Eunice Shriver: 1921-2009

Sunday, Aug. 16, 2009 | 2:06 a.m.

Writing about Eunice Shriver a few days before she died Tuesday at age 88, The Boston Globe reported that her father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., once said that she would have made a great politician if she had been born a man.

Joe Kennedy’s observation perfectly captured the social convention that prevailed when Shriver was a young woman. If they were to work at all outside the home, women were to assume supporting roles, not leadership positions.

That was just one prevailing view in the circa 1930s United States, where discrimination in many areas of life was accepted. Among the victims of discrimination were children born with mental challenges.

Although it is hard to comprehend today, mentally challenged children and adults in those days were kept largely isolated. There were few, if any, programs in which they could be enrolled.

Because of the mistaken fear that mentally challenged children would hurt themselves if they played sports or were at all active, many were shunted off to institutions, where caretakers consigned them to sedentary lifestyles.

This inactivity deprived many of the children of any semblance of a normal life and caused many to develop physical disabilities. For many children, this kind of “care” would go on for their whole lives.

Shriver never went on to hold public office, as did her famous brothers — John, Robert and Ted Kennedy, and her husband, Sargent Shriver, the founding director of the Peace Corps.

But she did something that her brother Ted once said should be remembered as the Kennedy family’s most consequential accomplishment. Inspired by her mentally challenged older sister Rosemary, Shriver spent the better part of her adult life championing the cause of mentally challenged people everywhere.

She gained lasting fame for founding the Special Olympics in 1968. But it is her whole life’s work that should be remembered. She played a major role in helping America and the world understand that mentally challenged people should be viewed for their humanity, not their disability.