Sargent Shriver was the first director of the Peace Corps and left behind a legacy of service and social change. Brother-in-law of John F. Kennedy and advisor to President Johnson, Shriver had a long career in the public sphere, co-founding the Office of Economic Opportunity and establishing many other social programs such as Head Start, VISTA and the Special Olympics.
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Robert Sargent Shriver was born on November 9, 1915, in Westminster, Maryland. He was an administrator, diplomat, the first director of the U.S. Peace Corps and the Democratic nominee for the U.S. vice presidency in 1972.
A graduate of Yale Law School (1940), Shriver served as a U.S. naval officer during World War II, and, after a brief association with a Wall Street law firm, he went to work as an assistant editor for Newsweek magazine in 1946. That same year he met millionaire Joseph P. Kennedy, who two years later asked him to manage the giant Merchandise Mart in Chicago. In 1953 he married Kennedy's daughter Eunice.
When his brother-in-law John F. Kennedy ran for the presidency in 1960, Shriver proved particularly adept in his work with minority groups throughout the country. After the election he first gained national prominence as director of the experimental overseas Peace Corps, one of the most popular ventures of the New Frontier program of the Kennedy administration. In 1964, after Kennedy's assassination, he accepted appointment as head of President Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty in the Office of Economic Opportunity. From 1968 to 1970 he served as ambassador to France under Republican President Richard M. Nixon. In 1972 Shriver unsuccessfully ran for the vice presidency on the ticket with Senator George McGovern. He was an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976.
In 1984 Shriver was elected president of the Special Olympics, which was founded by his wife. He was the recipient of numerous honours—including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian honour, in 1994. In 2003 Shriver was diagnosed with Alzheimer disease. His daughter, Maria Shriver, is a noted television journalist. Shriver died on January 18, 2011. He was 95.
Copyright © 1994-2009 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. For more information visit Britannica.com.
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