In Memoriam: Eleanor Mondale and Kara Kennedy

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Sad news to report today with the passing of Walter "Fritz" Mondale's daughter Eleanore Mondale, and Edward "Ted" Kennedy's daughter Kara Kennedy.

Eleanor Mondale, Daughter of Former Vice President, Dies at 51 – NYTimes.com:

Eleanor Mondale, the daughter of former Vice President Walter F. Mondale who carved out a reputation as an entertainment reporter, radio show host and gossip magnet, has died at her home in Minnesota. She was 51. [photo 1984]

A Mondale family spokeswoman, Lynda Pedersen, said Ms. Mondale died Saturday. She had been diagnosed with brain cancer several years ago.

Ms. Mondale had been off the air at WCCO-AM in Minneapolis since March 19, 2009, when she announced that her brain cancer had returned a second time.

Ms. Mondale was the middle of three children born to Walter and Joan Mondale.

Ms. Mondale started as an aspiring actress, with bit parts in “Three’s Company” and “Dynasty.” She got her start in broadcasting as an entertainment reporter at WCCO-TV in Minneapolis in 1989, but left after only eight months when a Twin Cities magazine was about to publish an article called “Walter and Joan’s Wild Child.”

In the article, Ms. Mondale was quoted as saying, “I like to get wild. But it’s not murder, and I don’t do drugs.”

After stints at Minneapolis radio station WLOL-FM, on cable television at E! Entertainment and ESPN, and network TV on “This Morning” on CBS, she returned to Minnesota in 2006 to co-host a weekday morning show on WCCO-AM with Susie Jones.

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Ms. Mondale was married three times: to Chicago Bears offensive lineman Keith Van Horne, to disc jockey Greg Thunder and to Twin Cities rock musician Chan Poling of The Suburbs. Ms. Mondale and Mr. Poling married in 2005, shortly after her cancer was diagnosed, and lived on a farm near Prior Lake in the southern Twin Cities.

Kara Kennedy Allen, Daughter of Edward M. Kennedy, Dies – NYTimes.com:

Kara Kennedy, the daughter of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, died on Friday after a workout at a Washington-area health club. She was 51. The cause was a heart attack, according to the the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate in Boston, which announced the death. [photo 2009]

“It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Kara Kennedy,” the institute said in a statement. “Kara was loved and cherished by the entire Kennedy family.”

Her brother Patrick J. Kennedy, a former Rhode Island congressman, told The Associated Press, “she’s with dad.” Their father died in August 2009 at the age of 77 after a battle with brain cancer. Her mother was Mr. Kennedy’s first wife, Joan Bennett Kennedy.

Ms. Kennedy, the eldest of Mr. Kennedy’s three children, was a shy person, and led a more private life than most of the grandchildren of Joseph P Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. In an article she wrote for The Boston Globe Magazine in April on the Kennedy institute’s upcoming groundbreaking, she said: “Unlike my father, I felt more comfortable behind the camera than in front of it. But like him, I found my greatest fulfillment in showing the needs and successes of others.”

Ms. Kennedy was a survivor of lung cancer in 2003. Patrick Kennedy told The A.P. that he thought his sister’s cancer treatment “took quite a toll on her and weakened her physically.” She loved to exercise, he said, but “her heart gave out.”

Ms. Kennedy graduated from Tufts University, and went on to become a television producer and filmmaker. 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, that was founded by her aunt Jean Kennedy Smith. She also served on the National Advisory Board for the National Organization on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. She was also a director emeriti of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum and had previously worked as a television producer.

In 1990, she was married to 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 Kennedy Jr., her stepmother Victoria Reggie, and her stepbrother and sister, Curran and Caroline Raclin.