Eunice Kennedy Shriver - Social Worker and Activist

Eunice Kennedy Shriver - A social worker and activist, credited with transforming America's view of the mentally disabled from institutionalized patients to friends, neighbors and athletes passed away on Tuesday, August 11, 2009 at the age of 88.

Her accomplishments are impressive and many:

• She pressed for efforts to help troubled young people and the mentally disabled while her brother was in the White House. And in 1968, she started what would become the world's largest athletic competition for mentally disabled children and adults. Now, more than 1 million athletes in more than 160 countries participate in Special Olympics meets each year. Well into her 70s, Shriver remained a daily presence at the Special Olympics headquarters in Washington.

• "She believed that people with intellectual disabilities could — individually and collectively — achieve more than anyone thought possible. This much she knew with unbridled faith and certainty," her son Timothy, chairman of Special Olympics, said in a statement.

• She was a social worker at a women's prison in Alderson, West Virginia, and worked with the juvenile court in Chicago in the 1950s before taking over the Joseph P. Kennedy Foundation with the goal of improving the treatment of the mentally disabled.

• A longtime advocate for children's health and disability issues, Shriver was a key founder of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), a part of the National Institutes of Health, in 1962, and has also helped to establish numerous other health-care facilities and support networks throughout the country. In 2008, the U.S. Congress changed the NICHD’s name to the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

• She was awarded the nation's highest civilian award, the (U.S.) Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 1984 by U.S. President Ronald Reagan, because of her work on behalf of those with mental disabilities. For her work in founding the Special Olympics, Shriver received the Civilian International World Citizenship Award.

• On May 9, 2009, the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery (NPG) in Washington, D.C., unveiled an historic portrait of her, the first portrait the NPG has ever commissioned of an individual who had not served as a U.S. President or First Lady. The portrait depicts her with four Special Olympics athletes and one Best Buddies participant.

She will be greatly missed by all those who knew her and those who because of her were able to benefit from her dedication, passion and advocacy.

-Carrie Moore, BSW, CSW