Jean Kennedy Smith, last surviving sibling of JFK, dies at age 92

Jean Kennedy Smith, who was the last surviving sibling of President John F. Kennedy and who as a U.S. ambassador played a key role in the peace process in Northern Ireland, has died, relatives said Thursday. She was 92.

Former U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy, Smith’s nephew, confirmed her death Wednesday at her home in Manhattan. He was among family and prominent politicians who highlighted Smith’s work in Ireland as one of her enduring legacies.

“She took an enormous risk to her own reputation and stature as an ambassador,” Kennedy said. “Any other ambassador at that time may not have been able to pull that off.”

Smith was the eighth of nine children born to Joseph and Rose Kennedy, and tragically outlived several of them by decades.

Her siblings included older brother Joseph Kennedy Jr., killed in action during World War II; Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy, who died in a 1948 plane crash; the president, assassinated in 1963 and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, slain in 1968. Among Smith’s other siblings, Rosemary died in 2005, Patricia in 2006 and Sen. Edward Kennedy, the youngest of the Kennedy siblings, died of brain cancer in August 2009, the same month their sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver died.

For much of her life, Smith was viewed as a quiet sister who largely shunned the spotlight.

Smith was married to Stephen Edward Smith, a financial and political advisor to the Kennedys who died in 1990. The couple married in 1956 and had four children, Stephen Jr., William, Amanda and Kym.

AP FILE PHOTO President John F. Kennedy and his sister, Jean Kennedy Smith, watch a baseball game at Griffith Stadium in Washington on April 10, 1961. Smith, the youngest sister and last surviving sibling of Kennedy, died at 92, her daughter Kym confirmed to the New York Times.