Jean Kennedy Smith
Jean Kennedy Smith was born
Jean Ann Kennedy on
February 20,
1928 in
Brookline, Massachusetts, the eighth of the nine children of
Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. and
Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy.
Jean was the shyest and most guarded of the Kennedy children. Her mother would say of her youngest daughter, "She was born so late, that she only was able to enjoy the tragedies, and not the triumphs." She would go on to attend
Manhattanville College, (which at that time was a Sacred Heart school), where she would meet and befriend two future sisters-in-law:
Ethel Skakel, who would marry her brother
Robert in 1950, and
Virginia Joan Bennett, who would marry her baby brother
Edward in 1958. She herself would be married on
May 19,
1956 in the small chapel of
St. Patrick's Cathedral to
Stephen Edward Smith, a businessman who helped run the Cleary Brothers Company, the family boat and shipping business. He would, in time, not only take over the Kennedy families' finances, he would also become a political advisor and campaign manager for the Kennedy brothers.
The Smiths would maintain a lower profile than the other Kennedys, preferring to stay out of the glare of the spotlight. During the early
1960s, they would permanently settle in New York City. Jean would have two sons,
Stephen Jr. (b. 1957) and
William Kennedy (b. 1960), and eventually adopt two daughters: Amanda Mary (b. 1967) and Kym Maria (b. 1972) who was actually born in
Vietnam during the war.
Jean managed to stay just out of the camera lens until the
1990s when she and her family were forced into the spotlight. First, her husband Steve died after a brief battle with cancer on
August 19,
1990. The next year, her son William, who was a medical student at
Northwestern University Medical School, was accused of rape in Florida (he was acquitted). Then in
1993, she was appointed by President
Bill Clinton as the American Ambassador to
Ireland, continuing a legacy of diplomacy begun by her father who was the Ambassador to the
Court of St. James's during the Roosevelt administration. She played a pivotal role in the peace process in that region for almost five years before resigning the post.
In
1974 Ambassador Smith founded the
Very Special Arts, a
nonprofit organization which promotes the artistic talents of mentally and physically challenged children. She also sits on the board of the
John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Today, she commutes between
New York City and
Washington D.C.
