Ethel Kennedy, Matriarch of Family Dynasty, Honored at Cape Cod Funeral

Several politicians and relatives, including her son Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his wife, the actress Cheryl Hines, were in attendance.

About 200 people, along with prominent members of the Kennedy family, crowded into a Catholic church on Cape Cod on Monday for the funeral of Ethel Kennedy, the widow of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and a powerful figure in the family’s political dynasty.

Mrs. Kennedy, who never remarried after her husband was assassinated in 1968 in Los Angeles, died last Thursday at 96 from complications of a stroke she had this month.

The gathering, which took place at Our Lady of Victory Parish in Centerville, Mass., included several politicians like Senator Ed Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, and members of the Kennedy family, including Mrs. Kennedy’s grandson and the former U.S. Representative Joseph Kennedy III; her son Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who ended his presidential campaign in August and endorsed former President Donald J. Trump; and his wife, the actress Cheryl Hines.

The list of speakers included Michaela Kennedy-Cuomo, a daughter of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, and Kerry Kennedy, Mrs. Kennedy’s daughter. Governor Cuomo was also in attendance.

Mrs. Kennedy’s wooden coffin was draped with white flowers and carried by relatives down the aisle of the church, which Mrs. Kennedy and the family have attended over the years for various religious services.

“From every walk of life, she taught us that every time you see an injustice, every time you see anything where someone is being hurt, she taught us to always intervene,” her son Joseph Kennedy II, a former U.S. representative, said after the funeral.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s decision to support Mr. Trump, and his earlier attempt to run against President Biden and then Vice President Kamala Harris, caused a rift in the deeply Democratic family and compelled some of his relatives to speak out and endorse Mr. Biden.

In a speech at the funeral, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. described his mother as a talented athlete. He said she ranked among the world’s best amateur female tennis players and might have made the U.S. Olympic equestrian team if women had been allowed to compete in the Games at the time.

Ethel Skakel was born in Chicago in 1928 and raised Catholic, and her large family resembled the Kennedys in size and exuberance. Her father was a businessman who started a company to sell the coal residue discarded by large mines. Its success led the family to rival the Kennedys in wealth. She moved to the East Coast when she was a child as her father conducted more business in the region.

Her roommate at Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart was Jean Kennedy, her soon-to-be-husband’s younger sister. Mrs. Kennedy was formally introduced to Robert F. Kennedy, the younger brother of John F. Kennedy, during a ski weekend in Mont Tremblant in Quebec.

The couple married on June 17, 1950, and they had 11 children. Mrs. Kennedy was so passionate about politics that she campaigned while pregnant and was often said to be “more Kennedy than the Kennedys.”

She was admired for her public grace and dignity after Robert F. Kennedy was killed, and she devoted the rest of her life to raising their children and working on behalf of causes that her husband had championed.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that his mother’s “outgoing personality perfectly complemented my father, providing encouragement to a man who was inherently quiet, vulnerable and shy.”

After the funeral, Joseph Kennedy II said he deeply hoped that his parents were reunited in heaven.

“It makes me so happy, because I know if she doesn’t make it to heaven, none of us got a chance,” he said.