Joan Bennett Kennedy, who married into Kennedy clan, dies at 89

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Joan Bennett Kennedy, the first wife of a U.S. senator, the mother of a congressman and the sister-in-law of a slain president, has died at the age of 89, U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on Wednesday.

A daughter of privilege who could trace her lineage back to one of the victims of the Salem witch trials, the then-Joan Bennett’s marriage to Edward Kennedy tied her to an American political dynasty and tumultuous personal life marred by bouts of alcoholism.

She died peacefully in her sleep at her home in Boston, her nephew Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a social media post. 

Virginia Joan Bennett was born into a wealthy Catholic family and attended the private Manhattanville College in suburban New York.

In 1958 she married Edward ‘Ted’ Kennedy and the couple moved to Boston. They had three children – Kara, who died in 2011, Ted Jr., who served as a state senator in Connecticut, and Patrick, who was a U.S. congressman for Rhode Island from 1995 to 2011.

Her husband served as U.S. senator for Massachusetts from 1962 until his death in 2009.

Her brother-in-law John F. Kennedy, meanwhile, would become president.

She maintained her composure in the public eye during difficult times that included the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy and the 1968 assassination of Edward’s brother Robert Kennedy, the U.S. attorney general and presidential candidate.

She suffered three miscarriages, watched her young son Ted Jr. lose a leg to bone cancer, and bore her husband’s highly publicized marital infidelities.

By the mid-1970s, she began to speak publicly about her emotional distress and hospitalizations for alcoholism. She was arrested several times for drunken driving. 

Although by then they were unofficially separated, she campaigned for her husband during his unsuccessful bid in 1980 for the Democratic Party presidential candidacy.

Not long after, the couple announced their divorce. Her sister-in-law Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis told her, “I am so sorry, because now I feel I should have told you to do this 15 years ago. Then maybe you wouldn’t have gotten so sick,” according to the book “Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot.”

Joan Kennedy settled in Massachusetts, dividing her time between her home in Boston’s Back Bay and the Kennedy compound in Hyannis.

During the 1980s, she returned to college, receiving a master’s degree in education. She slowly re-entered public life, among other things serving as head of the Boston Cultural Council and writing a guide to classical music.

Ted Jr. and Patrick mourned the loss of their mother in a statement released by the chair of the Massachusetts Democratic Party on Wednesday.

“She will be missed not just by the entire Kennedy Family, but by the arts community in the City of Boston and the many people whose lives that she touched,” said Patrick.

(Additional reporting by Bhargav Acharya, Maiya Keidan and Susan Heavey; Editing by Doina Chiacu, Rosalba O’Brien and Deepa Babington)