SARGENT Shriver, the exuberant public servant and Kennedy in-law who served as the first Peace Corps director, ambassador to France and a vice-presidential candidate, has died at the age of 95.
One of the last links to President John F Kennedy’s administration, Mr Shriver, who announced in 2003 that he had Alzheimer’s disease, had been in hospital for several days in his native Maryland.
Mr Shriver, a businessman and lawyer, helped his wife Special Olympics founder Eunice Kennedy Shriver to run the organisation that allows mentally challenged children to participate in sports. For all his accomplishments, he became known first as an in-law – brother-in-law of President Kennedy and, later in life, father-in- law of actor-turned-Californian governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
President Barack Obama called Mr Shriver “one of the brightest lights of the greatest generation”.
Born in 1915 to a prominent old Maryland family, Mr Shriver was the son of a stockbroker who would lose most of his money in the crash of 1929.
He went on a scholarship to Yale, then Yale Law School. After serving in the navy in the Pacific during the second World War, he returned and became an assistant editor at Newsweek magazine. About this time, he met Eunice Kennedy and was immediately taken by her. They married in 1953 in New York’s St Patrick’s Cathedral.
Soon after taking office, President John F Kennedy called on Mr Shriver to start the Peace Corps. Senator John Kerry said Mr Shriver’s work led to almost a quarter of a million volunteers helping 139 countries around the world over 50 years.
Mr Shriver was George McGovern’s running mate in the 1972 election, but the Democrats lost in a landslide to Richard Nixon. Four years later, Mr Shriver’s own presidential campaign ended quickly, overrun by a little-known Georgian governor named Jimmy Carter.
In 1994, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honour, from President Bill Clinton. “He leaves behind an astonishing legacy of people helped, lives transformed, and communities improved,” Mr Clinton said. “Through his work and his passion, he helped build a better America and a more humane world.”
Mary Davis, managing director of Special Olympics Europe/Eurasia, yesterday paid tribute to Mr Shriver. “As an international lawyer, ambassador and an advocate for the disadvantaged, Sargent Shriver enjoyed an unparalleled record of public service at every tier. He was a true leader and a man of honour and strength. He saw athletes of Special Olympics as ambassadors for peace and transformed the roots of discrimination against people with intellectual disabilities by promoting Special Olympics throughout the world,” Ms Davis said. – (AP)