Ethel Kennedy, who lost her husband, Robert F. Kennedy, and brother-in-law, President John F. Kennedy, to assassin’s bullets, and who channeled her grief into raising her eleven children and pursuing a lifetime of public service, died Thursday. She was 96.

Kennedy died of complications from a stroke she suffered last week, former Rep. Joe Kennedy III, D-Mass., a grandson, said in a statement on X.

“It is with our hearts full of love that we announce the passing of our wonderful grandmother, Ethel Kennedy,” the former congresswoman said.

Joe Kennedy wrote that his grandmother “was a devout Catholic and a daily communicant.”

“We are comforted by the knowledge that she has been reunited with the love of her life, our father, Robert F. Kennedy,” he wrote.

“In addition to a lifetime of work in social justice and human rights, our mother is survived by nine children, 34 grandchildren and 24 great-grandchildren, along with numerous nieces and nephews, all of whom love her dearly.”

Kennedy died about six weeks after her third child, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., ended his presidential campaign and angered his family by supporting former President Donald Trump.

Born Ethel Skakel on April 11, 1928, in Chicago, Kennedy’s life was marked by tragedy even before Sirhan Sirhan widowed her in 1968 by shooting her husband as he ran for president.

Kennedy’s parents, coal magnate George Skakel and Ann Brannack Skakel, died in a plane crash in 1955.

Kennedy met her future husband in 1945 at a ski resort in Quebec. According to an official biography from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, he was dating her older sister Patricia at the time.

Five years later, “Bobby and Ethel” married and their first child, Kathleen, was born on July 4, 1951.

In 1956, the young couple lived with their growing family in the sprawling Virginia mansion they had purchased from JFK. Meanwhile, Robert F. Kennedy’s public profile grew as chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Like the rest of her family, Kennedy participated in JFK’s presidential campaign, and after he was elected in 1960, her husband was appointed attorney general.

After the assassination of JFK, Robert F. Kennedy successfully ran for the United States Senate from New York. Then in 1968, with his wife’s blessing, he launched his own presidential campaign.

“Kennedy’s wife, always his most ardent believer, was the most consistent supporter of a race for the White House,” RFK biographer Evan Thomas wrote in “Robert Kennedy: His Life.” “If she had private thoughts about becoming a widow, she didn’t discuss them.”

Six months after RFK was assassinated, Kennedy gave birth to their last child, Rory. Around that time, Kennedy founded the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights and threw herself into working for some of the same causes her husband had championed.

For her efforts, Kennedy received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2014.

Kennedy never remarried, although in the 1970s she was often seen on the arm of singer Andy Williams, a family friend who denied they were romantically involved.

In the years following RFK’s assassination, Kennedy’s life was marked by even more setbacks.

In 1997, her son Michael died in a skiing accident. In 1984, her son David was found dead of a drug overdose in a hotel room in Palm Beach, Florida.

In 2002, Kennedy’s cousin Michael Skakel was tried and convicted for the 1975 murder of his then-neighbor Martha Moxley. He was released in 2013 when a judge agreed that Skakel’s former lawyer had not adequately defended him.

And in 2019, Kennedy’s 22-year-old granddaughter, Saoirse Kennedy Hill, died of a drug overdose.

Joe Kennedy said in his statement that his grandmother also lost her daughter-in-law Mary, granddaughter Maeve and great-grandchildren Gideon and Josie.

Kennedy’s personal pain over her husband’s death was pushed back into the public domain in 2021 when a California parole board recommended for the first time that RFK’s killer be released.

When he was 93, Kennedy objected.

“Our family and our country have suffered unspeakable loss because of one man’s inhumanity,” Kennedy wrote. “We believe in the kindness that spared his life, but taming his violent act should not give him the opportunity to terrorize again.”

Kennedy was supported by six of her surviving children: Joseph P. Kennedy II, Courtney Kennedy, Kerry Kennedy, Christopher G. Kennedy, Maxwell T. Kennedy and Rory Kennedy.

But two of Kennedy’s other sons, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Douglas Kennedy, said Sirhan had done his time and supported his parole.

California Governor Gavin Newsom agreed with Ethel Kennedy and in 2022 blocked Sirhan’s release from prison. And when Sirhan appeared before the parole board again in March 2023, his bid to be released was rejected.