Correction / clarification ° A photo caption Sunday on A2 incorrectly identified an organization founded by Eunice Shriver. She started the Special Olympics.

WASHINGTON - R. Sargent Shriver reclines cheerfully behind a well-papered table in his office at the Special Olympics, the program for mentally disabled athletes founded by wife Eunice Kennedy Shriver. He is 88 and quite the looker, with his pinstripe suit and dashing smile, his white hair brushed back in rakish fashion. Although diagnosed last year with Alzheimer's, he remains most engaged in conversation, with the easy laughter of a man used to events turning out for the best. A copy of Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" rests at his elbow but his current reading material is entirely more personal. Shriver holds a new biography by Scott Stossel, a senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly with whom Shriver is friendly. The book's subject is a man Shriver knows even better - Sargent Shriver. "Stossel's book will be required reading for anyone interested in the political affairs of 20th century America and the story of the Kennedy dynasty," Shriver notes with mock delight, reading a blurb from the back cover. "How about that!" he calls out, as if the whole affair were a practical joke. He then glances at the foreword by Bill Moyers, a former White House aide and television commentator. " 'He changed my life,' " Shriver reads, and then laughs. "I always had great admiration for Bill Moyers." Singular achievement But what Shriver regards with characteristic amusement - his own reputation - is a most serious matter to others. Stossel's book, "Sarge," seeks to establish Shriver as among the most overlooked public figures of modern times, a government official of singular achievement who has been reduced by many to a charming but glib Kennedy in-law. Within the family and within the government, he has been a man who got things done. When the newly elected President John F. Kennedy needed someone to recruit members for his Cabinet, he appointed Shriver. When Jackie Kennedy needed an organizer for the funeral of her murdered husband, she asked Shriver. The Peace Corps was a Kennedy initiative, but Shriver quickly built it into a respected international volunteer organization. The "War on Poverty" was a signature part of President Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society," but Shriver was the real architect, creating such enduring programs as Legal Services and Head Start and inspiring thousands to become teachers, poverty lawyers, job trainers and foster grandparents. "I don't know of any American who has not been president who left so many important institutions that have made such a real difference in our society," says Mickey Kantor, a longtime friend who started out in Legal Services and later served as secretary of commerce under President Bill Clinton. The Special Olympics offices in downtown Washington serve as both tribute to the athletes and as an unofficial Kennedy-Shriver shrine. Family pictures hang in the reception area, along the hallways and in the offices of Sargent and Eunice Shriver, on opposite ends of the floor. Married 50 years

 

The Shrivers have been married 50 years and still banter like actors in a drawing room comedy. He is relaxed and flirtatious, she is intense and businesslike, a thin, angular woman who at age 82 seems not to have lost a step or gained a pound. Stossel is among several Shriver admirers who wonder if Shriver would have achieved even more had he not married a Kennedy. Throughout the '60s, Shriver was repeatedly cited as a political candidate - as Illinois governor in 1960, as vice president in 1964 and 1968 - only to meet resistance from the Kennedys. In early 1968, he was appointed ambassador to France, a post he held until 1970. When Shriver finally ran for office, with limited support from the Kennedys, the results were embarrassing: He was George McGovern's running mate in the 1972 election, when the Democrats lost in a landslide to Richard Nixon. Four years later, Shriver's own presidential campaign ended quickly, overrun by a then-little- known Georgia governor named Jimmy Carter. "Over the years, I've tried to get people to write a book about Shriver," says Charles Peters, an aide to Shriver in the Peace Corps and later founder of the Washington Monthly. "But I couldn't get anybody interested. He had this image of being a Boy Scout, not to be taken seriously." Ancestor signed Bill of Rights

 

While many people believe Sargent Shriver married up, he comes from a prominent old Maryland family and was a descendant of David Shriver, a signer of the Bill of Rights. Sargent Shriver attended Yale University (the Kennedys were Harvard men), where he played varsity basketball and headed the Yale Daily News. He was called up for the Navy soon after graduation, and served on battleships and submarines in the Pacific during World War II. Soon after returning home in 1945, he met Eunice Kennedy. They married in 1953, at New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral. Correction / clarification ° A photo caption Sunday on A2 incorrectly identified an organization founded by Eunice Shriver. She started the Special Olympics.