PERSON: Rory Kennedy

Filmmaker

Rory Elizabeth Katherine Kennedy (born December 12, 1968) is an American documentary filmmaker. Kennedy has made documentary films that center on social issues such as addiction, her opposition to nuclear power, the treatment of prisoners-of-war, and the politics of the Mexican border fence. She is the youngest child of U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Skakel.

Kennedy’s mother and uncle Ted introducing the newborn Kennedy to the media at Georgetown University Hospital on December 19, 1968, a week after her birth
Rory Kennedy was born on December 12, 1968, in Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C., to parents Robert F. Kennedy, a former United States Attorney General, U.S. Senator, and 1968 U.S. presidential candidate, and his wife Ethel Kennedy. She was born six months after her father was assassinated. Her mother chose her name “Rory” after the last high king of Ireland, Rory O’Connor, who ruled in the 12th century.

On December 19, 1968, a week after Rory was born, her mother took her to her father’s grave at Arlington National Cemetery. Kennedy’s older brother Michael LeMoyne Kennedy was assigned as her godparent by their mother. In December 1997, she tried to resuscitate her brother Michael after a skiing accident in Aspen, Colorado, which was fatal. Friends of the Kennedy family said Rory and Michael spoke almost every day of their lives.

When Rory was a teenager, she was arrested during a protest outside the South African Embassy. When she was 15, her 28-year-old brother David died from a drug overdose. Rory graduated from Madeira School in McLean, Virginia, and then Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. During her sophomore year at Brown, Rory organized a rally in front of a Providence supermarket. In solidarity with migrant farm workers, she urged shoppers to boycott grapes.

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