page_title: Ethel Kennedy
section_title: Later life
hierarchical_section_title: Ethel Kennedy / Later life
caption_attribution_description: English: Wash D.C. Kennedy center December 3, 2000
context_page_description: Ethel Kennedy is an American human rights advocate. Kennedy is the widow of U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy as well as the sixth child of George Skakel and Ann Brannack. She married Robert F. Kennedy in 1950, and the couple had 11 children together.
  Shortly after her husband's 1968 assassination, Kennedy founded the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights. The organization is a nonprofit charity working to fulfill Robert F. Kennedy's dream of a just and peaceful world. In 2014, Ethel Kennedy was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.
context_section_description: Kennedy sold Hickory Hill for $8.25 million in December 2009. 
  During the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries, Ethel Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama. She publicly supported and held fundraisers at Hickory Hill for numerous politicians that included Virginia gubernatorial candidate Brian Moran. Kennedy hosted a $6-million fundraising dinner for Obama at Hickory Hill in June 2008. The $28,500-a-plate dinner was headlined by former Democratic presidential candidate and DNC chairman Howard Dean.
  In 2012, Kennedy appeared in a documentary about her life; the documentary was directed by her youngest child, daughter Rory. The documentary, entitled Ethel, covers Kennedy's early political involvement, her life with Robert F. Kennedy, and the years following his death when she raised eleven children on her own. It features interviews with Ethel and her children interspersed with family videos and archival photos.
  In August 2014, Kennedy nominated President Barack Obama to do the Ice Bucket Challenge as part of an effort to raise funds and awareness about amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease). Obama declined to perform the fundraising stunt, but expressed appreciation to Kennedy and made a monetary donation to the cause.
  As of 2014, Kennedy reportedly wintered in Florida and summered in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Five years later, she was known to reside at the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.
caption: Ethel Kennedy in 1999
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