Jean Kennedy Smith
1928 - 2020
With her brother, The President
Today we note the death of Jean Kennedy Smith, the youngest sibling of President Jack Kennedy, and the last of the generation of Joe and Rose Kennedy's children. It is notable to me when the last member of the remarkable generation of the Kennedy family, with all of their triumphs and tragedies, leaves us. She was, of course, the sister of a US President and two US Senators, but she had a pretty remarkable and accomplished life of her own.
I will let parts of the obituary from the Washington Post by Vincent Bzdek tell her story.
Jean Kennedy Smith, a former U.S. ambassador to Ireland and the last of a generation of overachieving, tragedy-stalked siblings whose influence on American political life and culture has surpassed that of most any other single family, died June 17 at her home in Manhattan. She was 92.
Jean Smith went on to found and organization called Very Special Arts. Per the Post obit,
Very Special Arts, working closely with the Kennedy Center, now provides artistic outlets for disabled children and adults in 55 countries.
In 1993, President Bill Clinton appointed Mrs. Smith to be the United Sates Ambassador to Ireland, and it is here that she achieved something remarkable. She began the process of opening peace talks between the Irish Republican Army and the governments of Northern Ireland and Great Britain.
The Irish Republican Army, which didn’t trust the British government, turned to the United States to broker the peace process between Northern Ireland and Britain. Mrs. Smith helped bring leaders such as Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political wing, and hard-line IRA activist Joe Cahill to the table in New York, where talks could be held on neutral ground and carry the imprimatur of the United States.
....But winning Adams’s trust changed the political climate, clearing the way for a cease-fire that laid the groundwork for the Good Friday peace agreement in 1998 that ended the long sectarian war.
One of the most moving parts of our trip to Great Britain last year was the day that we spent in Belfast, hearing about "the troubles" and about the relative peace that has existed in Northern Ireland over the last twenty or so years. Until today, I had no idea that it was a member of the Kennedy Family that played such a significant role in that process.
Again, from the Post:
Much of Mrs. Smith’s life afterward was dedicated to filling her assassinated brothers’ interrupted promise, focusing on the care of the disenfranchised and disadvantaged.
She collected dozens of citations for her work with the disabled. In 2011, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
In a video she made for the White House to commemorate the event, she summed up the ethos that bound her famous brothers and sisters.
“My parents felt very strongly, my mother in particular, if you have a happy home, much is given, much is expected,” she said, adding that she viewed the entirety of her adult life as “payback time.”
RIP Jean Kennedy Smith
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