention on the futures of his sons. And his daughters were basically decorative accessories to their brother's. Political careers. And of all the girls, Eunice was not buying it. And her father thought he could buy her off in a way by putting her in charge of the Kennedy foundation, which was named for Joe Kennedy Jr. Who died tragically in World War II. And this foundation was created in his name, but it had no real focus until Joe Sr. Turned it over to unit. It's interesting when you look at the history of that foundation, which did more in the private sector to help people with intellectual disabilities than anyone in the federal government did in the 1940s and 50s. But if you look at their letterhead from the outset, the president of the foundation is Isa Joe, or it's Jack or it's Bobby, or it's Teddy. And I'm here to tell you that none of those men had anything to do with the Kennedy Foundation. Eunice ran it. Eunice focused it exclusively on issues of intellectual disability. And she understood from the beginning of her life that her boys would be out front and she would be the anonymous person behind the. But behind the scenes, she created a civil rights movement for people with disability that has had more impact, I'm here to say, than anything that the Kennedy men did in their lifetimes.

Eileen McNamara (11:15)

But I think that was compounded by, you know, her mother had an obsession about weight, and I think Eunice had an eating disorder all of her life, and she wasn't like a particularly healthy person, but she was relentless, absolutely relentless. She went through assistance the way you and I would go through tissues if we had a really bad head cold. People that worked for her told me just amazing stories about her expectations that were beyond belief. That came out of this sense that she had that everyone should care as passionately about this issue as she did, and nobody could. For instance, when the planes hit the Pentagon on 9 11, she hadn't come into work yet, the Kennedy foundation, but she called in from home, and the woman who was the executive director said, well, I'm going to send everyone home because what's happening? And she said, don't send anybody home. We have work to do. The work doesn't stop just because those planes hit the towers and hit the Pentagon. Now, the executive director sent everybody home. But that was who Eunice was. She was just. She was hell on wheel. And that's why the Special Olympics, although it's an enormous accomplishment, is the least of it. I don't think that people really understand that until 1975, a child with intellectual disabilities in the United States did not have a legal right to a feat in a public school classroom, let alone be mainstreamed with other kids without disability. Eunice Kennedy Shriver made those things happen. The Americans for Disabilities act originally was about people with physical disabilities. So we have sidewalk curbs for people who are in wheelchairs, which is a wonderful accomplishment. But Lowell Weiker was a Republican who really championed that as a senator from Connecticut who was like a moving force behind that legislation. In 1990, that bill got a lot bigger when Eunice showed up in his office and said, lowell, I don't see anything in this bill about people with intellectual disability. And as it happened, Senator Weicker had a son, Sonny, who had intellectual disability. So he was well acquainted with Eunice and this issue. And suddenly that bill was rewritten, and it was rewritten by the force of her personality. Legislation passed between 1961, when John Kennedy went to the White House, and her death, that passed because just as forceful as she was with her poor suffering assistance, she was that way on the Hill. She was absolutely that way. When she went to a senator's office, Orrin Hatch told me that he would hear her five minutes before she arrived in our voice, that kind of voice, and he would hear her down the hall. She never made an appointment to see him, and she never asked him for anything. She just barged past his secretaries and into his office. And told him, I've written this bill and Teddy is going to carry it for the Democrats and I need a Republican and Oren wannabe. You people did what she asked to do.

Eileen McNamara (22:25)

Well, that's a good question. You have a lot you packed into that. But if I could go back a little bit to where you started, I mean Eunice is distinguished from the other Kennedy women in that she had a very serious higher education. She went to Stanford. I mean, I know the Kennedy men went to Harvard la dee da. But the fact of the matter Is the other Kennedy women were sent off to Sacred Heart convent schools, as Eunice was initially. She went to Manhattanville in New York initially, but she transferred, at Jack's urging, to Stanford. And then when she moved to Chicago, she studied at the Chicago School, you know, at University of Chicago, where sociology was really born. I mean, all of the great practitioners were there. She worked as a social worker in a detention facility for wayward girls. You know, what does that mean? I mean, it means somebody was pregnant who was not married. Petty thieves, not serious criminals, but they were incarcerated at this convention as if they were. And they worked in a laundry just like the Magdalene sisters did in Ireland with people. They had a pretty tough road to ho there. And she was somebody who tried to transition them from their unfortunate circumstances back into society. She saw potential in them. She was a serious, thoughtful person. She came out of a family where, as you've examined in your podcast, excellence was expected of everyone. And the record shows that Rosemary was born with minor, really what we would think of today as minor intellectual disability. She didn't have down syndrome. She was not severely impacted by whatever it was that caused her illness. Now, I've read all kinds of fanciful reasons for why she was born with intellectual disabilities, including the farcical idea that the doctor or the nurse told Rose to cross her legs and not give birth until the obstetrician arrived for the home birth. Anybody who's had a baby knows that that's not possible. She wasn't deprived of oxygen because Rose crossed her legs. The Spanish flu was pretty prevalent at the time. I don't know if Rose was affected. That's not in the historical record. We don't know what caused her issues. But I think that the most you would say about Rosemary is that she was slow. But she went to garden parties in London when her father was the ambassador to the Court of St. James alone. She was holding conversations with other young adults. You can see in the films that I examined at the Kennedy Library from that era, there is nobody walking around sheltering her. So she doesn't embarrass the family. She could hold her own. The tragedy of Rosemary's life was stablobotomy. As far as we can tell, no one knew that he was going to do that, including Rose, and that he told them when it was over and was a disastrous result. She was non verbal, she fairly mobile after that lobotomy. And then the real tragedy is what followed, where she was exiled from the family and in order to promote the boys political careers and their futures. She was sidelined and never spoken again or when spoken about, was lied about that she was teaching in a school for children with intellectual disability when, in fact, she was at St. Helena's as a resident. Eunice was getting ready to go to Stanford when her father had that operation done on Rosemary. She did not go to Stanford because she was traumatized and had to get to the other side of the country. She had delayed her entry there. She was already on a path to go there. I think it probably was the most significant event in her young life when she realized what happened to Rosemary. We don't have records too much about when she did know. We do have correspondence between Rose and St. Coletta's School in which Rose sort of washes her hands about the care of Rosemary and says, my daughter Eunice is someone you should talk to, because her father talked to her about this early on. So I think probably while she was at Stanford, the father told her what happened to Rosemary, and he would have told her first among all of them because she was in charge of Rosemary when she was a child. She taught her how to swim. She taught her how to sail when she was in all those races that they were always competitively involved in on Nantucket Sound. Rosemary was her second in the boat. And she didn't like that because she lost a lot of races because of Rosemary, and believe me, she cared about winning those races. So, again, this notion that she was just so compassionate is not exactly true, but she was her protector in life, and she came to see that if the Kennedy foundation could have an impact, it ought to pick an issue and it ought to focus all its money and its attention there, and she did that.

Eileen McNamara (29:06)

Right. It was, you know, it was a gesture that Joe made. He had to do something to commemorate the life of his son that he lost and who he had placed his presidential ambitions on, frankly. So the death of Joe required something of him. He created this, and they built an ice skating rink in Hyannis. There's a church that has a beautiful marble altar on Cape Cod that is, you know, was created by the Kennedy Foundation. And Cardinal Cushing was the archbishop of Boston at the time and was very influential with Joe Kennedy. And intellectual disabilities was a Particular concern of Cardinal Cushing's. So he prevailed upon Joe to give him a lot of money to create St. Coletta School, which is in Braintree, Massachusetts, which was a residential school for children with these intellectual disabilities. So he had sort of, Joe had dipped his toe in there. Eunice just took the focus and it went there and it never came back. And she was an incredible political operative too. When I talk about how the women were just sort of decorative accessories to the Kennedy boys careers, that's not true either. I mean, when I read biographies of Jack Kennedy, I'm always frustrated when I get to the sections that are always very small about Eunice, when they describe what an irritant she was to the President. And you know, they always quote Jack Kennedy saying to his aides, when Eunice comes to the White House, what she asks for, just give it to her. And the impression you're supposed to walk away with is that he would do anything to get that woman out of his face and off the phone. Some of that may be true, but the reality is that Jack Kennedy knew that when it came to this issue, if she was asking for was worthwhile and he was going to lean into what she was asking for, and the evidence of this is overwhelming. Before he even took the oath of office, she convinced him to create a presidential commission on mental retardation, which is what we called intellectual disabilities back in the day. And there was no precedent for anything like this. It was an enormous commission full of all of the experts in the country. Well, Jack Kennedy didn't know who those experts were. Eunice packed that commission with the best people in the country in all kinds of fields. Law, medicine, genetics. You name it, they were on there. And she ran it. Her name's not on it, but she ran it. She was at every meeting, she set the agenda. And that's why, because she knew on this issue what was needed. And she knew that what this issue needed was not a private foundation run by her dad, wealthy as they were, they could not solve this problem. She wanted the weight of the federal government behind the needs of these children.

Eileen McNamara (37:16)

So her accomplishments are broad and deep. I'll give you one example. In 1963, three months before JFK was assassinated in Dallas, Jackie gave birth to their son, Patrick Bouillier Kennedy. Patrick was premature. He was born with something called highline membrane disease, which is basically undeveloped lungs. In 1963, most babies born with that condition died because we didn't have the research. We didn't know how to treat premature infants. We didn't have the expertise, Una is argued, to John Kennedy in 1961, that he needed in the National Institute of Health to create a special institute for child health and human development so that we could study pregnancy, childbirth, and infancy, so that we would be able to understand diseases, developmental stages that medicine had simply not paid much attention to back in the early 60s. We operated under a disease model, so we studied heart disease and we studied cancer, but we didn't look at issues, development. Jack Kennedy's response to that initially had been, why would I want to create another institute within the Institute of Health? There's too many competing factions. I'll never get that through Congress. And so Eunice did what she always did when she wanted to convince Jack of something. She took him sailing, and they went out on Nantucket Sound. And at that point in they're like, Jackie had had miscarriages. She had had a stillbirth. And Eunice is living embodiment of the philosophy that Feminism has long promoted, which is the personal is political and the political is personal. Jack, don't you want to know why those things happened? Don't you think Jackie deserves to know why those things happen? Jack created the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. And today, babies do not die of high line memory. They live. And they lived because of the research that was done at the institute that today is named the Eunice Kennedy Shriver Institute for Child Health and Human Development. And when this biography that I wrote of Eunice came out, they invited me down to speak to the doctors there. And I spoke to an auditorium full of medical researchers, most of whom had no idea why her name was on that building.

Eileen McNamara (42:05)

Yeah, I think that's fair to say. The Shriver kids are very different than their Kennedy cousin in almost every way I can think of. And that is not by accident. I'll give you an example. Bobby Kennedy Jr. Was a member of a group that they like to call among themselves The Hyannis Porter's. And, you know, they would unleash people's boats and let them drift off into the sound. And, you know, they smoked a little grass and they, you know, they were just teenagers. Well, Bobby Shriver was hanging out with him at the time. They were like 16 years old and they were busted for smoking marijuana. And that was the end of the Shriver kids hanging out with the Kennedy cousins. When they came out of the courthouse, Bobby went directly to an airplane with his father, Sergeant Driver, and they flew to California. And that's Eunice. She put a continent between her kid and those kids. And they went to tennis camp for a week, dad and Bobby. And I think they instilled in their kids early and often, you know, the Kennedy ethic, you know, to whom much is given, much is required. So that they had larger obligations than themselves and that they were public people and that nobody in our family is getting busted for drugs. And nobody in that family ever got busted again, let me tell you. And as we all know, that wasn't the end of Bobby Kennedy's presence with. So I think that they were just a very, very different family. Look at what the Shriver kids are doing today. Tim is the head of Special Olympics. Mark works for Save the Children. Maria runs, like, philanthropic work on women with Alzheimer's. Her dad, Sergeant Shriver, died of Alzheimer's. They're out there doing the kind of work their mother would have expected them to do. So she saved them from some of the downsides of being in that family. Did that mean that they got away scot free? No. She was a very difficult person to have as a mother. I loved when I was doing my research, reading these pieces that she did for Redbook and Good Housekeeping about how motherhood was the most noble profession. And, you know, nobody should disparage women who have five or six children because, you know, the glory of motherhood, blah, blah, blah. And working women who seem to think that a career could replace motherhood were so misguided. Yeah, well, tell that to the Shriver kids. Because mom was at work all the time. They woke up.

Eileen McNamara (51:13)

You know, I'm not sure that they agree with this, but their mother never wanted to be married, in my view. She wanted to be a nun. She wanted to be a nun not just because she was a devout Catholic. She wanted to be a nun because those were the most powerful women that she had experienced in her lives, you know, in all of their lives. Those women made decisions on their own. Priests didn't tell women in the convent what to do. They ran their own lives. And I think she admired that greatly. The juvenile facility that she worked in in Chicago was run by the Sisters of the Good shepherd, and she loved them, and I think she wanted to be like them. Sergeant Trevor asked her to marry him seven times before she said yes. That's a long time. And finally, Joe inserted himself into that courtship and called Father Ted Hesburgh, who was the president of Notre Dame. And Chicago isn't that far from Notre Dame. So Eunice and Sarge used to go down there for Notre Dame football games. So they knew Ted Hesburgh when he was a young priest and teacher there before he became the president of the university. And so Joe called him and said, you gotta talk to Eunice about this. She thinks she's got a vocation for the nunhood. Like, you gotta talk her out of that. And for years, and by years, I mean decades, Father Hesburgh, who was like a national public figure, a huge civil rights activist, wonderful human being, for years, he dined out privately on the story that I'm going to tell you, but he would never put it on the record. So you read Kennedy biographies, and he'll say, oh, no, no. I knew that she and Sarge would be a great marriage. That's a wonderful partnership. And I had nothing to do with it. Well, he was in his late 90s when I called him and I said, well, you know, Father, you're not going to live forever. And at some point, you might want to put this on the record. I mean, either you did or you didn't tell Eunice to marry Sergeant Shriver. And he said, what the hell, Irene? They're all dead. And then he told me that what he actually said to her was, I think you do have a vocation to do the kind of work that you're doing, but I don't think that that precludes a marriage. I don't think you have to join the convent to do that work. He said, I think you have a vocation that includes marrying Sergeant Shy. And she married him.

Eileen McNamara (55:53)

I think she knew it all. I mean, she knew that her father was a landerer. One of the great gifts that the Shriver kids gave me was access to her private papers, which nobody had ever read. And reading is like the wrong word because they were in boxes with like VHS tapes of Maria on the Today show. They were like. Everything in her life was a jumble, and her archives were the same. You know, I hope that someday the kids give those papers back to the Kennedy Library where they were in storage, so that an archivist can organize them, because she is a historical figure. And Sarge's papers are there. And I think Eunice's papers should be there, too. I hope they do it someday. What did she think? Well, she knew about her father. I know she did, just from the correspondence in those boxes that I looked at. And she joked with Jock about their father. I assume she knew about Jack. She was his roommate when he was a bachelor in Washington. They lived together when he first came to Congress. They shared a townhouse in Georgetown. You know, she not blind. She saw the women coming in and going out, and she was anything but stupid. I think she was a pretty sophisticated person, and she lived in a family where that was tolerated. And I think, you know, she went along because that's what women did. They put up with it. But were you to publicly criticize a member of her family for the randy behavior, she would have been down your throat. And she was. She wrote ridiculous letter to the Washington Post when Marlena Dietrich wrote her autobiography in which she talked about her affair with Joe Kennedy. And the letter Eunice wrote to the Washington Post decrying them, writing a review of this scandalous autobiography full of lies about her father was absurd because of course she knew that her father had had an affair with Marlene Dietrich because he had it in on the French Riviera where the whole family was spending the summer. That's where it started. So none of this was news to her. But loyalty is a very important quality in the Kennedy family.

Eileen McNamara (69:05)

And it's, it's in 200 countries, millions of children around the world, millions of volunteers around the world in countries where you would not expect to find a special Olympic. It is there. It started as a summer camp in her backyard in 1961. And she did it the way she did everything. It's like off the top of her head by the seat of her pants, she said, we ought to have this. Because the mother had called her and said, I have a child with these issues and I have no way to send them to summer camp. So she said, send them half. She lived on a 200 acre estate in Maryland called Timberlawn. They had a swimming pool, they had a basketball court, they had tennis courts, they had horses. So she just opened basically her backyard to these children. And who was going to work there? Well, she went to the Catholic schools, and she got all the good Catholic school kids to volunteer to help her then. And then she did something that was typical of Eunice. She went to the local prison and she asked them to send her prisoners. But can you imagine today anyone saying, could you please open the cells and send me some prisoners to help? They had to build paddocks for the horses so they could have pony rides for the kids. And it was 1961. There was no, like, background checks. They brought them over in a prison bus from Loudoun, Virginia, and they volunteered at her camp. And there were black children and white children swimming in her swimming pool. And I remind you, it was 1961, and we were in Maryland, and there was segregation law still on the book. And when Saturday Evening Post came to call to photograph this amazing social experiment that she was conducting in her backyard, they ran these fabulous photographs of this integrated summer camp. That's one of the small ways in which she helped change the world. When we talked a little bit before about, did she resent at all not having enough recognition for the work she did, let me say that Eunice was not afraid to take credit even when it wasn't due. Now, in 1961, she did start what she called Camp Shriver in her backyard. But meanwhile in Chicago, there was a young woman named Ann Burke who worked for the Parks Department, and she started a summer camp for kids with intellectual disabilities of the Chicago Park District. And Eunice got wind of her program, flew out to Chicago, got to know her, and stole her idea. And very first Special Olympics was held in Chicago in 1968, organized by the Chicago Parks District. It was an extraordinary event in no small part because her brother Bobby had been murdered only six weeks before. And everybody expected that this event would be canceled, but it was not canceled. Eunice went to Chicago and she announced, although she had announced this to absolutely no one but herself, that this was just the beginning. We were in Chicago for the Special Olympics, but this was going to be given a national event. And, of course, it did become a national and now an international event. Yeah.

Eileen McNamara (78:55)

Well, first of all, on the abortion issue, you know, conservative, liberal, however you want to say it, she opposed abortion. Obviously, I found her completely consistent. I don't agree with her on that issue, but I find her completely consistent. She opposes the death penalty, too. She's a Catholic, so it isn't just that she's concerned about people with intellectual disabilities being aborted in utero. She thought that abortion was murder, and that's the teaching of the Catholic Church, and she accepted that teaching. So love her, hate her. You know, that's her faith, and that's what she believed in terms of the disability community. She was a woman of her time. Would we call it the Special Olympics now? No, they're not special like she. She called children with down syndrome her special friends. That's how we got the Special Olympics. Well, there's something inherently condescending in that, isn't there? And now in 1961, nobody said, oh, that's kind of condescending. You know, we've changed. We don't call it mental retardation anymore. Mental retardation wasn't a slur. It was the name of the Massachusetts Department of Mental Retardation. They dealt with these issues. It's the name of the legislation that jfk, the last bill he signed before he was assassinated was a bill that she drafted that provided federal money to deinstitutionalized children in the places. So society progresses, it changes. Intellectual disabilities isn't going to last either as a moniker for these children because it too is problematic. I don't know what the right raising is, but she did have a patronizing attitude. And, you know, why wouldn't she? She's a spoiled rich girl. That's who she was. She did wonderful things in her life, but she wasn't like, signing away her. Her fortunes to the disadvantage. She was as cheap as the other Kennedys. You know, she never had a nickel in her pocket. You know, she required whoever was with her to pay for her. So I don't know. I think the disability community embraces her because they understand that at that moment in time, she was a historical figure. She didn't discover this population. There were all these wonderful parents who were working really hard and doctors who were trying to convince parents, you don't have to institutionalize your kid. What she did was she recognized good ideas and then she stole them and she built on them. And because of her name and because her brother was the President of the United States and then the senator from New York and then the senator from Massachusetts, she was able to get stuff done. That's her legacy. So is she politically incorrect? In lots of ways, yeah. I mean, Tim Shriver led a campaign to stop the use of the R word, to turn the R word into a slur. And he was successful until the current administration, where now it's used constantly as a pejorative, and it seems to be working its way back into the general population. But society has swings and changes. I think on lots of issues, you know, she was not a visionary, but on the big issue, she was an enormous visionary.