Eunice Kennedy Shriver - Definition and Overview

Zurab Tsereteli with Eunice Kennedy Shriver (right)

Eunice Mary Kennedy Shriver (born July 10, 1921) is a member of the Kennedy family. Her father was Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., and her mother was Rose Kennedy.

On May 23, 1953, she married Robert Sargent Shriver, Jr., who was U.S. ambassador to France from 1968 to 1970, and was Democratic vice-presidential candidate in 1972. They had five children:

• Robert Sargent Shriver III (b. April 28, 1954), Yale Law School graduate and former part-owner of Baltimore Orioles
• Maria Owings Shriver (b. November 6, 1955), TV anchorwoman and wife of California's Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
• Timothy Perry Shriver (b. August 29, 1959), chairman of the Special Olympics
• Mark Kennedy Shriver (b. February 17, 1964), Democrat politician who served as a member of the House of Delegates in the Maryland legislature for eight years. In 2002 made an unsuccessful bid for U.S. Congress
• Anthony Paul Kennedy Shriver (b. July 20, 1965), activist for the mentally retarded

She actively campaigned for her brother John F. Kennedy, and supported Schwarzenegger's successful bid for governor of California in 2003.

She helped Ann McGlone Burke nationalize the Special Olympics movement in 1968.

She is the only living woman whose portrait appears on a U.S. coin, the 1995 commemorative Special Olympics Silver Dollar.