Kara Kennedy

Kara Anne Kennedy was born on Feb. 27, 1960. She graduated from Tufts University and went on to a career in television and film. She produced a film for the institute’s inaugural gala, as well as several videos for Very Special Arts, an organization for people with disabilities, which was founded by her aunt Jean Kennedy Smith. Until 1990, she was a producer of “Evening Magazine” on WBZ-TV in Boston. Ms. Kennedy, a filmmaker and the eldest of the three children of Mr. Kennedy and Joan Bennett Kennedy, was a shy person and led a more private life than most of the grandchildren of Joseph P. Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. She died September 16 2011 after a workout at a Washington-area health club. She was 51. The cause was a heart attack. She served on the national advisory board for the National Organization on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and was a director emeritus of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. In 1990, she married Michael Allen, a member of the United States sailing team that won the Sardinia Cup in 1980. They had a son, Max, and a daughter, Grace. They survive her, as do her mother; her brothers, Patrick and Edward M. Kennedy Jr.; her stepmother, Victoria Reggie Kennedy; and her stepbrother and stepsister, Curran and Caroline Raclin.