Biden eulogizes Ethel Kennedy, whose late husband he counted among his political inspirations, as ‘a hero in her own right’

President Joe Biden on Wednesday eulogized Ethel Kennedy, the human rights activist and widow of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, as “a hero in her own right,” remembering her decades of public service and personal friendship to him and his family.

President Joe Biden on Wednesday eulogized Ethel Kennedy, the human rights activist and widow of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, as “a hero in her own right,” remembering her decades of public service and personal friendship to him and his family. “She got me through a time I didn’t want to stick around,” Biden said at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington, referencing the aftermath of the 1972 crash that killed his first wife and daughter and left his two sons seriously injured shortly after he had been elected to the Senate. The president added: “You know, the fact is, like she did for the country, Ethel helped my family find a way forward with principle and purpose.” Kennedy, who died last week at age 96, was one of the last vestiges of the “Camelot” era that encompassed her brother-in-law John F. Kennedy’s time as president until his 1963 assassination. Robert Kennedy, who served as attorney general during his brother’s presidency before being elected to the US Senate from New York in 1964, was himself assassinated while running for president in 1968. Biden has frequently spoken about being inspired by Robert Kennedy – whose legacy served as the lodestar for his own political career – to leave the prestigious white-collar Delaware law firm he joined shortly after graduating law school to become a public defender. “I’ve done so in large part because I thought that’s something your dad would have done,” he told the Kennedys in April, after a large portion of the family publicly endorsed his presidential campaign. Biden has often mentioned two heroes he had as a young man entering politics. He has kept busts of both on his desk in the Oval Office during his time as president: One of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and one of Bobby Kennedy.