Sources disagree as to the means by which Patricia Kennedy Lawford met Peter Lawford. Some say her sister Eunice was behind it. The JFK library says that John F. Kennedy introduced the two. Whatever the case, the couple met in 1949 -- four years after her graduation from college. They married in 1954. The couple was divorced after roughly eleven years. The press had many things to say about it. Peter was unfaithful. He was doing drugs. Patricia was more straight-laced than he was. The reality is that their marriage fell apart no matter what the reason.
Patricia moved to Idaho to complete the divorce due to the strict nature of New York divorce laws at the time. She then retained custody of the children and took her act to New York City. She upheld her Catholic beliefs by staying unmarried for the remainder of her life following the divorce.
During Patricia's marriage, she was a staple in her older brothers' campaigns. She was an active participant in her family. She lost her brother John to an assassin's bullet in 1963, before she was divorced. Just a few years after her divorce, another assassin murdered her brother Bobby. She did not slow down in the face of such tragedy. She spent her later years immersed in the arts and causes like drug addiction and special needs. The latter is something of a pet cause for the Kennedy family, given the condition Rosemary was in after her lobotomy.
Patricia Kennedy Lawson outlived many of her siblings, making it to the age of 82. She died in her home in Manhattan on September 17, 2006.
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