From the New York Times obituary:

Mrs. Shrivers official efforts on behalf of people with developmental challenges began after she became the executive vice president of the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation in 1957. The foundation was established in 1946 as a memorial to her oldest brother, who was killed in World War II. Under Mrs. Shrivers direction, it focused on the prevention of mental retardation and improving the ways in which society deals with people with intellectual disabilities.In the 1950s, the mentally retarded were among the most scorned, isolated and neglected groups in American society, Edward Shorter wrote in his book The Kennedy Family and the Story of Mental Retardation. Mental retardation was viewed as a hopeless, shameful disease, and those afflicted with it were shunted from sight as soon as possible.The foundation was instrumental in the formation of President Kennedys Panel on Mental Retardation in 1961, development of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (which is now named for Mrs. Shriver) in 1962, the establishment of a network of mental retardation research centers at major medical schools across the United States in 1967 and the creation of major centers for the study of medical ethics at Harvard and Georgetown in 1971.In 1968, the foundation helped plan and provided financing for the First International Special Olympics Summer Games, held at Soldier Field in Chicago that summer.I was just a young physical education teacher in the Chicago Park District back in the summer of 1968, a time of horrific tragedy for the Kennedy family, when Eunice Kennedy Shriver wrapped her arms around the very first Chicago Special Olympic games held at Soldier Field, Justice Anne M. Burke of the Illinois Supreme Court said in an e-mail message. I will never forget at the start of the games when she asked me to go to Sears and buy her a $10 bathing suit so she could jump in the pool with the Special Olympics swimmers.

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