By Pat Reber Aug 14, 2009, 16:20 GMT
Washington/Hyannis, Massachusetts - Hundreds of Special Olympics athletes lined the final path of their hero, Eunice Shriver, on Friday as the Kennedy family prepared to bury the younger sister of the late US President John F Kennedy.
Maria Shriver looks out the window of her limo as the family heads to the burial site from St. Francis Xavier Church after her mother Eunice Kennedy Shriver's funeral in Hyannis, Massachusetts, USA, 14 August 2009. Shriver, the sister of former US President John F. Kennedy and US Senator Ted Kennedy died earlier this week at the age of 88. EPA/MATT CAMPBELL
Shriver, known around the world for her work on behalf of people with mental disabilities and as founder of the Special Olympics, died Tuesday at age 88 after suffering a series of strokes.
The reported absence of Senator Edward 'Ted' Kennedy from his sister's funeral - he is suffering brain cancer - added a poignant tone to the passage of another of the JFK generation that has served as America's first public family - some would say, royal family - since the mid 20th Century.
Ted Kennedy, 77, missed another important engagement this week when US President Barack Obama awarded him one of 16 medals of freedom, the nation's highest civilian honour.
About 900 people were invited to attend the funeral at Saint Francis Xavier Roman Catholic Church in Hyannis, the Massachusetts coastal town on Cape Cod that is home to the sprawling Kennedy compound, local media reports said. They included musician Stevie Wonder, Vice President Joe Biden and Olympic ice skating gold medalist Scott Hamilton.
Two Special Olympics athletes carried torches at the head of the procession towards the church. Her casket was carried by her children and grandchildren, including Maria Shriver and Maria's husband Arnold Schwarzenegger, governor of California.
But the limitations on attendance did not keep hundreds of other Special Olympics athletes and their families, some dressed in special outfits and wearing their Olympic medals, from being present outside the church.
Daughter Maria delivered a poetic eulogy, according to funeral coverage live streamed on the Special Olympics website. 'You are the star in my sky. You are the music in my heart. Mummy, you are the trumpet of my life,' she said.
Shriver spent much of her adult life bringing to reality her belief that sport could awaken the spirit of those with intellectual disabilities - and bring them into public focus as a forgotten people.
While her husband Sargent Shriver organized the US Peace Corps under the JFK administration in the early 1960s, Eunice started a special camp at her home in suburban Maryland outside the nation's capital.
By 1968, just weeks after the assassination of another brother, Robert, she was ready to launch the first International Special Olympics Summer Games attracting 1,000 individuals. The global Special Olympics now draw 3 million competitors.
The funeral literature distributed by the Special Olympics organization included a quote from her in 1987, at the summer games in Notre Dame, Indiana: 'The right to play on any playing field? You have earned it. The right to study in any school? You have earned it. The right to hold a job? You have earned it. The right to be anyones neighbor? You have earned it.'
The fifth of nine children of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr and Rose Kennedy, Shriver was born July 10, 1921, in Brookline, Massachusetts. She earned a degree in sociology from Stanford University and held multiple government positions, including a position helping World War II veterans readjust to civilian life and another as a social worker at a women's prison in West Virginia.
She is survived by her husband R Sargent Shriver, who suffers Alzheimer's disease, and their five children.
Shriver's influence on her brother, the former president, is credited with the push in 1963 to pass the first law in US history to protect and support the rights of the mentally disabled.
Shriver's work was in part inspired by the struggles of her mentally disabled sister, Rosemary, who suffered after a prefrontal lobotomy was performed on her brain.
Although Rosemary Kennedy's history of mental illness is unclear, her father, Joseph Kennedy, sent her for the relatively new and since-discontinued procedure of a prefrontal lobotomy when she was only 23, in 1941. The cutting away of part of her brain reduced her to severe retardation.
Rosemary was kept in an institution and out of the public eye until her situation became public in 1960, as her brother John was running for president. She died in 2005 at age 86.
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