Ethel Kennedy, widow of Robert F. Kennedy, suffers stroke

BOSTON (AP) — The family of Ethel Kennedy, the widow of Robert F. Kennedy, says she's been hospitalized after suffering a stroke.

In a statement on X posted Tuesday night by her daughter Kerry Kennedy, the family said it happened Thursday morning in her sleep and that she was brought to a hospital where she was receiving treatment and resting comfortably. They did not identify the hospital, nor where she suffered the stroke.

“She is comfortable, she is getting the best care possible and she is surrounded by family,” the statement said. “She is, as you know, a strong woman who has led a remarkably fulfilling life. We are looking after her.”

The 96-year-old matriarch is the last remaining member of the extended family’s generation that included President John F. Kennedy, following the death in 2020 of ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith, who was JFK’s last surviving sibling.

“She has had a great summer and transition into fall,” the family statement said. “Every day she enjoyed time with her children, nieces, nephews, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. She was able to get out on the water, visit the pier, and enjoy many lunches and dinners with family. It has been a gift to all of us and to her as well.”

For a generation of Americans, the Democratic Party clan represented the closest thing the U.S. had to the royalty it has always admired elsewhere. The JFK era was dubbed “Camelot” because the youthful president and his glamorous wife, Jacqueline Kennedy, evoked a sense of national optimism, expressed in a line from the Broadway musical.

She was by Robert F. Kennedy’s side when he was fatally shot in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968, just after winning the Democratic presidential primary in California. Her brother-in-law, President John F. Kennedy, had been assassinated in Dallas less than five years earlier.

The Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, which she founded later in 1968, is dedicated to advancing human rights through litigation, advocacy, education and inspiration. The nonprofit also gives annual awards to journalists, authors and others who have made a significant contribution to human rights. She also was active in the Coalition of Gun Control, Special Olympics and the Earth Conservation Corps.

She remained socially active into her 90s, participating in a 2016 demonstration in support of higher pay for farmworkers in Florida and a 2018 hunger strike against the Trump administration’s immigration policies. She divided her time between homes in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, and Palm Beach, Florida.