American activist for people with intellectual disabilities, he is from a noted family, the son of Sargent and Eunice Kennedy Shriver. He became the president and founder of Best Buddies, a group that fosters friendship between college students and youths who are mentally handicapped.
The youngest of five kids, his dad, Sargent, is founding director of the Peace Corps and his mom, Eunice Kennedy, founder of the Special Olympics. An older sister, Maria Shriver, is married to movie actor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Shriver was especially inspired by his aunt, Rosemary, who was born mentally retarded. Rosemary was the third of Rose and Joseph Kennedy Sr.’s nine kids and underwent a lobotomy in 1941 which left her partially paralyzed. She was later institutionalized and then lived under supervised care. Shriver remembers, as a youngster, the stares people would give them when Rosemary accompanied the family to church.
While attending Georgetown University in 1987 he came up with an idea to get mentally retarded people out into mainstream life society through one-on-one friendships with others. He got 50 student volunteers and paired them with individuals from group homes and special schools. After graduating the following year he got calls from students at other schools wanting to start their own chapters. Shriver turned his college project into a full time job by founding and becoming the first president of Best Buddies which has grown to more than 6,500 participants in 172 chapters around the world.
He met his Cuban-born wife, Alina Mojica (born 5 January 1965) in 1991 at a Best Buddies cocktail party and they married two years later on 2 July 1993. She had a four-year-old son, George (born 4 September 1988), and they had daughter Eunice on 4 January 1994 and daughter Francesca on 12 December 1994.
His mother Eunice died on 11 August 2009. His father Sargent Shriver died on 18 January 2011. Alina and Anthony filed for divorce in November 2018, They sold their shared Miami Beach home in March 2020.
Link to Wikipedia biography