Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 23, 1995 TAG: 9501230097
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Dallas Morning News
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, the glue that held together the nation's most prominent political family, has died at age 104.
Kennedy died from complications of pneumonia Sunday at the family compound on Cape Cod, said Scott Ferson, a spokesman for her son, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.
``She had a long and extraordinary life, and we loved her deeply,'' Edward Kennedy said. ``To all of us in the Kennedy and Fitzgerald families, she was the most beautiful rose of all.''
He was at her side when Kennedy died, along with daughters Patricia Kennedy Lawford, Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith and Eunice Kennedy Shriver, and Robert F. Kennedy's widow, Ethel Kennedy.
Last Monday, it was reported that she was having difficulty breathing. Kennedy had used a wheelchair since a 1984 stroke.
Her life was an agony and ecstasy of society gatherings and world travel mixed with an adulterous husband, a daughter harmed by experimental brain surgery, and the deaths of four children, two at the hands of political assassins.
``She will be remembered as the matriarch of America's greatest family,'' said Laurence Leamer, author of ``The Kennedy Women.'' He compared the family's history to a Shakespearean play, with elements of death, romance and power.
Her husband, Joseph, launched the political career of their oldest son, Joseph Jr., by giving him his place at the 1940 Democratic National Convention. But Joseph Jr. was killed in action during World War II and the political baton was passed to the next son, John F. Kennedy, who became the nation's first Catholic president.
President Kennedy's assassination in 1963 in Dallas brought the family down from the peak of political power. Five years later, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy also was fatally shot, just after winning California's Democratic presidential primary.
In addition to losing three sons, Rose Kennedy lost a daughter, Kathleen Kennedy Cavendish, in a plane crash in 1948. Another daughter, Rosemary, had a low IQ and was hidden from the public after an experimental lobotomy. Rose Kennedy was widowed in 1969 after 54 years of marriage. She had 30 grandchildren and 41 great-grandchildren. One of them, Robert Kennedy's son David, was found dead in a Florida hotel room in 1985; officials said he died of a drug overdose. Another, President Kennedy's son Patrick, died shortly after birth.
She approached her family's tragedies with the stoicism of her faith, saying that God never gives us a heavier load than we can carry.
by CNB