Eunice Kennedy, who left us this week, also left us a great legacy. Old Joe Kennedy saw to it that his sons were educated at Yale and Harvard as stepping stones to great public careers. He left the girls to Catholic school upbringings, evidently thinking of them only as potential good wives and mothers.

Eunice was the best of the Kennedy sisters and even the sisters would concur. She was dynamic and ambitious, the closest person to Jack. In fact, once he became president, some intimates said, "It’s too bad she wasn’t a boy; she’d have made a better president than Jack."

Her children have been the more exemplary children of the Kennedy heirs. She married Sargent Shriver, who was also a good family man, brilliantly involved in the development of the Peace Corps, a leader and one who aspired to be a vice president even though his effort failed.

She was an inspiration who never took no for an answer about her Special Olympics.