Journalist Michael Barone, writing on the website of the American Enterprise Institute, offers praise for Eunice Kennedy Shriver and her husband, founding Peace Corps director R. Sargent Shriver. An excerpt:

They took the advantages they had in life, and their disappointments as well, and created two great institutions which will live on and serve people and enrich America for many, many years to come. The Peace Corps and Special Olympics share an important characteristic: they encourage and enable people to do things that they and those around them might have thought impossible. Peace Corps volunteers are empowered to spend two years living and working in a foreign country. Special Olympics participants are empowered to achieve measurable goals. Both teach the lesson that we can exceed limits that seem imposed on us.

All of us should shed a tear for Eunice Shriver, and for Sargent Shriver too, a tear of happiness and gratitude for what they have given their country and the world.

Earlier posts here.

Writing in the Washington Post, Colman McCarthy says he met Eunice Shriver at a pickup basketball game in her backyard more than 30 years ago. An excerpt:

She truly believed, and she instilled in those [Special Olympics] events, the idea that it’s not what you achieve in life, it’s what you overcome. A morally driven and politically astute woman, she sprung open doors globally for the mentally disabled and opened minds that had too long been closed to accepting people with Down syndrome and other disabilities.

… Eunice Shriver had no taste for fame-seeking. She had no publicist, no agent, no handler. All she had was energy, of a steeled kind that never stalled out. It was Olympian energy, special in its grace.

Earlier posts here.

From the Boston Globe (with video) and elsewhere:

“If I (had) never met Rosemary, never known anything about handicapped children, how would I have ever found out? Because nobody accepted them anyplace,” she told National Public Radio in 2007.

International champion for people with developmental disabilities and Special Olympics founder Eunice Kennedy Shriver, 88, died this morning at a hospital in Hyannis, Mass. Shriver was the fifth of nine children in the Kennedy clan which included President John F. Kennedy and Sens. Robert F. Kennedy and Edward M. Kennedy.

Mrs. Shriver was credited with changing the public’s perception of people with intellectual disabilities by publicly acknowledging her sister with developmental disabilities, Rosemary, and founding the Special Olympics in 1968.

Her family said in a statement, “Her work transformed the lives of hundreds of millions of people across the globe and they in turn are her living legacy.”

‘‘My sister, Rosemary, is retarded,” she wrote in Parade magazine in February 1964. ‘‘But I cannot help her with pity – or serve with sorrow the 5 1/2 million others like her. Only by facing the facts and resolving to meet the challenge head-on can something be done. Only if we broaden our understanding can we help the mentally retarded to escape into the sunlight of useful living.”

In a statement, President Obama described Mrs. Shriver as “an extraordinary woman who, as much as anyone, taught our nation –and our world — that no physical or mental barrier can restrain the power of the human spirit.”

See also:

Remembering Eunice Kennedy Shriver — The Atlantic

Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Founder of Special Olympics, Dies at 88 – New York Times

Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Founder of Special Olympics, Dies at 88 – Washington Post

Eunice Kennedy Shriver Dies At Age 88 – By Joseph Shapiro on National Public Radio

Eunice Kennedy Shriver Dies at 88 – Wall Street Journal

Eunice Kennedy Shriver, JFK’s sister and champion for the mentally retarded, dies at 88 – Los Angeles Times

Eunice Kennedy Shriver dies – CNN

JFK’s sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver dead at 88 – MSNBC

Eunice Kennedy Shriver dies at 88 – USA Today

Statement from Special Olympics on death of Eunice Kennedy Shriver – Boston Globe

By Mike Lupica in the New York Daily News:

Go to her web site today and listen to that Kennedy voice with all its hard angles, from a Special Olympics ceremony from 1987, in South Bend, Ind., saying the things she has said across the last four decades of her life:

“The right to play on any playing field? You have earned it. The right to study in any school? You have earned it. The right to hold a job? You have earned it.”

Then her voice is rising, the way her brothers’ voices rose in moments like this when they were running for office.

“The right to be anyone’s neighbor?” Eunice Kennedy Shriver says. “You have earned it!”

… In her own way, she fought for people unable to fight for themselves the way her brothers did.

… In her own way, Mrs. S. did exactly what her brothers set out to do. She changed the world.

See also:

• Report: Eunice Kennedy ‘minute to minute’ — Boston Herald
• Schwarzenegger cancels appearance at energy summit — AP
• Shriver getting well wishes from Special Olympians — AP
• Special Olympics honors ailing founder Eunice Shriver — Boston Herald

Earlier posts here.

(Photo from Boston Globe)

From CNN, Boston Globe:

Special Olympics founder Eunice Kennedy Shriver is in critical but stable condition in a Massachusetts hospital, her family said today.

Members of her family flew in to Cape Cod Hospital to be with the 88-year-old, including California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the husband of her daughter, Maria Shriver, a source told CNN.

See also: www.eunicekennedyshriver.org

UPDATE: Schwarzenegger, Maria Shriver at Eunice Shriver’s bedside — Los Angeles Times

From the [UK] Guardian:

Special Olympics chairman Tim Shriver, in London in preparation for the GB Summer Games later this month, challenged the UK to do more to support its citizens with disabilities. It is estimated that 8,000 athletes will participate in the games — far short, Shriver said, of the one million who are eligible.

“There are 200 children born in this country every day with learning disabilities and most will grow up and experience enormous prejudice unless we do something about it. So we do need more government support, there is no doubt about it – I think we need to turn the goodwill into real support, into muscle,” he said.

Asked about President Obama’s jest about the Special Olympics earlier this year, Shriver said he appreciated the president’s apology. He said the organization had offered to have some Special Olympics athletes visit the White House to bowl with the president, but to date nothing has happened.

Seattle police say Hannah Geiger was the victim of a hate crime

From the Seattle Times, KOMO-TV:

Crowds rallied in Seattle to celebrate the life of Hannah Geiger, a 19-year-old Special Olympics athlete, two weeks after she was beaten unconscious near her home by men who accosted her because of her race and disability. No arrests have been made.

… And the crowd shouted: “Hannah!”

For the first time since she was thrust into the local spotlight after surviving what police say was a violent hate crime, Geiger’s game face cracked into an embarrassed, but resolute, smile.

Related posts here.