Shriver was the founder of the Special Olympics, a sports organization for persons with intellectual disabilities. For her efforts on behalf of disabled people, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1984.
Shriver became executive vice president of the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation in 1957.[2] She shifted the organization's focus from Catholic charities to research on the causes of intellectual disabilities, and humane ways to treat them.[6] This interest eventually culminated in, among other things, the Special Olympics movement.[8]
In 1962, Shriver founded Camp Shriver, a summer day camp for children and adults with intellectual disabilities at her Maryland farm to explore their capabilities in a variety of sports and physical activities.[11] From that camp came the concept of Special Olympics.[12] Shriver founded the Special Olympics in 1968.[13] That year, the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation helped to plan and fund the First International Special Olympics Summer Games, held in Chicago's Soldier Field where 1,000 athletes with intellectual disabilities from 26 states and Canada competed.[11] In her speech at the opening ceremony, Shriver said, "The Chicago Special Olympics prove a very fundamental fact, the fact that exceptional children — children with mental retardation — can be exceptional athletes, the fact that through sports they can realize their potential for growth." Special Olympics Inc. was established as a nonprofit charity in 1968; since that time, nearly three million athletes have participated.[2]
In 1969, Shriver moved to France and pursued her interest in intellectual disability there. She started organizing small activities with Paris organizations, mostly reaching out to families of kids who had special needs to provide activities for them, laying the foundation for a robust international expansion of the Special Olympics in the late 1970s and 1980s.[14]
In 1982, Shriver founded the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Center for Community of Caring at University of Utah, Salt Lake City. The Community is a "grades K-12, whole school, comprehensive character education program with a focus on disabilities... adopted by almost 1,200 schools nationwide and in Canada".[15][16]
In 1992, Shriver received the Senator John Heinz Award for Greatest Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged, an award given out annually by the Jefferson Awards for Public Service.[22]
For her work in nationalizing the Special Olympics, Shriver received the Civitan International World Citizenship Award.[23] Her advocacy on this issue has also earned her other awards and recognitions, including honorary degrees from numerous universities.[24][25][better source needed] She is the second American and only woman to appear on a US coin while still living. Her portrait is on the obverse of the 1995 commemorative silver dollar honoring the Special Olympics. On the reverse is the quotation attributed to Shriver, "As we hope for the best in them, hope is reborn in us."[26][27][28][29]
In 2008, the U.S. Congress changed the NICHD's name to the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.[36] In December 2008, Sports Illustrated named Shriver the first recipient of Sportsman of the Year Legacy Award.[37] On May 9, 2009, the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery (NPG) in Washington, D.C., unveiled an historic portrait of her, the first portrait the NPG has ever commissioned of an individual who had not served as a U.S. president or First Lady. The portrait depicts her with four Special Olympics athletes (including Loretta Claiborne) and one Best Buddies participant. It was painted by David Lenz, the winner of the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition in 2006. As part of the Portrait Competition prize, the NPG commissioned 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 Shriver's dedication to working with people with intellectual disabilities.[citation needed]
She had a close relationship with her sister Rosemary Kennedy, who was intellectually disabled and who became incapacitated due to a lobotomy.[2] Shriver suffered a stroke and broken hip in 2005.[56] On November 18, 2007, aged 86, she was admitted to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where she spent several weeks.[57][58]
Death
On August 7, 2009, Shriver was admitted to Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis, Massachusetts with an undisclosed ailment.[59] On August 10, her relatives were called to the hospital.[60] She died at the hospital the next day at the age of 88, two weeks before her brother, Senator Ted Kennedy, died on August 25, 2009, at the age of 77.[3][61]
Shriver's family issued a statement upon her death, reading in part:
Inspired by her love of God, her devotion to her family, and her relentless belief in the dignity and worth of every human life, she worked without ceasing—searching, pushing, demanding, hoping for change. She was a living prayer, a living advocate, a living center of power. She set out to change the world and to change us, and she did that and more. She founded the movement that became Special Olympics, the largest movement for acceptance and inclusion for people with intellectual disabilities in the history of the world. Her work transformed the lives of hundreds of millions of people across the globe, and they in turn are her living legacy.[62]
President Barack Obama remarked after Shriver's death that she was "an extraordinary woman who, as much as anyone, taught our nation—and our world—that no physical or mental barrier can restrain the power of the human spirit."[63]
Funeral and burial
On August 14, 2009, an invitation-only Requiem Mass was celebrated for Shriver at St. Francis Xavier Roman Catholic Church in Hyannis. Following the Requiem Mass, she was buried at the St. Francis Xavier parish cemetery in nearby Centerville, Massachusetts.[64] Pope Benedict XVI sent a letter of condolence to her family.[65] Because her brother Ted had terminalbrain cancer, he was unable to attend the funeral, and their sister Jean Kennedy Smith stayed with him. Ted died two weeks later, leaving Jean as the sole surviving child of Joseph and Rose Kennedy until her death on June 17, 2020, at the age of 92.[66]
^Shriver, Timothy (2007). "Prepared statement of Timothy Shriver". Special Olympics: Hearing Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, United States Senate, One Hundred Ninth Congress, Second Session, Special Hearing, July 2, 2006, Washington, DC. U.S. Government Printing Office. p. 9. ISBN9780160786907.
^"The Numismatist". The Numismatist. Vol. 108. American Numismatic Association. 1995. p. 788,797,803. Retrieved February 5, 2020.
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