R. Sargent Shriver

R. Sargent Shriver, the founder and first director of the Peace Corps, a major figure in the war on poverty and the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 1972, died Jan. 18 in a Bethesda, Md., hospital. He was 95, and had announced in 2003 that he had Alzheimer’s disease.

A family spokesman said his five children—Robert, Maria, Tim, Mark and Anthony—and several of his 19 grandchildren, were with him when he died.

Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl of Washington presided at a private Funeral Mass Jan. 22 for Shriver at Our Lady of Mercy Church in Potomac, Md.

Shriver’s death came about a year and a half after the death of his wife, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, a founder of the Special Olympics and member of one of the most prominent American Catholic political families of the 20th century. She died Aug. 11, 2009. About two weeks later, her last surviving brother, Sen. Edward “Ted” Kennedy, died. Sargent Shriver attended both funerals.

A lifelong Catholic who attended daily Mass and was known to carry a well-worn rosary with him, Shriver was “a man who personified the ideal of Catholic public service,” Supreme Knight Carl Anderson said in a Jan. 19 statement.

He noted that his death came just two days shy of the 50th anniversary of the inaugural address of his brother-in-law, President John F. Kennedy, who issued “a call to public service,” inviting “Americans to ask what they could do for their country.”

Anderson said like the late president, Shriver was a Knight of Columbus.

Shriver “came to embody the idea of public service” over his long career, President Obama said in a statement issued shortly after his death.

He called Shriver “one of the brightest lights of the greatest generation.”

Born in Westminster, Md., Shriver grew up in New York where his family settled. He graduated from Yale University and its law school and served overseas as a U.S. Navy officer in World War II. He later came to know the Kennedy family and was hired by its patriarch, Joseph P. Kennedy, to manage the Merchandise Mart in Chicago. In 1953, Shriver and Eunice Kennedy were married in St. Patrick’s Cathedral with Cardinal Francis Spellman presiding.

After President Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, Shriver accepted President Lyndon Johnson’s offer to administer the Office of Economic Opportunity, and he became known as the architect of the administration’s war on poverty. He later accepted the post of ambassador to France, from 1968 to 1970.

In 1972, he ran for vice president on the 1972 ticket with George McGovern, replacing nominee Thomas Eagleton, who resigned from the ticket. In 1976, Shriver threw his hat into the presidential ring, but his candidacy was short-lived.

In addition to creating the Peace Corps, Shriver founded many social programs and organizations, including Head Start, VISTA, Job Corps, Community Action, Upward Bound, Foster Grandparents, Special Olympics (with his wife), Legal Services, the National Clearinghouse for Legal Services (now the Shriver Center), Indian and Migrant Opportunities, and Neighborhood Health Services.

Despite all of that, an AP story noted that above all he was “known first as an in-law”: brother-in-law of President Kennedy, Sen. Ted Kennedy and their brother, Robert F. Kennedy; and father-in-law of former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is married to daughter Maria. —CNS