He spent his high school years at Canterbury School in New Milford, Connecticut, which he attended on a full scholarship. In his freshman year at Canterbury, he befriended future brother-in-law President John F. Kennedy. He was on Canterbury's baseball, basketball, and football teams, became the editor of the school's newspaper, and participated in choral and debating clubs.[9] On June 9, 2023, Shriver was inducted into the Canterbury School Athletic Hall of Fame for all three sports. After graduating from The Browning School in 1934, Shriver spent the summer in Germany as part of The Experiment in International Living, returning in the fall of 1934 to enter Yale University, where he was a brother in the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, as well as a member of Yale's Scroll and Key society.
Shriver's relationship with the Kennedys began when he was working as an assistant editor at Newsweek after his discharge from the Navy. He met Eunice Kennedy at a party in New York, and shortly afterwards, family patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. asked him to look at diary entries written by his eldest son, Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., who had died in a plane crash while he was on a military mission during World War II. Shriver was later hired to manage the Merchandise Mart, part of Kennedy's business empire, in Chicago, Illinois.[12]
Shriver was admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia, Illinois, and New York, and at the US Supreme Court.[15]
A devout Catholic, Shriver attended daily Mass and always carried a rosary of well-worn wooden beads.[16] He was critical of abortion and was a signatory to "A New Compact of Care: Caring about Women, Caring for the Unborn", which appeared in The New York Times in July 1992 and stated that "To establish justice and to promote the general welfare, America does not need the abortion license. What America needs are policies that responsibly protect and advance the interest of mothers and their children, both before and after birth."[17]
Public service and political career
1950s
In May 1954, Shriver was appointed to the Chicago Board of Education by Chicago mayor Martin H. Kennelly.[18] On October 26, 1955, Shriver was chosen to serve as president of the Chicago Board of Education by a vote of the board.[18] Shriver would serve in the position of president for five years,[19][20] resigning from the position on October 10, 1960.[21] At the time he became president of the board, he was the second-youngest individual to hold that office, being only 39.[22] At the time, Chicago Public Schools was the second-largest school district in the United States.[22]
Shriver also served as director of the Catholic Interracial Council, a group created to advocate for desegregation in Chicago schools.[23]
Shriver considered several runs for statewide office. His first consideration was for the Democratic nomination in the 1956 Illinois gubernatorial election. Shriver had been courted by many Chicago Democrats, including Mayor Richard J. Daley, but ultimately chose to stay out of the election.[24] The primary was won by Cook County treasurer Herbert C. Paschen, who would be forced to withdraw as the nominee after becoming embroiled in scandals surrounding his work as Treasurer. District Court Judge Richard B. Austin, was chosen as the replacement and went on to narrowly lose the election to incumbent Governor William Stratton.
1960s
Shriver and JFK at the White House in August 1961.
In 1960, Shriver once again received serious courting by Democratic leaders in both Chicago and across the state to enter the Democratic primary for the 1960 Illinois gubernatorial election.[25][24] Shriver even met with Mayor Daley and the Cook County Democratic Committee to gauge a possible run at Daley's urging. However his father-in-law, Joseph P. Kennedy, told Shriver he would not be able to run or else he could seriously cripple the Presidential campaign of his brother-in-law, John F. Kennedy. His father-in-law cited the oversaturation of Catholic candidates in Illinois could cost the Democrats the state in November (Kennedy, Shriver, and Daley were all Catholic).[26][24]
When John F. Kennedy ran for president, Shriver worked as a political and organization coordinator in the Wisconsin and West Virginia primaries. During Kennedy's presidential term, Shriver founded and served as the first director of the Peace Corps from March 22, 1961, to February 28, 1966.[3][27]
Shriver has been credited with convincing a hesitant Kennedy to contact Coretta Scott King after her husband, prominent civil rights activist Martin Luther King, was jailed for civil disobedience in Georgia in October 1960. Kennedy's phone call to Coretta Scott King was credited with helping to strengthen black support for Kennedy's candidacy.[28][29][30]
After Kennedy's assassination, Shriver continued to serve as Director of the Peace Corps and served as Special Assistant to President Lyndon Johnson. Under Johnson, he created the Office of Economic Opportunity and served as its first director.[31] He is known as the "architect" of the Johnson administration's "War on Poverty".[3] Hired by President Johnson to be the "salesman" for Johnson's War on Poverty initiative, Shriver initially was "not interested in hearing about community action proposals." The Job Corps movement was more consistent with his goals. Thus, soon after his appointment, Shriver "moved quickly to reconsider the proposed anti-poverty initiative."[32]
Shriver founded numerous social programs and organizations, including Head Start,[33]VISTA, Job Corps, Community Action, Upward Bound, Foster Grandparents, Legal Services, the National Clearinghouse for Legal Services (now the Shriver Center), Indian and Migrant Opportunities and Neighborhood Health Services, in addition to directing the Peace Corps. He was active in the Special Olympics, which was founded in 1968 by his wife Eunice.
In 1964 Shriver was considered one of the primary finalists on Johnson's shortlist to be vice president. After weighing the benefits of Shriver as the second spot on the ticket, Johnson ultimately chose Hubert Humphrey. Shriver again considered running for Governor of Illinois in the 1964 Illinois gubernatorial election.[24] However, he demurred after being asked by President Johnson to stay on and continue leading the creation of many of the aforementioned War on Poverty programs that would become part of the Great Society.[24]
In 1968, Shriver was once again seriously courted by Illinois Democrats for both the 1968 Illinois gubernatorial election against increasingly unpopular incumbent Governor Otto Kerner, Jr. and the 1968 United States Senate election in Illinois against incumbent Republican Everett Dirksen. Shriver expressed little interest in serving in the Senate, not wanting to be overshadowed by his brothers-in-law Ted Kennedy and specifically Robert Kennedy, who he had expected to run for president in 1972. To move Shriver toward a run, Daley pitched to Illinois Democratic leaders and Shriver on recruiting Illinois State TreasurerAdlai E. Stevenson III to run for the Senate seat with Shriver running for Governor. Shriver even received Johnson's blessing to make the run as part of Daley's "Dream Ticket", should he choose to do so. However, when Stevenson spoke out against the Vietnam War, Daley rejected Stevenson's candidacy and again tried to recruit Shriver for the Senate seat. Johnson had offered Shriver the post of U.S. Ambassador to France, but asked for time to consider the offer, during which he considered his potential candidacy. When Stevenson lost Daley's support for the Senate seat and began trying to recruit Shriver again, Shriver decided to accept Johnson's offer of the Ambassadorship.[24]
Shriver served as U.S. Ambassador to France from 1968 to 1970, becoming a quasi-celebrity among the French for bringing what Time magazine called "a rare and welcome panache" to the normally sedate world of international diplomacy.[34] Upon returning to the United States in 1970, Shriver was speculated to be considering challenging incumbent Democratic Governor Marvin Mandel for the Democratic nomination for the 1970 Maryland gubernatorial election, reports he did nothing to dissuade despite Mandel's sizable campaign fund and being the state's first Jewish Governor. Mandel had been elected by the Maryland Legislature to finish out the term Spiro Agnew had been elected to in 1966, but resigned from after being elected Vice President in 1968. After traveling the state to gauge the support a potential candidacy might have, Shriver met with Mandel in the Governor's office. After emerging from the meeting, Shriver declined to be a candidate. Mandel recalled years later, "We had a long discussion, and when it was over, he wasn't a candidate."[35]
During the 1972 Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida, George McGovern considered Shriver as a vice presidential candidate, but his campaign was unable to reach Shriver, who was at the time visiting Moscow, Soviet Union.[36] McGovern then selected Thomas Eagleton instead, who later resigned from the Democratic ticket following revelations of past mental health treatments. Shriver replaced Eagleton on the ticket. The McGovern-Shriver ticket lost to Republican incumbents Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew.
Shriver unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976. In the months before the primaries began, political observers thought that Shriver would draw strength from legions of former colleagues from the Peace Corps and the War on Poverty programs, and he was even seen as an inheritor of the Kennedy legacy, but neither theory proved true.[37] His candidacy was short-lived and he returned to private life.[38]
In 1981, Shriver was appointed to the Rockefeller University Council, an organization devoted exclusively to research and graduate education in the biomedical and related sciences.
In 1984, he was elected president of Special Olympics by the board of directors; as president, he directed the operation and international development of sports programs around the world. Six years later, in 1990, he was appointed chairman of the board of Special Olympics.
Shriver was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2003. In 2004, his daughter, Maria, published a children's book, What's Happening to Grandpa?, to help explain Alzheimer's to children. The book gives suggestions on how to help and to show love to an elderly person with the disease.[40] In July 2007, Shriver's son-in-law, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, speaking in favor of stem-cell research, said that Shriver's Alzheimer's disease had advanced to the point that "Today, he does not even recognize his wife."[41] Maria Shriver discusses her father's worsening condition in a segment for the four-part 2009 HBO documentary series The Alzheimer's Project called Grandpa, Do You Know Who I Am?, including describing a moment when she decided to stop trying to correct his various delusions.[42]
On August 11, 2009, Shriver's wife of 56 years, Eunice, died at the age of 88.[19] He attended her wake and funeral in Centerville and Hyannis, Massachusetts.[43] Two weeks later, on August 29, 2009, he attended the funeral of her brother Ted Kennedy in Boston, Massachusetts.[44]
Shriver died on January 18, 2011, in Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, at age 95.[3][12][45] Shriver's family released a statement calling him "a man of giant love, energy, enthusiasm, and commitment" who "lived to make the world a more joyful, faithful, and compassionate place."[45] President Barack Obama also released a statement, calling Shriver "one of the brightest lights of the greatest generation".[45] Aaron S. Williams, the director of the Peace Corps, said in a statement, "The entire Peace Corps community is deeply saddened by the passing of Sargent Shriver." He further noted that Shriver "served as our founder, friend, and guiding light for the past 50 years" and that "his legacy of idealism will live on in the work of current and future Peace Corps volunteers."[46] He is buried alongside his wife Eunice at St. Francis Xavier Cemetery in Centerville, Massachusetts.
In December 1993, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County created the Shriver Center in honor of Shriver and his wife. The center serves as the university's civic engagement, and applied learning organization. The Shriver Center also is home to the Shriver Peaceworker Program and the Shriver Living Learning Community.[48]
The Job Corps dedicated a center to his name in 1998 – the "Shriver Job Corps Center" – located in Devens, Massachusetts.[49] The National Clearinghouse for Legal Services (renamed the National Center on Poverty Law in 1995) was renamed the Shriver Center in 2002 and each year awards a Sargent Shriver Award for Equal Justice.[50]
Shriver was an admirable, principled, and conscientious man who respected the dignity and sanctity of human life, and he also happened to be a contemporary and in-law of Kennedy. Not only did Shriver represent a "link" with JFK, but he represented a particular culture of white ethnic Catholic Democratic politics that has been gradually disappearing for the last fifty years. A pro-life Catholic, Shriver had been a founding member of the America First Committee, and more famously he was also on the 1972 antiwar ticket with George McGovern. In short, he represented much of what was good in the Democratic Party of his time.[54]
The film Too Young the Hero (1988), about the life of Calvin Graham, features a scene during World War II in which Graham (played by Ricky Schroder) meets Shriver (played by Carl Mueller).
^Kauffman, Bill; Sarles, Ruth (2003). A story of America First: the men and women who opposed U.S. intervention in World War II. New York: Praeger. p. xvii. ISBN0-275-97512-6.
^Vinovskis, M. A. (2008) Birth of Head Start: Preschool education policies in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. pp. 42-43
^Clymer, Adam (January 18, 2011). "Sargent Shriver's America". The Daily Beast. Retrieved March 21, 2016. In fact, McGovern said this week, he probably would have chosen instead of the ill-starred Eagleton at the Miami Beach convention, but Shriver was traveling in Russia and could not be reached by phone to be offered the nomination.
