The oldest remaining member of the Kennedy clan, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, has died aged 88, leaving only two survivors of the nine children born to Joseph and Rose Kennedy. Though Eunice never aspired to enter the world of political controversy that enveloped her brothers, she was prominent in US public life and won numerous awards for her work for people with learning difficulties.
She was the fifth of the Kennedy children and the third daughter. The tragedies that repeatedly struck the family began in her earliest years. Her oldest brother, Joseph, was killed in the second world war; her elder sister, Rosemary, had learning difficulties and underwent the appalling experience of a prefrontal lobotomy that ruined the rest of her long life; another sister, Kathleen, died in a plane crash in 1948. Later, of course, two brothers, John and Robert, were assassinated, and the third, Edward, was involved in the car accident at Chappaquiddick island, off Massachusetts, which resulted in the drowning of a young woman.
Small wonder that Eunice avoided their boisterous competitiveness. Her retiring nature even extended to wearing black dresses throughout her five pregnancies, to make her condition less evident. Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, she was given the conventional education of a rich New England Roman Catholic - including a spell at a convent school in London, while her father was US ambassador - and in 1943 gained a Stanford University sociology degree.
Her father's prominence in the Roosevelt administration ensured that she was assigned to the special war problems section of the State Department. She then became a prison social worker in West Virginia and later moved to Chicago to deal with juvenile offenders.
There she met and, in 1953, married Sargent Shriver, a lawyer and former naval officer who had joined the Kennedy family's Chicago merchandising company and, under President John Kennedy (another one-time naval officer), founded and directed the American Peace Corps (1961-66). He went on to be Democratic vice-presidential candidate when George McGovern ran for president in 1972, and four years later was, briefly, a presidential hopeful.
Eunice's faith in her brothers' capacity to surmount all obstacles emerged in November 1963 when she was lunching at a restaurant with her husband. He was called to the telephone and returned saying: "Something has happened to Jack." There was a rumour that the president had been shot. Eunice continued studying the menu and calmly ordered her meal with the comment: "There have been so many crises in his life: he'll pull through."
She had taken over the direction of the family foundation, named after her eldest brother and dedicated to research into learning difficulties, in 1957. What eventually became her principal undertaking began at her home in Maryland in 1962, when she organised a summer day camp for adults and children with learning difficulties. Six years later this had evolved into the International Special Olympics in Chicago, initially with 1,000 competitors from the US and Canada. From 1975, the summer games were held every four years, and Eunice was present in Shanghai in 2007, when 7,000 athletes took part. In 160 countries round the world, there are more than a million participants in Special Olympics events every year.
Her tireless fundraising and organisation, in later years with the formal participation of her husband, drew worldwide praise. In 1984, Ronald Reagan gave her the presidential medal of freedom, and she also became the first living American woman to be portrayed on one of her country's medals.
She is survived by her husband, daughter Maria (who is married to Arnold Schwarzenegger), sons Robert, Timothy, Mark, Anthony, brother Edward and sister Jean Kennedy Smith.