"What a great moment for me, my son, the world. What you have made possible for so many people defies all reason." LOWELL WEICKER, JR.
Former United States Senator

Advocacy - A Salvaged Life

Eunice Kennedy Shriver dedicated herself to the cause of intellectual disability early on, at a time when the nation didn't devote a second's thought to people with intellectual disabilities, some thought they should be locked up in dark rooms and some were frightened and intimidated by them. But mostly, nobody cared.

Of the hundreds of thousands of words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs and entire volumes that Eunice has said or written about people with intellectual disabilities, one resonates: "A salvaged life."

She said that once to elucidate the once-revolutionary idea that the lives of those with intellectually disablility could actually be something other than a dreary slow dance from birth to death. A salvaged life.

It haunted Eunice--indeed, the entire Kennedy family--that sister Rosemary, the third child of Joseph and Rose Kennedy, lived a life that went partly unsalvaged. Rosemary was born in 1919 with "mental retardation," as it was called at the time.

Rosemary was not the entire reason that Eunice became involved in the cause of persons with intellectual disability, but it was a major reason. In 1946, her father established the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation as a memorial to older brother Joe, who was killed in World War II. Eunice now had a cause and resources. "Not a single private foundation was then devoting its money to mental retardation," Eunice wrote in the Sept. 22, 1962 edition of The Saturday Evening Post.

The foundation began dedicating $1 million a year in awards and grants to advocate for people with intellectual disabilities, and the movement was off, if not running.

After that, Eunice began to take notice of changes that could be made. She visited a state institution where the smell of urine was overpowering and where the patients stood around with nothing to do, "like misshapen statues" in Eunice's memorable phrase. She began to hammer away at individual prejudices, the idea that the lives of individuals with intellectual disability should be by definition wasted ones.

Inspiring Others to Believe

Eunice was tireless in her efforts. Her passion and belief in the cause were so deep that others began to see her vision. As she worked, she began to discover that thousands of people, inspired by her and compelled by instincts similar to her own, were eager to befriend, educate and work with kids with intellectual disabilities.

Those were the kind of young people who would work at Camp Shriver in the 1960's and would help carry Eunice's message to a skeptical or uncaring nation. And, gradually, as working with people with intellectual disabilities became Eunice's cause, Eunice's cause became one of the nation's causes. And what happened was that "a salvaged life," something that didn't happen with Rosemary, became a thousand salvaged lives, and, over time, that became millions of salvaged lives.