Private Life and Family
He resides in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. A long-time bachelor, Kennedy announced his engagement to sixth-grade history teacher Amy Petitgout in March 2011. She has a 3-year-old daughter from a previous marriage. They married on July 15, 2011 in Hyannisport, Massachusetts and have a son named Owen Patrick, born on April 15, 2012.
His father, Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy, died on August 25, 2009. Patrick Kennedy made a tearful eulogy at the funeral, saying that "He would be very proud to see you all out here today paying a final respect and tribute to his memory". He further elaborated on his experiences with his father as a child, saying his father would stay at his bedside during his frequent bouts of ill health.
Kennedy suffers from bipolar disorder, and has struggled with alcoholism, asthma, and depression for a good portion of his life.
When Kennedy decided not to run for reelection in 2010, he cited his decision on the fact that his life "has taken a new direction". Mark Weiner, a major Democratic fundraiser in Rhode Island and one of Kennedy's top financial backers, said "It's tough to get up and go to work every day when your partner is not there, I think he just had a broken heart after his father passed away."
Read more about this topic: Patrick J. Kennedy
Famous quotes containing the words private life, private, life and/or family:
“As in private life one differentiates between what a man thinks and says of himself and what he really is and does, so in historical struggles one must still more distinguish the language and the imaginary aspirations of parties from their real organism and their real interests, their conception of themselves from their reality.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“... it is a commonplace that men like war. For peace, in our society, with the feeling we have then that it is feeble-minded to strive except for one’s own private profit, is a lonely thing and a hazardous business. Over and over men have proved that they prefer the hazards of war with all its suffering. It has its compensations.”
—Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)
“I stand in awe of my body, this matter to which I am bound has become so strange to me. I fear not spirits, ghosts, of which I am one,—that my body might,—but I fear bodies, I tremble to meet them. What is this Titan that has possession of me? Talk of mysteries! Think of our life in nature,—daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it,—rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Female Virtues are of a Domestick turn. The Family is the proper Province for Private Women to Shine in. If they must be showing their Zeal for the Publick, let it not be against those who are perhaps of the same Family, or at least of the same Religion or Nation, but against those who are the open, professed, undoubted Enemies of their Faith, Liberty, and Country.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)