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"She understood deeply the lesson our mother and father taught us -- much is expected of those to whom much has been given."

"Throughout her extraordinary life, she touched the lives of millions, and for Eunice that was never enough."

So said Teddy Kennedy about his sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, dead at the age of 88.

In the competitive household of her youth, she established herself as the most intellectually gifted of the sisters in a family where the patriarch, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., decided that his sons were the ones bound for politics.

Within the constraints of her era, gender, and social strata, she was the most ambitious, too, becoming an international leader more than a half century ago in the burgeoning movement to wrest mental retardation from the shadows of hushed conversations.

A younger sister of Rosemary Kennedy, who was developmentally disabled and institutionalized most of her life, Mrs. Shriver dedicated decades to ensuring that other families would not endure the fate of her own, watching a loved one whisked behind closed doors. In an attempt to alleviate Rosemary?s intellectual disabilities, doctors performed a lobotomy that instead left her in need of constant care.

Here are 2 pictures of the great lady ? young and old:

Full post as published by Althouse on August 11, 2009 (boomark / email).