Rosemary Kennedy | |
|---|---|
 Rosemary Kennedy in 1931 | |
| Born | Rose Marie Kennedy (1918-09-13)September 13, 1918 Brookline, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Died | January 7, 2005(2005-01-07) (aged 86) Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, U.S. |
| Burial place | Holyhood Cemetery Brookline, Massachusetts |
| Education | Convent of the Sacred Heart |
| Parent(s) | Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy |
| Family | Kennedy family |
Rose Marie "Rosemary"Kennedy (September 13, 1918 – January 7, 2005) was the eldest daughter born toJoseph P. Kennedy Sr. andRose Fitzgerald Kennedy. She was a sister ofPresidentJohn F. Kennedy andSenatorsRobert F. andTed Kennedy.
Born on September 13, 1918, as a child, she reportedly exhibited developmental delays. In her young adult years, Kennedy was "becoming increasingly irritable and difficult."[1] In response to these issues, her father arranged alobotomy on her in 1941, when she was 23 years of age. The procedure left her permanently incapacitated and rendered her unable to speak intelligibly.
She spent most of the rest of her life being cared for at St. Coletta, an institution inJefferson, Wisconsin. The truth about her situation and whereabouts was kept secret for decades. While she was initially isolated from her siblings and extended family following her lobotomy, she did go on to visit them during her later life.
Rose Marie Kennedy was born ather parents' home inBrookline, Massachusetts, on September 13, 1918. She was the third child and first daughter ofJoseph P. Kennedy Sr. andRose Fitzgerald. She was named after her mother[2] and was commonly called Rosemary or Rosie. During her birth, the doctor was not immediately available because of an outbreak of theSpanish influenza epidemic, and the nurse ordered Rose Kennedy to keep her legs closed, forcing the baby's head to stay in the birth canal for two hours. The action resulted ina harmful loss of oxygen.[3] As Rosemary began to grow, her parents noticed she was not reaching thebasic developmental steps normally reached at a certain month or year. At two years old, she had a hard time sitting up, crawling, and learning to walk.[4]
Accounts of Kennedy's life indicated that she had anintellectual disability,[5][3] although some have raised questions about the Kennedys' accounts of the nature and scope of her disability.[6] A biographer wrote that Rose Kennedy did not confide in her friends and that she pretended her daughter was developing typically, with relatives other than the immediate family knowing nothing of Rosemary's disability.[7][8] Despite the help of tutors, Rosemary had trouble learning to read and write. At age 11, she was sent to aPennsylvania boarding school for people with intellectual disabilities.[3]
At age 16, Kennedy was sent to the Sacred Heart Convent inElmhurst, Providence, Rhode Island, where she was educated separately from the other students. Two nuns and a special teacher, Miss Newton, worked with her all day in a separate classroom. The Kennedys gave the school a new tennis court for their efforts. Her reading, writing, spelling, and counting skills were reported to be at a fourth-grade level (ages 9–10). During this period, her mother arranged for her older brotherJohn to accompany her to atea dance. Thanks to him, she appeared "not different at all" during the dance.[9]
Rosemary read few books, such asWinnie-the-Pooh.[10] Diaries written by her in the late 1930s, and published in the 1980s, reveal a young woman whose life was filled with outings to theopera, tea dances, dress fittings, and other social interests.[11] Kennedy accompanied her family to the coronation ofPope Pius XII in Rome in 1939. She also visited theWhite House.[6] Kennedy's parents toldWoman's Day that she was "studying to be a kindergarten teacher," andParents was told that while she had "an interest in social welfare work, she is said to harbor a secret longing to go on the stage." WhenThe Boston Globe requested an interview with Rosemary, her father's assistant prepared a response which Rosemary copied out laboriously:
I have always had serious tastes and understand life is not given us just for enjoyment. For some time past, I have been studying the well known psychological method of Dr.Maria Montessori and I got my degree in teaching last year.[12]
In 1938, Kennedy waspresented as adebutante to KingGeorge VI and QueenElizabeth at Buckingham Palace during her father's service as theUnited States Ambassador to the United Kingdom.[13] Kennedy practiced the complicated royalcurtsy for hours. At the event, she tripped and nearly fell. Rose Kennedy never discussed the incident and treated the debut as a triumph. The crowd made no sign, and the King and the Queen smiled as if nothing had happened.[14]
According to Kennedy's sisterEunice, when Rosemary returned to the United States from the United Kingdom in 1940, she became "increasingly irritable and difficult" at the age of 22.[8] Kennedy would often experience convulsions[15] and fly into violent rages, during which she would hit and injure others.[3] After being expelled from asummer camp inwestern Massachusetts and staying only a few months at aPhiladelphia boarding school, Kennedy was sent to a convent school inWashington, D.C.[3] Kennedy began sneaking out of the convent school at night.[16] The nuns at the convent thought that Rosemary might be involved with sexual partners and that she could contract asexually transmitted disease[6] or become pregnant.[17] Her occasionally erratic behavior frustrated her parents; her father was especially worried that Kennedy's behavior would shame and embarrass the family and damagehis and his children's political careers.[3][18]
When Kennedy was 23 years old, doctors told her father that alobotomy would help calm her mood swings and stop her occasional violent outbursts.[19][20] Joe Sr. decided that Rosemary should have a lobotomy; however, he did not inform his wife of this decision until after the procedure was completed.[21][22] The procedure took place in November 1941.[5][23] InRonald Kessler's 1996 biography of Joe Sr.,Sins of the Father,James W. Watts, who carried out the procedure withWalter Freeman (both ofGeorge Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences), is quoted in the following passage:
After Rosemary was mildly sedated, "We went through the top of the head," Dr. Watts recalled. "I think she was awake. She had a mildtranquilizer. I made a surgical incision in the brain through the skull. It was near the front. It was on both sides. We just made a small incision, no more than an inch." The instrument Dr. Watts used looked like abutter knife. He swung it up and down to cutbrain tissue. "We put an instrument inside", he said. As Dr. Watts cut, Dr. Freeman asked Rosemary some questions. For example, he asked her to recite theLord's Prayer or sing "God Bless America" or count backward ... "We made an estimate on how far to cut based on how she responded." When Rosemary began to become incoherent, they stopped.[24]
Watts told Kessler that in his opinion, Kennedy did not have "mental retardation" but rather a form ofdepression. A review of all of the papers written by the two doctors confirmed Watts' declaration. All of the patients the two doctors lobotomized were diagnosed as having some form of mental disorder.[25]Bertram S. Brown, director of theNational Institute of Mental Health who was previously an aide to President Kennedy, told Kessler that Joe Kennedy referred to his daughter Rosemary asmentally retarded rather thanmentally ill in order to protect John's reputation for a presidential run and that the family's "lack of support for mental illness is part of a lifelong family denial of what was really so".[26] It quickly became apparent that the procedure had caused catastrophic damage. Kennedy's mental capacity diminished to that of a two-year-old child. She could not walk or speak intelligibly and wasincontinent.[27]
After the lobotomy, Kennedy was almost immediately institutionalized. She initially lived for several years at Craig House, a private psychiatric hospital around 90 minutes north of New York City.[28] In 1949, she was relocated toJefferson, Wisconsin, where she lived for the rest of her life on the grounds of the St. Coletta School for Exceptional Children (formerly known as "St. Coletta Institute for Backward Youth").[29] ArchbishopRichard Cushing of Boston had told her father about St. Coletta's, an institution for more than 300 people with disabilities, and her father traveled to and built a private house for her about a mile outside St. Coletta's main campus near Alverno House, which was designed for adults who needed lifelong care.[30] The nuns called the house "the Kennedy cottage".[31] Two Catholic nuns, Sister Margaret Ann and Sister Leona, provided her care along with a student and a woman who worked on ceramics with Kennedy three nights a week.[32] Kennedy had a car that could be used to take her for rides and a dog which she could take on walks.[31]
In response to her condition, Kennedy's parents separated her from her family. Her mother did not visit her for 20 years[21] and her father did not visit his daughter at the institution at all.[33] InRosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter, authorKate Clifford Larson stated that Kennedy's lobotomy was hidden from the family for 20 years; none of her siblings knew of her whereabouts.[34] While her older brother John was campaigning forre-election to the U.S. Senate in 1958, the Kennedy family explained away her absence by claiming she was reclusive. The family did not publicly explain her absence until 1961, after John had been elected president. The Kennedys did not reveal that she was institutionalized because of a failed lobotomy, but instead said that she was deemed "mentally retarded".[21][35] In 1961, after Joe Sr. had astroke that left him unable to speak and walk, Rosemary's siblings were made aware of her location.[34]
Rosemary's condition was revealed publicly by her sister Eunice in a 1962 interview toThe Saturday Evening Post, but her lobotomy did not become public knowledge until 1987, when historianDoris Kearns Goodwin revealed it in her bookThe Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys.[36][27][37]
Following her father's death in 1969, the Kennedys gradually involved Rosemary in family life again.[6] She was occasionally taken to visit relatives inFlorida andWashington, D.C., as well as her childhood home onCape Cod, Massachusetts.[34] By that time, Rosemary had learned to walk again, but did so with alimp. She never regained the ability to speak clearly and her arm waspalsied.[21] Her condition is sometimes credited as the inspiration for her sisterEunice to found theSpecial Olympics in 1968,[21] although Eunice toldThe New York Times in 1995 that Kennedy was just one of the disabled people she would have over to her house to swim, and that the games should not focus on any single individual.[38]
Kennedy died from natural causes[39] on January 7, 2005, aged 86,[40] at the Fort Atkinson Memorial Hospital inFort Atkinson, Wisconsin,[41] with her siblings (sistersJean, Eunice, andPatricia and brotherTed) by her side.[40] She was buried beside her parents atHolyhood Cemetery in Brookline, Massachusetts.[42][43]
November 20, 1925 – June 6, 1968 | ||
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February 22, 1932 – August 25, 2009 | ||
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