1968 SPECIAL REPORT: "BOBBY AND ETHEL'S BABY"

She was born in Washington, D.C., six months after her father was assassinated. Her mother chose the name "Rory" after the last high king of Ireland, Rory O'Connor who ruled in the 12th century.

On December 19, 1968 (a week after Rory was born), her mother took her to her father's grave at Arlington National Cemetery.  Kennedy's older brother Michael LeMoyne Kennedy was assigned as her godparent by their mother. In December 1997, she tried to resuscitate her brother Michael after a skiing accident in Aspen, Colorado, which was fatal.

 Friends of the Kennedy family said Rory and Michael spoke almost every day of their lives.

When Rory was a teenager, she was arrested during a protest outside the South African Embassy. When she was 15, her 28-year-old brother David died from a drug overdose. Rory graduated from Madeira School and then Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

During her sophomore year at Brown, Rory organized a rally in front of a Providence supermarket. In solidarity with migrant farm workers, she urged shoppers to boycott grapes