SHRIVER, R(OBERT) SARGENT, (JR.)

born Nov. 9, 1915, Westminster, Md., U.S. administrator, diplomat, first director of the U.S. Peace Corps, and Democratic nominee for the U.S. vice presidency in 1972. A graduate of Yale Law School (1940), Shriver served as a U.S. naval officer during World War II, and, after a brief association with a Wall Street law firm, he went to work as an assistant editor for Newsweek magazine in 1946. The same year he met millionaire Joseph P. Kennedy, who two years later asked him to manage the giant Merchandise Mart in Chicago. In 1953 he married Kennedy's daughter Eunice. When his brother-in-law John F. Kennedy ran for the presidency in 1960, Shriver proved particularly adept in his work with minority groups throughout the country. After the election he first gained national prominence as director of the experimental overseas Peace Corps, one of the most popular ventures of the New Frontier program of the Kennedy administration. In 1964, after Kennedy's assassination, he accepted appointment as head of Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty in the Office of Economic Opportunity. From 1968 to 1970 he served as ambassador to France under Republican Pres. Richard M. Nixon. In 1972 Shriver unsuccessfully ran for the vice presidency on the ticket with Sen. George McGovern. He was an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976.