from TPM.com
Sargent Shriver, former vice presidential nominee, dies
Jan 18, 2011 18:01 EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Sargent Shriver, a member of the Kennedy family and a former U.S. vice presidential nominee who served as the first Peace Corps director, died on Tuesday. He was 95.
His family said in a statement that Shriver, known as Sarge, was surrounded by his five children and 19 grandchildren when he died in a Washington-area hospital.

Shriver, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease in his final years, had been an advocate for the poor and powerless who helped launch President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty and became the driving force behind social programs such as Head Start, Legal Services and VISTA.

“Over the course of his long and distinguished career, Sarge came to embody the idea of public service,” President Barack Obama said in a statement.

His marriage in 1953 to Eunice Kennedy, daughter of diplomat and businessman Joseph Kennedy, inducted him into the legendary Kennedy family and its generations of politicians and activists. In 1968 he helped Eunice, who died in 2009, create the Special Olympics for the mentally disabled.

Chris Matthews did two good pieces on Mr. Shriver.

This first one with Andrea Mitchell..

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The second one was his own honoring of what Shriver meant to him through the Peace Corps..

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