Late Sen. Kennedy's daughter dies after workout
WASHINGTON - September 17, 2011
However, her own lung cancer treatment - surgery and grueling
chemotherapy and radiation - left her physically weakened, her
brother Patrick Kennedy said. She died Friday at age 51 after her
daily workout at a Washington-area health club.
"Her heart gave out," said Patrick Kennedy, a former
congressman from Rhode Island.
"She's with dad."
Kennedy was a member of the Sport & Health fitness center,
though spokeswoman Nancy Terry declined to release further details
about the incident, citing member privacy.
Her ex-husband, Michael Allen, said she frequently visited the
club and went swimming every day if she could. He said details
about her death would be released by The Edward M. Kennedy
Institute for the United States Senate. He said funeral
arrangements are being made.
"Insofar as I'm concerned her legacy is one of courage and grit
and determination in the face of her own illness and in the face of
many family tragedies and limitless, absolutely limitless, devotion
to our children," he said.
Kara Kennedy was born in 1960 to Edward and Joan Bennett
Kennedy, just as her father was on the campaign trail for his
brother John F. Kennedy during the presidential primaries.
The late senator wrote of his oldest child in his 2009 memoir,
"True Compass," that "I had never seen a more beautiful baby,
nor been happier in my life."
Later, she and her brother Edward Kennedy Jr. helped run their
father's 1988 U.S. Senate campaign.
Her lung cancer diagnosis came in 2002, and the prognosis was
grim. But the family refused to accept that, the senator wrote. She
was able to have an operation, and Edward Kennedy accompanied his
daughter to chemotherapy treatments.
"Kara responded to my exhortations to have faith in herself,"
he wrote. "Today, nearly seven years later as I write this, Kara
is a healthy, vibrant, active mother of two who is flourishing."
Her children, Grace and Max, are now teenagers.
Her two brothers have dealt with health issues of their own:
Edward Kennedy Jr. lost a leg to bone cancer as a child, and
Patrick Kennedy had surgery in 1988 to remove a non-cancerous tumor
that was pressing against his spine.
"Her magnificent strength in her successful battle with lung
cancer was a quiet inspiration to all us and provided her family
and fellow patients with hope," the Edward M. Kennedy Institute
said in a news release.
Five months before her death, Kara Kennedy wrote of her father
and the institute named in his honor in an article published in The
Boston Globe Magazine. She described Christmas 1984, when her
father insisted on spending the night helping relief workers feed
hungry people in the Ethiopian desert. And how each summer, the
family loaded the family into a Winnebago for road trips to hike
through historic battlefields and buildings.
"What mattered to my father was not the scale of an
accomplishment, but that we did our share to make the world
better," she wrote. "That we learned we were part of something
larger than ourselves."
Kara Kennedy, a graduate of Tufts University, also worked as a
filmmaker and in television. She helped produce several videos for
Very Special Arts, an organization founded by her aunt Jean Kennedy
Smith. She also served as a board member for the Edward M. Kennedy
Institute; director emerita and national trustee of the John F.
Kennedy Library Foundation; and a national advisory board member
for the National Organization on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.
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Associated Press Writer Jay Lindsay in Boston contributed to
this report.
