Bobby Kennedy’s Granddaughter Kyle Kennedy Dies at 42, Six Years After Spinal Cord Trauma.
The Kennedy family is dealing with yet another terrible tragedy. Six years after being paralyzed in 2020 due to a spinal cord injury, Kyle Francis Kennedy, the granddaughter of Robert F. and Ethel Kennedy, passed away "peacefully" at her Westwood, Massachusetts home on September 21. She was forty-two.
According to her Burke Funeral Homes obituary, Kyle will be remembered by her loved ones as "blessed with a formidable intellect, dry wit, and beauty." She was the mother to Conor, 12, and Declan, 10, as well as daughter Josephine, who passed away soon after her birth in 2014, with Liam Kerr.
Daughter to Michael Kennedy—who died in 1997—and Victoria Denise Gifford, Kyle attended Georgetown University to study history before graduating from Pace University and Harvard University with master's degrees in early education and education policy and management, respectively. She devoted her professional life to her love of early childhood teaching.
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“She will be remembered for her devotion to her children Conor, Josephine, and Declan,” as stated in her obituary, “and her support for educational reform for disadvantaged children and for people living with disabilities.”
Kyle finished the Boston Marathon in less than four hours in 2019—20 minutes quicker than her father—during a "driving rainstorm."
Unfortunately, Kyle suffered a devastating spinal cord injury a year after which “resulted in long term paralysis, disability, and other medical challenges.”
“The years that followed brought struggles, but Kyle fought to maintain her dry wit and determination through it all, trying to be the best possible mother to her sons and caring for her two beloved, ill-behaved Wheaten terriers,” mentioned in her obituary. “She also began to advocate for people living with disabilities, including testifying at the Massachusetts state house in a hearing on discrimination in disabled health care.”
Kyle is survived by her brother Michael Kennedy Jr. and sister Rory Gifford Kennedy, as well as to her mother, sons, and Kerr, whom her obituary describes as her "former husband."
Less than a year has passed since Katiana Schlossberg, Kyle's second cousin and the granddaughter of John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, passed away in December from a rare blood malignancy.
Knowing that she had a terminal illness, Tatiana, who is married to George Moran and has two children, Edwin, 4, and Josephine, 2, wrote a reflection on her life and the catastrophes that befell her close relatives.
"For my whole life, I have tried to be good, to be a good student and a good sister and a good daughter, and to protect my mother and never make her upset or angry," Last November, Tatiana acknowledged this in a piece for The New Yorker. “Now I have added a new tragedy to her life, to our family's life, and there's nothing I can do to stop it.”
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