WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – Sargent Shriver, who spent four decades in public service as a member of the Kennedy family, the first director of the Peace Corps and a key warrior in Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, died yesterday. He was 95.
Shriver, who had suffered from Alzheimer’s disease in his final years, was surrounded by his five children and 19 grandchildren when he died in Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Md., his family said in a statement.
Shriver, the Democratic substitute nominee for vice president in 1972 and briefly a presidential candidate in 1976, was an advocate for the poor and powerless who helped launch President Johnson’s War on Poverty. He became the driving force behind social programs such as Head Start, Legal Services and VISTA.
Shriver, known as Sarge, helped his wife, Eunice Kennedy, who died on Aug. 11, 2009, create the Special Olympics for mentally disabled children and adults in 1968. The Special Olympics, now run by their son Timothy, serves 1.4 million athletes in 150 countries.
It was Shriver’s marriage in 1953 to Eunice, daughter of diplomat and businessman Joseph Kennedy, that inducted him into the legendary Kennedy family and its generations of politicians and activists.
Late in life he became a famous in-law on the other side of the political fence when his daughter, television journalist Maria Shriver, married actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who later became a Republican governor of California.
Despite his own achievements and interests, Shriver “was willing, at times, to dim his own bright star to accommodate the whole shimmering constellation of Kennedys,” his biographer, Scott Stossel, wrote.
