Later Years and Death
After her son Jack became President in 1961, Rose "became a sort of quiet celebrity," appearing on the International Best Dressed List. Most of her social activities consisted of involvement in charities and women’s groups. Rose also took brisk ocean swims outside her Cape Cod house in fifty-degree weather.
After suffering a stroke in 1984, Rose used a wheelchair for the remainder of her life. She maintained her residence at the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts and was cared for by private nurses and staff. On January 22, 1995, she died from complications from pneumonia at the age of 104, having outlived her husband by a quarter of a century, four of her nine children (Joe, Jr., Jack, Kick, and Bobby), her ex-son-in-law Peter Lawford, her son-in-law Stephen Edward Smith, her daughter-in-law Jackie, and three of her grandchildren, David, Arabella, and Patrick.
Jean became the last surviving child after Ted died.
Read more about this topic: Rose Kennedy
Famous quotes containing the words years and/or death:
“Youth is rather to be pitied than envied by people in years since it is doomed to toil through the rugged road of life which the others have passed through, in search of happiness that is not to be met with in it and that, at the highest, can be compounded for only by the blessing of a contented mind.”
—Samuel Richardson (1689–1761)
“I never can hear a crowd of people singing and gesticulating, all together, at an Italian opera, without fancying myself at Athens, listening to that particular tragedy, by Sophocles, in which he introduces a full chorus of turkeys, who set about bewailing the death of Meleager.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)