ANOTHER KENNEDY GONE

Kennedy Granddaughter Dies at 42

Kyle Kennedy was an educator and disability advocate.

Kyle Kennedy, granddaughter of Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Kennedy, died on September 21 at her home in Westwood, Massachusetts, according to her obituary. She was 42.

The Westwood Town Clerk told People that her cause of death is still pending.

Born in Washington, D.C., in 1984, Kennedy was the daughter of Michael Kennedy—the sixth child of Robert and Ethel Kennedy’s 11 children—and Victoria Denise Gifford—the daughter of former NFL player and sportscaster Frank Gifford and stepdaughter of Kathie Lee Gifford.

Six years ago, Kennedy sustained a severe spinal cord injury that “resulted in long-term paralysis, disability, and other medical challenges,” her obituary said. She later became an advocate for people living with disabilities and testified at the Massachusetts State House in a hearing on discrimination in disabled healthcare.

According to her obituary, Kennedy earned an undergraduate degree in history from Georgetown University and then two advanced degrees from Pace University and Harvard.

After graduation, she taught for two years in New York City public schools with Teach For America. Kennedy advocated for more equitable elementary education and charter schooling.

Kennedy is survived by her sons, 12-year-old Conor and 10-year-old Declan; her former husband, Liam Kerr; her mother, Victoria Gifford; her brother, Michael Kennedy, Jr.; and her sister, Rory Kennedy.

Her father, Michael Kennedy, died in a skiing accident in 1997 at the age of 39.

The Kennedy family has long been dogged by tragedy. Earlier this year, Ryan Murphy’s Love Story series brought the so-called “Kennedy Curse” back into the public eye by depicting the plane crash that killed John F. Kennedy, Jr., 38, and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, 33.

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In 1963, President John F. Kennedy was shot dead in Dallas, Texas, while riding in a presidential motorcade at age 46. His brother, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated in Los Angeles five years later while running for president.

In 1969, Senator Ted Kennedy lost control of his car on a wooden bridge on Chappaquiddick Island in Massachusetts. He and a campaign staffer, Mary Jo Kopechne, plunged into the water. Kennedy escaped the submerged car, but Kopechne did not.

After the incident, Ted Kennedy publicly wondered whether “some awful curse did actually hang over all the Kennedys.”

David Kennedy, one of Robert and Ethel Kennedy’s 11 children, died of a drug overdose in 1984. He was 28.

Mary Richardson Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s second wife, died by suicide in 2012.

Seven years later, Robert F. Kennedy’s granddaughter Saoirse Kennedy Hill died of an accidental overdose at the family’s Hyannis Port compound. She was 22.

Last year, John F. Kennedy’s granddaughter, journalist Tatiana Schlossberg, died at the age of 35 from a rare mutation of acute myeloid leukemia.

In an essay published in The New Yorker shortly before her death, Schlossberg expressed sympathy for her mother, Caroline Kennedy, writing, “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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Evgenia AnastasakosBreaking News Intern

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