Eunice Kennedy Shriver

She's the one we all wanted to be like, said her brother Bobby Kennedy. In another age, she's the one who could have been elected President, said Jack, the brother who was. Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who died Aug. 11 at 88, was never elected to anything. Yet she presided over a social revolution that changed not just attitudes but also laws, expectations and opportunities.

The middle child of nine, Shriver grew up in the shadow of Rosemary, the "mildly retarded" sister who loved to play but couldn't keep up. When Rosemary was 23, she had a prefrontal lobotomy; from that point...

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