Eunice Kennedy Shriver, a member of one of the most prominent American political families of the 20th century, and founder of the Special Olympics, died at the age of 88.

Her family said in a statement that Shriver, had died after she was hospitalized in Hyannis, the Massachusetts town on Cape Cod synonymous with the Kennedy dynasty.

Known for her devotion to the mentally disabled community and in particular her mentally disabled sister Rosemary, Eunice Kennedy founded the Special Olympics in 1968. For years before, she had invited mentally disabled children to a summer camp held in the backyard of her Maryland home. From the first group of 35 children, the Special Olympics grew into an organization that now hosts 227 programs in more than 180 countries and includes more than three million participants.

The Special Olympics were designed "to demonstrate that people with mental retardation are capable of remarkable achievements in sports, education, employment and beyond", Kennedy Shriver said.

"With enormous conviction and unrelenting effort, Eunice Kennedy Shriver has labored on behalf of America's least-powerful people, those with mental retardation", President Ronald Reagan said, when presenting Eunice Kennedy Shriver with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1984.

Born on July 10, 1921, in Brookline, Massachusetts, Eunice Kennedy was the fifth of Joseph and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy's nine children . She was a sister of the late President John F. Kennedy and Senator Edward Kennedy (Massachusetts), and the mother of Maria Shriver, the first lady of California. She had been married since 1953 to Sargent Shriver, who served as the first director of the US Peace Corps and an ambassador to France.

She earned a bachelor's degree in sociology from Stanford University, did social work in Harlem, NY, and worked for the US State Department helping American prisoners of war returning from Germany adjust to life back in the US. For a while, she lived with her brother John, at the time a freshman congressman, in a Georgetown townhouse, working as a government secretary.

As executive vice president of the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation, named after her oldest brother , who was killed as a pilot in World War II, Eunice Kennedy Shriver helped change civil service regulations to allow mentally disabled people to be evaluated on ability rather than just test scores, and set up a program to provide free dental care for participants of the Special Olympics, among other efforts.

Eunice Kennedy Shriver was the first living woman to appear on a commemorative coin, the 1995 silver dollar.

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