WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Joan Bennett Kennedy, the first wife of a U.S. senator, the mother of a congressman and the sister-in-law of a slain president, has died at the age of 89, U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on Wednesday.
A daughter of privilege who could trace her lineage back to one of the victims of the Salem witch trials, Joan Kennedy’s marriage to Edward Kennedy tied her to an American political dynasty and tumultuous personal life marred by bouts of alcoholism.
She passed away peacefully in her sleep on Tuesday at her home in Boston, her nephew Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a social media post.
“She was my friend, confidante, and my partner in recovery. Joan inspired me with her courage and humility,” he wrote.
Virginia Joan Bennett was born into a wealthy Catholic family and attended the private Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart in suburban New York.
In 1958 she married Edward ‘Ted’ Kennedy and the couple moved to Boston. In 1960, she gave birth to their first child, Kara, followed by Ted Jr. in 1961 and Patrick in 1967.
Her husband went on to serve as U.S. senator for Massachusetts from 1962 until his death in 2009, while son Patrick would go on to become a U.S. congressman from Rhode Island from 1995 to 2011.
Her brother-in-law John F. Kennedy, meanwhile, would become president.
She maintained her composure in the public eye during difficult times that included the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy and the 1968 assassination of Edward’s brother Robert Kennedy, the U.S. attorney general and presidential candidate.
She suffered three miscarriages, watched her young son Ted Jr. lose a leg to bone cancer, and bore her husband’s highly publicized marital infidelities.
But by the mid-1970s, she began to speak publicly about her hospitalizations for alcoholism, which saw her arrested several times for drunken driving, and emotional distress.
Although by then they were unofficially separated, she campaigned for her husband during his unsuccessful bid in 1980 for the Democratic Party presidential candidacy.
Not long after announcing their divorce, her sister-in-law Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis told her, “I am so sorry, because now I feel I should have told you to do this 15 years ago. Then maybe you wouldn’t have gotten so sick,” according to the book “Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot.”
Joan Kennedy settled in Massachusetts, dividing her time between their home in Boston’s Back Bay and the Kennedy compound in Hyannis.
During the 1980s, she returned to college, receiving a master’s degree in education. She slowly re-entered public life, among other things serving as head of the Boston Cultural Council and writing a guide to classical music.
(Additional reporting by Bhargav Acharya, Maiya Keidan and Susan Heavey; Editing by Doina Chiacu, Rosalba O’Brien and Deepa Babington)
