Timeline
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., year by year
Seventy years in order: the family he was born into, the river that made him a lawyer, the movements he founded, and the office he holds now.
Timeline
Seventy years, in order
- 1954
Born in Washington, D.C.
Robert Francis Kennedy Jr. is born on January 17 at Georgetown University Hospital, the third of eleven children of Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Skakel Kennedy, and a nephew of President John F. Kennedy.
- 1968
A family, and a country, in mourning
His father is assassinated in Los Angeles during the presidential primary campaign. Bobby is fourteen. He is a pallbearer at the funeral and reads from his father's speeches at Arlington.
- 1976
Harvard
He graduates with a degree in American history and literature, having done his thesis research in Alabama on the federal judge Frank M. Johnson Jr. — the subject of his first book, published two years later.
- 1982
Law school, and a false start
He earns a Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia School of Law and is sworn in as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan.
- 1984
The bottom, and the turn
After a heroin arrest the previous autumn he pleads guilty, enters treatment, and ends fourteen years of addiction. Probation sends him to volunteer at the Natural Resources Defense Council — the accident that becomes a vocation. He has spoken about it openly ever since.
- 1985
Riverkeeper takes on the Hudson
Admitted to the New York bar, he is hired as Riverkeeper's senior attorney and begins suing municipalities and industries — General Electric among them — to stop discharges and clean up legacy contamination on the Hudson.
- 1987
Pace Environmental Litigation Clinic
He founds the clinic at Pace University School of Law and wins a special order from the New York Court of Appeals letting his students try real cases against Hudson polluters. He supervises it for three decades and earns his LL.M. in environmental law the same year.
- 1996
The New York City Watershed Agreement
After five years of litigation and reports, he helps broker the landmark agreement protecting the Catskill watershed — the reason millions of New Yorkers still drink unfiltered surface water.
- 1997
The Riverkeepers
With John Cronin he writes the history of the early Riverkeepers and a field manual for anyone who wants to defend their own river.
- 1999
Waterkeeper Alliance is founded
Local Riverkeeper and Baykeeper programs unite into a single global movement at a gathering in Southampton, Long Island. He serves as president for the next two decades. The same year, TIME names him a Hero for the Planet.
- 2001
“Clean Coal is a Deadly Lie”
Waterkeeper opens a campaign against mountaintop removal, coal slurry ponds, mercury emissions, and coal ash. Men's Journal gives him its Heroes Award for creating the Pace clinic.
- 2005
Crimes Against Nature
The bestseller arguing that corporate capture of the regulatory agencies is an environmental crisis and a democratic one at once. Waterkeeper meanwhile grows into hundreds of programs on six continents.
- 2010
Newtown Creek
A Pace clinic lawsuit forces ExxonMobil to clean up tens of millions of gallons of oil from legacy refinery spills under Brooklyn.
- 2016
Children's Health Defense
He founds and chairs the advocacy organization, turning his public work toward children's chronic illness, environmental exposures, and government transparency. He chairs it until 2023.
- 2018
American Values
The memoir: Hyannis Port, Hickory Hill, two assassinations, and what it does to a boy to inherit that name at fourteen.
- 2020
Stepping back from the water
He resigns the Waterkeeper Alliance presidency in November, leaving behind 344 licensed programs in 44 countries. He had already left Riverkeeper in 2017 after 33 years.
- 2023
A candidate for President
He launches a campaign for the presidency in Boston, later continuing as an independent, and draws crowds to hours-long, unscripted town halls across the country.
- 2024
Suspends the campaign
He ends his independent bid in August and endorses Donald Trump. In November, Trump announces he will nominate him to lead Health and Human Services.
- 2025
U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services
Confirmed by the Senate 52–48 on February 13, he is sworn in as the 26th Secretary — the first third-party presidential candidate ever to join a cabinet. Minutes later, Executive Order 14211 creates the Make America Healthy Again Commission with Kennedy as chair.