November 23, 2022 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Joe and Rose Kennedy’s strikingly beautiful daughter Rosemary Kennedy—the younger sister of President John F. Kennedy—was intellectually disabled, a secret fiercely guarded by her powerful and glamorous family. Here to tell the story is Kate Clifford Larson, author of Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lei Habibe, and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
And to share your stories where THEUS send them to
our American Stories dot Com. Our listeners stories, your stories.
They're some of our favorites. Joe and Rose Kennedy's strikingly
beautiful daughter. Rosemary Kennedy, the younger sister of President John F. Kennedy,
(00:35):
was intellectually disabled, a secret fiercely guarded by her powerful
and glamorous family. Here to tell the story is Kate
Clifford Larson, author of Rosemary, the Hidden Kennedy Daughter. Let's
take a listen. Back in two thousand and five, Rosemary
Kennedy died. It was January and there was a beautiful
(00:58):
obituary of her in the Boston Globe and it was
like two or three paragraphs, a lovely picture, and I
read it and it just touched me. And of course,
as a New Englander, I knew about the Kennedy family,
and you know, they're like New England Royalty, and I
knew about Rosemary, but I didn't know much. And at
(01:19):
the time I was starting work on another book, so
I knew that I didn't have much time, but I
felt that I needed to go to the Kennedy Library
and see if there was material that I could write
an article for, like the Boston Globe magazine section or something.
But in two thousand and eight, I finally went to
(01:41):
the JFK Library, thinking, you know again, I would just
write an article because nothing had been written about her
in the three years between two thousand and five and
two thousand and eight. And I happened to arrive at
a time when they were opening up Rose Kennedy's some
of her collection of diaries, letters, and journals and things
(02:02):
like that. They were part of the Joseph pe Kennedy Papers.
The Kennedy father and the family had gifted his voluminous
papers back in the nineteen nineties, but the gift came
with restrictions that certain portions of the archive would be
opened on a timetable, and that timetable goes out to
(02:24):
like twenty thirty. Well, this was the time that it
was okay to open up Rose's papers, and so I
started going through them, and there was Rosemary in Rose's
diary entries, in letters back and forth between she and
her husband, with the other children, and Rosemary's own letters
(02:46):
that she had written as a young girl and adult woman.
And I knew then that I could write a biography,
not just an article, because I had a little bit
of Rosemary's voice, and because I was so focused on Rosemary,
it appeared to me fairly quickly that by putting Rosemary
(03:10):
at the center of the Kennedy story, that family looks
a little different. Actually it looks a lot different. And
so I just knew that her story was important to
tell because no one had really told it before. I
felt so lucky to be able to do that. So
I started the project going through those voluminous papers, and
(03:33):
as I would go to the library over the years,
more and more papers were being opened up, which just
kind of extended the length of the project. At the
same time, as I was trying to figure out how
to write this biography and learning about Joe and rose
and what they were doing to try to help and
treat Rosemary's disabilities, which I will talk about in a minute,
(03:55):
my son, who was a freshman in college, develops schizophrenia,
very serious, debilitating schizophrenia, and that put our world on
hold and turned it upside down. And so my book
project had to go on hold while we sought treatment
for him, and fortunately he's doing very well today, but
(04:17):
it was quite a long and painful journey for us.
So going through that made me look at Joe and
Rose a little differently, and the way they sought to
take care of Rosemary, I decided I couldn't be quite
as harsh as I was going to be, so to
give you an idea of what they did and what
(04:37):
Rosemary's life was like. She was born in September of
nineteen eighteen, in the middle of the Spanish influenza epidemic
that was sweeping across the country. Millions of people were dying,
millions were sick and surviving, and it was hitting Boston
for the second time, and thousands of people were dying,
(04:58):
thousands were in the hospital and sick. Rose was blessed
that their family was not touched by it at the time,
but she went into labor on September thirteenth, and Joe
was already becoming a successful businessman. They had two little
boys at home, Joe Junior and Jack, who would go
on to become our president. They had arranged for a
(05:20):
nurse to be living with them at the time, knowing
that Rose would go into labor at any minute. Sure enough,
Rose went into labor and the nurse who was staying
them called the doctor, doctor Frederick Good to come and
assist in the birth, but he couldn't come quickly because
(05:41):
he was at the hospital treating patients with influenza. So
the nurse did what she could to make Rose comfortable,
and nurses at the time were trained to make the
mother comfortable and actually to help forestall the birth until
the doctor could rive to deliver the baby. That was
(06:01):
the protocol. Even though the nurses were trained how to
deliver a baby in an emergency, they were taught also
how to keep things going slowly, which is what she
did for Rose. But this is Rose's third birth and
the baby's coming quickly, so she wants to push and
the nurse is like, don't push, don't push. Well, any
woman who has gone through childbirth knows that you can't
(06:24):
help but push. It's just that biological thing. So the
nurse told her to cross her legs and it was like,
that doesn't work, so she held Rose's legs together. That
didn't work. The baby is crowning and the nurse held
the baby back in the birth canal until the doctor
could arrive two hours later. And you've been listening to
(06:46):
author Kate Clifford Larson tell the story of Rosemary Kennedy.
And as she said, by putting Rosemary at the center
of the Kennedy family, the family looked a lot different.
More of the story of Rosemary Kennedy, the Kennedy no
one knew much about. When we return here on Our
(07:07):
American Stories. Lei Habibi here the host of our American Stories.
(07:32):
Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from
across this great country, stories from our big cities and
small towns. But we truly can't do the show without you.
Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not
free to make. If you love what you hear, go
to our American Stories dot com and click the donate button.
Give a little, give a lot. Go to our American
(07:53):
Stories dot com and give. And we returned to Our
American Stories. On September thirteenth, nineteen eighteen, while Rose Kennedy
(08:16):
went into labor with baby Rosemary, her doctor, Doctor Good,
was busy attending patients stricken with the deadly Spanish flu.
Although the nurse was trained to deliver babies. She nonetheless
tried to halt the birth to await the doctor's arrival
by forcing the baby's head to stay in the birth
canal for two hours. The nurse's actions resulted in a
(08:40):
harmful loss of oxygen to Rosemary's brain. Let's return to
Kate Clifford Larson. He delivers little Rosemary, who seems to
be the perfect little child. She barely fussed, she barely cried.
She was just Joe and Rose thought it was a
gift from Heaven. And rose who was so happy because
(09:02):
she had this little girl. She had sisters who she loved,
and she had these two little boys, but she really
wanted a girl. And hear's beautiful baby, Rosemary, the sweetest baby.
So this lovely little family in Brookline, Massachusetts, they're very happy.
And as Rosemary ages as an infant, they begin to
notice that her development is different than it was for
(09:24):
the boys. She rolled over much later, she sat up
much later. She crawled much later, and stood up much later,
and walked much later than the boys. She had difficulty
feeding herself, as the other boys had learned, you know,
when they were toddlers. So they just assumed that, well,
(09:46):
boys are faster and developed faster and smarter, and it's okay,
little girls do things slower, which I don't know where
they got that idea, but that's what they thought. In
the meantime, Rose gets pregnant again. She delivers Athlete or
Kick in nineteen twenty and then immediately after that, Eunice
is born in nineteen twenty one, and they noticed that
(10:09):
Rosemary still seems developmentally slow. But then Kick comes along
and she develops just like the boys did, and Eunice
advances even faster. She's like, you know, talking, and she's
a year old, you know, typical Unie. As we came
to know, she was quite a powerful woman. So Rose
and Joe started to become concerned. Rosemary was having a
(10:31):
difficult time learning how to ride a tricycle. She couldn't
figure out how to steer and pedal, And then they
enrolled her at the local elementary school, and the teachers recognized,
even in the early nineteen twenties that there was something
different about Rosemary, that she was not at the same
place as her five year old cohort, and so they
(10:54):
kept Rosemary back at least once, possibly twice in kindergarten.
So Rose and Joe were frustrated, but they kept moving
along and having more children, and Rosemary just was part
of it. And Joe was becoming more and more successful,
and eventually they moved to New York and so his
(11:15):
career on Wall Street would blossom more. And they enrolled
Rosemary and all the children in local public schools and
the older boys in private schools. But it was just
becoming more and more of a struggle for Rosemary. She
was frustrated. Kick went to kindergarten in first grade and
eventually she advanced beyond Rosemary in grades, and then Eunice
(11:36):
and Rosemary was noticing this. It was like, you know, hey,
what's going on here. And one thing I have to
say about the Kennedys is they raised their children to
be each other's best friend, that their siblings came first
and foremost, and that they were to look out for
each other, and the older ones especially were charged with
(11:56):
looking out for the younger ones. But they were a community,
they were a family unit, and they came first, and
so the kids learned to accommodate Rosemary. You know she
was slow on the tennis court, well, they congratulated her
for whatever she could do. On the tennis court. When
they'd go sailing. She didn't know how to sail, but
she would be their sailing partner and when they won
(12:18):
a race, they would congratulate her too. They were really
good about that, and I credit Joe and Rose for
making sure that Rosemary was always included. And of course
that speaks to Unice as an adult becoming this head
of Special Olympics and the issue of inclusion and accommodating
people with different abilities. So that was like the magic
(12:38):
of what the Kennedys did. But Joe was becoming very
frustrated and so was Rose, and they were concerned because
they wanted their children to excel at everything in Rosemary
just wasn't. And by the time she was eleven years old,
they decided that they would send her to a special
school outside of Philadelphia called the Devereaux School, and it
(12:59):
was like one of a kind in the country. It
was developed by Helen Devereaux, who had devised this program
for children with intellectual disabilities in Philadelphia, and she created
private school out of it, so it was a boarding school, unfortunately,
and eleven year old Rosemary was sent to this boarding
school away from this family cocoon that loved her and
(13:23):
nurtured her and accommodated her and made her feel whole
to this school far away, and she fell apart. Another
issue that the Kennedy's had to confront and deal with
is because they were to devout Catholics, particularly Rose who
(13:43):
was deeply, profoundly invested in her faith. The Catholic Church
had a very it was not a very enlightened view
of people with disabilities, particularly intellectual disabilities, and they had
a policy to not give first communion to confirmation to
(14:06):
young people with intellectual disabilities. They argued that they were
not cognitively aware enough to accept Jesus into their lives
and understand what being a good Catholic was all about.
So they routinely refused to give the sacraments to children
with Down syndrome and other people with different intellectual disabilities,
(14:29):
and they that practice continued through the twentieth century. So
Joe and Rose, whatever they did, they made sure that
Rosemary was able to quote unquote pass those tests. And
she did. I mean she could. She as a young girl,
she could. She was giggly, she could talk. But as
she aged, you know, she probably was like an eight
(14:50):
year old. But she was twenty years old, so she
could do those Catholic requirements and those sacraments given her
particular intellectual level. But it certainly must have been a
concern for Rose and Joe at the time. For many
children with intellectual disabilities, they're also emotionally immature as well.
(15:11):
So she really could not handle being in this school.
But the school had these rules, and two of them
were they had to behave and they had to do
well in school, and if they didn't, they would not
be able to go home for Thanksgiving. For Rosemary, that
was an impossible requirement. And so her letters in the
(15:33):
library are so touching. She's writing her letters so she's
eleven years old, and there's lots of punctuation errors, spelling errors,
but she gets the message across, particularly to her father. Oh, Daddy,
guess what. I'm getting a's in all my classes and
I'm doing really well. You know, I basically can't wait
to come home for Thanksgiving. In the meantime, the teachers
(15:54):
and the administrators are writing him and telling him she's
getting c's and d's. She doesn't understand that. Of course,
they're going to tell her parents what the truth is
I do not know she went home for Thanksgiving. I
would imagine that she did, knowing rose would have wanted
her to come home anyway, until she was eighteen, For
(16:15):
the next seven years, she went to five different boarding schools.
The goal of the parents was to get her educated,
and they felt that all these different schools were failing her. Well,
of course they weren't equipped because they didn't know how
to do that and Rosemary. They didn't want to accept
that Rosemary was intellectually disabled. And Joe went on this campaign,
(16:37):
interviewing doctor after doctor, taking Rosemary to so many different
doctors to cure her. And you're listening to the story
of Rosemary Kennedy as told by Kate Clifford Larson, author
of Rosemary, The Hidden Kennedy Daughter. And Rosemary is clearly
having troubles learning and by almost any standard as cognitive disabilities,
(17:04):
but Joe and Roe simply refused to accept that, and
they keep pushing her to excel like her siblings, and
that's just not possible. Five more boarding schools after the
first in Philadelphia, and of course this had to create
tremendous emotional discord for the girl, who well her real
(17:24):
family that took care of her and loved her like
none else while she was separated from them. Add to
that the burden of her cognitive disabilities and the burden
of having to be what she couldn't be. When we
come back more of this remarkable story, the story of
Rosemary Kennedy, and the story of so much more, particularly
(17:45):
how the world and the Catholic Church viewed cognitive disabilities.
Here on our American stories, and we returned to our
(18:09):
American stories and the story of Rosemary Kennedy and her
father's unwillingness to accept his daughter's intellectual disability. Let's return
to Kate Clifford Larsen. I recall notes from one particular
doctor in Boston. He was a specialist in into chronology.
(18:29):
He was famous at the time, and he wrote Joe
that he was thinking he would give Rosemary hormone injections
every week for like a year, and he guaranteed that
she would be one hundred percent. Okay, So here's this
fourteen year old girl already going through puberty, and this
doctor in the early nineteen thirties is injecting her with hormones,
(18:53):
and Rosemary starts becoming emotionally unstable. It's sort of like
she's developing bip hole, or she has these tremendous highs
and lows. She lashes out at people. She has these
rageful events where she hits people and screams and kicks,
and life is very difficult for Rosemary and for the
people around her. In the meantime, all the other kids
(19:17):
are growing up and they're doing well in school and
they're the pride and joy of their parents. Rosemary is
now twenty years old. The family moves to Great Britain
because Joe, who's been involved in FDR's administration during the
Great Depression, and he has been appointed to several positions
(19:37):
in the government, and for a reward for doing so well,
he is appointed the ambassador in Great Britain. And they
go and rose is just thrilled to be on the
world stage, and she's such a political human being. She
just loved all that attention and the politics and the
pomp and circumstance. But they decided to bring all the children.
(19:59):
They do everything as a family, so everyone goes over,
including Rosemary. But they have to protect Rosemary. They don't
want her out in public because they realize that if
people or reporters talk to her. Within a few minutes
you figure out there's something different about Rosemary. So they
protect her and they hide her. They have her presented
(20:21):
the King and Queen of England during the Debutante season,
along with her sister Kick. She's the rave of London
newspapers because Rosemary is so beautiful. They just can't get
over how beautiful she is. And because she has been
taught by her parents not to say much in public,
she appears coy and shy, but her smile is so captivating.
(20:43):
The press just can't get enough of her. And interestingly,
rose was disappointed inness. She wanted them to pay attention
to Kick. But Kick was outgoing and friendly and all
of that, but she wasn't quite as beautiful as Rosemary.
But they struggled and how to keep her busy and learning,
(21:04):
and it was up against Rosemary wanting independence. She sees
Joe and Jack, her older brothers, going out and partying,
her sister Kick going out with them and partying, and
she resented that she wasn't allowed to go out. And
in some of her letters she mentioned she likes boys
and she wants to go to dances, and her family
is so frightened of that and her brothers. You know,
(21:26):
whenever they went to functions, her brothers would fill out
her dance cards so that they would always be dancing
with her, and she resented that she wanted to dance
with other young men. So the family was always on
high alert. So, you know, I think we can underestimate
the stress that the Kennedy's were under in trying to
keep Rosemary with them as much as possible. In the
(21:50):
Kennedy Library, in the letters, there are so many people
that are advising them to put her an institution and
just leave her there. And rose and Joe were adamant
that she was not going to be committed to an
institution and live out her days there. But they were
very concerned. You know, during the Great Depression there was
the kidnapping craze. I'll put you quotation marks around that.
(22:11):
But they were afraid because they were one of the
wealthiest families in the country at the time of the
Great Depression, when so many people lost so much money,
and they were afraid that someone like Rosemary would be
kidnapped because she was so trusting and she would walk
up to people, and so they worried she might be kidnapped.
They started practicing in the United States, but when they
got to England they really doubled down on this. They
(22:33):
hired young women, British women or Irish women to be
Rosemary's companion no matter where she went, so that she
always had someone with eyes on her and she viewed
them as her girlfriends. And you know, it really was
very effective because they wanted Rosemary to travel around Europe
like all the other siblings were, and sometimes they'd allow
(22:57):
her to go separately on short little trips with these
young women that they hired to travel with Rosemary. A
lot of times they connected her with Catholic nuns in
different communities in around Europe, but she went everywhere with them.
When they did big trips together like skiing in the
Swiss Alps, or going to Khns, or going to Italy,
(23:20):
going to Rome to the Pope's coronation, Rosemary was always
there with them. She traveled with them, and you know,
she was part of all those pictures and movies that
the news media would take of all the kids traveling
around in Pompeii, you sightseeing, and they would show that
film in movie theaters around the United States. You know,
they'd have these news clips before the films would start,
(23:42):
and there Za Kennedy's, you know, walking around Pompeii. So
she was part of their life, but it was very
choreographed and very tightly controlled, which again she resented. But
they worried constantly that she would be lured away or
you know, some man would lure her away, because she
was anxious to meet young men and party and have
(24:05):
fun like her siblings, and they just knew that intellectually
and emotionally she could not. She would be taken advantage of.
They felt that danger was lurking and they could not
afford that any longer. At least Joe felt he had
to put a stop to her. Eventually, rose who had
a strong relationship with the Catholic Church, enrolled Rosemary in
(24:28):
an Assumption Academy school in London. The head of the school,
mother Eujaney, had been trained by Maria Montessori in Italy,
and she brought the Montessori method to this Assumption school
in London, And it turns out she decided to bring
Rosemary into the school and tell her that they were
(24:49):
training her to be a preschool assistant teacher. Because Rosemary
could read magazines and children's books, and so you know
that she could do that with a little children. And
she used Montessori methods with Rosemary to teach her things
like math, and they would have dishes that she would
have to do after dinner, so they'd have her count
(25:10):
the dishes and the silverware. That's just a simple example
of what sister Eujanie would do. It worked miracles with Rosemary,
and she felt so important and useful. But World War
two was knocking on the door of England and the
Kennedy's felt they needed to evacuate the kids in the
(25:30):
fall of nineteen thirty nine as Hitler is starting to
march across western Europe. So rose left with all the
other children, except they decided to leave Rosemary because she
was so happy, and the school moved to the outskirts
of London so it wouldn't be in danger of being bombed, etc.
And she thrived there throughout the winter and into the
(25:52):
spring of nineteen forty, but it was getting too dangerous,
so they brought her back to United States. And you've
been listening to Kate Clifford Larson, author of Rosemary, They
Hidden Kennedy Daughter, And what a story she's telling about
this daughter of Rose and Joe Kennedy, and my goodness,
(26:15):
at the time, they are practically superstars, the Kennedy family.
And this is long before, of course, President Kennedy. Joseph
is an ambassador of the United States in Great Britain.
The whole family is along with him. Their lives are
captured in movie reels. Joseph Junior is a superstar in
his own right, and young Patrick is dashing and handsome
(26:37):
and capturing the world's attention too. And then there's Rosemary,
whom the Kennedy family worried about tremendously. And Joseph he
just simply refused to accept his daughter's cognitive disability, at
one point injecting hormones into her body in her mid
teens in an effort to just dwell see if he
(26:58):
could save her from her disability. When we come back
more of the story of Rosemary Kennedy, the hidden Kennedy daughter.
After these messages here on our American stories, and we
(27:37):
returned to our American stories. Rosemary Kennedy was thriving in
Britain during the winter and spring of nineteen forty, but
Hitler's march across Western Europe was making her stay too dangerous.
Let's return to Kate Clifford Larson. She was heartbroken, really heartbroken,
(27:58):
and she struggled deeply and it was a struggle for
rose too. Was not used to having Rosemary around all
the time. Eventually she was placed back into a convent school.
You know, she's twenty two years old and she's back
at a convent school in Washington, d C. She's angry
(28:19):
and frustrated, can't understand why this is happening to her.
She escapes from the convent at night and the nuns
find her at two o'clock in the morning, and she's
been drinking and her clothes are all disheveled. And so
the Kennedys were desperately afraid that something Toddrey was going
to happen, and so Joe investigated what was being touted
(28:41):
as a miracle cure for brain diseases and issues, and
that was the prefrontal lobotomy. And the experiments were going
on at the George Washington Hospital there in Washington, d C.
And the two doctors, James Watts and to Freeman, were
experimenting on people and they were telling the public that
(29:04):
these surgeries were a miracle that most people came out
of the surgery with their frontal lobes cut off basically,
and they were able to live happy, healthy, independent lives.
But when I looked at their research, it was the
exact opposite. Most people came out of the surgery not
able to live independently. Sixteen percent of them died. The
(29:28):
lobotomy was such a scary thing, and so there was
a European doctor he was from Spain who developed the
technique in the nineteen thirties. Eventually he won a Nobel
Prize for the procedure, which is shocking today and I
think doctors are just they can't believe that this man
was given this honor. It so, don't get me wrong.
(29:51):
It did help some people with very specific brain issues,
but it was used on far too many people, and
in the United States it started to be used a
lot on women who they viewed were out of control
quote unquote. Prostitutes were lobotomized. Teenage boys were lobotomized if
they seemed wild. Any person that's kind of strayed out
(30:14):
of the norm at the time could be subject to
a lobotomy. So Rose apparently learned of this surgery that
Joe was interested in having Rosemary undergo, and she talked
to Kick about it, who was then a reporter for
a newspaper in Washington. Kick investigated them and told her mother,
(30:35):
you know, mom, this is not good. We shouldn't have
Rosemary do this is not The results are just not good.
She knew, but Joe went ahead and had Rosemary lobotomized anyway,
and the doctor's cut too much, and she came out
of that surgery unable to walk, basically talk coherently. She
(30:56):
was incontinent. She was actually quite disabled on her left side.
And so, and sometimes when I tell the story to audiences,
people say, well, why didn't Joe go back and sue
those doctors. Well, then it didn't happen back then. It
just and first of all, he didn't want anyone to
know that she was lobotomized, so he wasn't about to
(31:18):
sue them. And that's what happened to Rosemary. And also
when I looked for her records there, I could not
find them. So whether they had been sealed because of
the hippo laws that were passed back in two thousand,
I don't know, but I could not find a trace
of her in the records, and she certainly was not
able to live independently. She was now requiring twenty four
(31:41):
hour care, so they placed her in Craighouse, which was
a psychiatric facility in Beacon, New York. Famous celebrities went there,
but it was not an appropriate facility for Rosemary. She
didn't have psychiatric issues at that time. She needed physical
and occupational therapy. She didn't get it there, and who
knows what kind of treatment she received there. Nobody saw Rosemary,
(32:05):
apparently except maybe Joe did. After the surgery. In November
of nineteen forty one, rose stopped including Rosemary in her
round robin letters that she would send out to all
the children. She would list all their names at the
top of the letter and send copies to all the children.
But Rosemary's name was no longer on those letters. She
(32:26):
just was dropped ted. Kennedy said one of his memoirs
that he remembered that Rosemary just disappeared. He was never
told what happened to her, and so he thought to
himself at nine years old, that he better behave or
he might disappear. To Joe and Jack and Kick did
(32:50):
correspond with their father about Rosemary's health. I do not
know if they knew that she'd had a lobotomy. I'm
sure Kick surmised that she did. But Jack didn't see
his sister until nineteen fifty eight, when he started on
the exploring in the campaign trail for the presidency. He
took a secret side trip to Jefferson, Wisconsin, which was
(33:13):
where Rosemary was eventually sent to a Saint Coletta's Catholic
facility for children with intellectual disabilities and adults, and what
he saw shocked him. I imagined that Unie saw Rosemary
for the first time about the same time. Rose did
not see her daughter until nineteen sixty two. That was
(33:34):
more than twenty years later. That was stunning to me
when I learned that she did not see her daughter
for more than twenty years, knowing what had happened to her.
According to the nuns that were taking care of Rosemary
at Saint Coletta's, when rose finally arrived at some point
(33:55):
in nineteen sixty two, this is after Jack had become
elected president, Rosemary saw her and hit her, screamed at her.
Sant Coletta's did provide really great care. They provided physical therapy,
different doctors and nurses worked with her so she was
(34:15):
able to walk again, She could say a few words,
she could make her needs known to people. She hadn't
lost her memory. She knew who she was, and she
knew who her family was. So when Rose walked in
the door after twenty years, you can imagine the anger
that had built up in her. Daughter Joe did not
(34:35):
see her again. He had a stroke that left him
unable to walk or talk in nineteen sixty one, which
seemed rather ironic to me. He died in sixty eight,
and then Rose started bringing Rosemary home to Hyenna's Port,
where they had their summer home and their Palm Beach residence,
for a week's vacation, one in the winter and one
(34:57):
in the summertime. The nuns would bring Rosemary and she
would get to know her siblings all over again, who
also started visiting her at St. Coletta's and her nieces
and nephews got to know their aunt, and all of
them loved her and adored her, and she affected them too.
(35:18):
Some of them really have been committed to helping change
the world for people with different types of abilities and disabilities,
so she had a huge impact on that family. Rose
lived with tremendous regret for the rest of her life,
and Rosemary died in two thousand and five as a
result of her atrophying muscles and her inability to eat
(35:43):
by the time she was eighty six years old. But
there can be no denial that Rosemary's legacy really lives
on and her siblings, not only because of the legislation
that was passed by her politician brothers, but Unics with
the Special Olympics. That's a direct lie to Unice growing
up being very close to Rosemary, helping to accommodate her disabilities.
(36:06):
And then Jean, youngest sister, who established Very Special Arts,
which is an arts program for people with intellectual and
physical disabilities, still going strong today. Kennedy Shriver's son, Anthony
Shriver started Best Buddies, which is a program to match
high school and college educated students with same aged young
(36:30):
people with intellectual disabilities, and that's going strong. And there
are other things that family members have done and have
felt committed to, and it's a huge testament to Rosemary
and the impact that she had personally on her siblings
and her nieces and nephews who are carrying on her
memory in their work and a terrific job on the storytelling,
(36:53):
editing and production by Greg Hengler and his special thanks
to Kate Clifford Larson, author of Mary, the Hidden Kennedy Daughter,
And what a tragic story this is having to do
that frontal lobotomy thinking it was the best thing to do,
and Joe Kennedy was not alone the overuse the frontal
lobotomies at the time. It was just tragic. Indeed, Tennessee
(37:17):
William's greatest regret was authorizing in o King the prefrontal
lobotomy on his sister Rose and the story also of
triumph in the end and Rosemary getting to know her
siblings and in the end the effect and impact Rosemary's
life had on her siblings. Eunice of course leading the
(37:38):
charge on the Special Olympics, and what a history lesson
for all of us. We tell a lot of stories
of how far America has come on the racial front,
how far we've come on the gender front, and now
we find out that, my goodness, what a different place
this is for the disabled or people with special needs
in this country. The story of Rosemary Kennedy, story of
(38:00):
America itself as it relates to disabilities and the disabled.
Here on our American Stories.
This is Lei Habibe, and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
And to share your stories where THEUS send them to
our American Stories dot Com. Our listeners stories, your stories.
They're some of our favorites. Joe and Rose Kennedy's strikingly
beautiful daughter. Rosemary Kennedy, the younger sister of President John F. Kennedy,
(00:35):
was intellectually disabled, a secret fiercely guarded by her powerful
and glamorous family. Here to tell the story is Kate
Clifford Larson, author of Rosemary, the Hidden Kennedy Daughter. Let's
take a listen. Back in two thousand and five, Rosemary
Kennedy died. It was January and there was a beautiful
(00:58):
obituary of her in the Boston Globe and it was
like two or three paragraphs, a lovely picture, and I
read it and it just touched me. And of course,
as a New Englander, I knew about the Kennedy family,
and you know, they're like New England Royalty, and I
knew about Rosemary, but I didn't know much. And at
(01:19):
the time I was starting work on another book, so
I knew that I didn't have much time, but I
felt that I needed to go to the Kennedy Library
and see if there was material that I could write
an article for, like the Boston Globe magazine section or something.
But in two thousand and eight, I finally went to
(01:41):
the JFK Library, thinking, you know again, I would just
write an article because nothing had been written about her
in the three years between two thousand and five and
two thousand and eight. And I happened to arrive at
a time when they were opening up Rose Kennedy's some
of her collection of diaries, letters, and journals and things
(02:02):
like that. They were part of the Joseph pe Kennedy Papers.
The Kennedy father and the family had gifted his voluminous
papers back in the nineteen nineties, but the gift came
with restrictions that certain portions of the archive would be
opened on a timetable, and that timetable goes out to
(02:24):
like twenty thirty. Well, this was the time that it
was okay to open up Rose's papers, and so I
started going through them, and there was Rosemary in Rose's
diary entries, in letters back and forth between she and
her husband, with the other children, and Rosemary's own letters
(02:46):
that she had written as a young girl and adult woman.
And I knew then that I could write a biography,
not just an article, because I had a little bit
of Rosemary's voice, and because I was so focused on Rosemary,
it appeared to me fairly quickly that by putting Rosemary
(03:10):
at the center of the Kennedy story, that family looks
a little different. Actually it looks a lot different. And
so I just knew that her story was important to
tell because no one had really told it before. I
felt so lucky to be able to do that. So
I started the project going through those voluminous papers, and
(03:33):
as I would go to the library over the years,
more and more papers were being opened up, which just
kind of extended the length of the project. At the
same time, as I was trying to figure out how
to write this biography and learning about Joe and rose
and what they were doing to try to help and
treat Rosemary's disabilities, which I will talk about in a minute,
(03:55):
my son, who was a freshman in college, develops schizophrenia,
very serious, debilitating schizophrenia, and that put our world on
hold and turned it upside down. And so my book
project had to go on hold while we sought treatment
for him, and fortunately he's doing very well today, but
(04:17):
it was quite a long and painful journey for us.
So going through that made me look at Joe and
Rose a little differently, and the way they sought to
take care of Rosemary, I decided I couldn't be quite
as harsh as I was going to be, so to
give you an idea of what they did and what
(04:37):
Rosemary's life was like. She was born in September of
nineteen eighteen, in the middle of the Spanish influenza epidemic
that was sweeping across the country. Millions of people were dying,
millions were sick and surviving, and it was hitting Boston
for the second time, and thousands of people were dying,
(04:58):
thousands were in the hospital and sick. Rose was blessed
that their family was not touched by it at the time,
but she went into labor on September thirteenth, and Joe
was already becoming a successful businessman. They had two little
boys at home, Joe Junior and Jack, who would go
on to become our president. They had arranged for a
(05:20):
nurse to be living with them at the time, knowing
that Rose would go into labor at any minute. Sure enough,
Rose went into labor and the nurse who was staying
them called the doctor, doctor Frederick Good to come and
assist in the birth, but he couldn't come quickly because
(05:41):
he was at the hospital treating patients with influenza. So
the nurse did what she could to make Rose comfortable,
and nurses at the time were trained to make the
mother comfortable and actually to help forestall the birth until
the doctor could rive to deliver the baby. That was
(06:01):
the protocol. Even though the nurses were trained how to
deliver a baby in an emergency, they were taught also
how to keep things going slowly, which is what she
did for Rose. But this is Rose's third birth and
the baby's coming quickly, so she wants to push and
the nurse is like, don't push, don't push. Well, any
woman who has gone through childbirth knows that you can't
(06:24):
help but push. It's just that biological thing. So the
nurse told her to cross her legs and it was like,
that doesn't work, so she held Rose's legs together. That
didn't work. The baby is crowning and the nurse held
the baby back in the birth canal until the doctor
could arrive two hours later. And you've been listening to
(06:46):
author Kate Clifford Larson tell the story of Rosemary Kennedy.
And as she said, by putting Rosemary at the center
of the Kennedy family, the family looked a lot different.
More of the story of Rosemary Kennedy, the Kennedy no
one knew much about. When we return here on Our
(07:07):
American Stories. Lei Habibi here the host of our American Stories.
(07:32):
Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from
across this great country, stories from our big cities and
small towns. But we truly can't do the show without you.
Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not
free to make. If you love what you hear, go
to our American Stories dot com and click the donate button.
Give a little, give a lot. Go to our American
(07:53):
Stories dot com and give. And we returned to Our
American Stories. On September thirteenth, nineteen eighteen, while Rose Kennedy
(08:16):
went into labor with baby Rosemary, her doctor, Doctor Good,
was busy attending patients stricken with the deadly Spanish flu.
Although the nurse was trained to deliver babies. She nonetheless
tried to halt the birth to await the doctor's arrival
by forcing the baby's head to stay in the birth
canal for two hours. The nurse's actions resulted in a
(08:40):
harmful loss of oxygen to Rosemary's brain. Let's return to
Kate Clifford Larson. He delivers little Rosemary, who seems to
be the perfect little child. She barely fussed, she barely cried.
She was just Joe and Rose thought it was a
gift from Heaven. And rose who was so happy because
(09:02):
she had this little girl. She had sisters who she loved,
and she had these two little boys, but she really
wanted a girl. And hear's beautiful baby, Rosemary, the sweetest baby.
So this lovely little family in Brookline, Massachusetts, they're very happy.
And as Rosemary ages as an infant, they begin to
notice that her development is different than it was for
(09:24):
the boys. She rolled over much later, she sat up
much later. She crawled much later, and stood up much later,
and walked much later than the boys. She had difficulty
feeding herself, as the other boys had learned, you know,
when they were toddlers. So they just assumed that, well,
(09:46):
boys are faster and developed faster and smarter, and it's okay,
little girls do things slower, which I don't know where
they got that idea, but that's what they thought. In
the meantime, Rose gets pregnant again. She delivers Athlete or
Kick in nineteen twenty and then immediately after that, Eunice
is born in nineteen twenty one, and they noticed that
(10:09):
Rosemary still seems developmentally slow. But then Kick comes along
and she develops just like the boys did, and Eunice
advances even faster. She's like, you know, talking, and she's
a year old, you know, typical Unie. As we came
to know, she was quite a powerful woman. So Rose
and Joe started to become concerned. Rosemary was having a
(10:31):
difficult time learning how to ride a tricycle. She couldn't
figure out how to steer and pedal, And then they
enrolled her at the local elementary school, and the teachers recognized,
even in the early nineteen twenties that there was something
different about Rosemary, that she was not at the same
place as her five year old cohort, and so they
(10:54):
kept Rosemary back at least once, possibly twice in kindergarten.
So Rose and Joe were frustrated, but they kept moving
along and having more children, and Rosemary just was part
of it. And Joe was becoming more and more successful,
and eventually they moved to New York and so his
(11:15):
career on Wall Street would blossom more. And they enrolled
Rosemary and all the children in local public schools and
the older boys in private schools. But it was just
becoming more and more of a struggle for Rosemary. She
was frustrated. Kick went to kindergarten in first grade and
eventually she advanced beyond Rosemary in grades, and then Eunice
(11:36):
and Rosemary was noticing this. It was like, you know, hey,
what's going on here. And one thing I have to
say about the Kennedys is they raised their children to
be each other's best friend, that their siblings came first
and foremost, and that they were to look out for
each other, and the older ones especially were charged with
(11:56):
looking out for the younger ones. But they were a community,
they were a family unit, and they came first, and
so the kids learned to accommodate Rosemary. You know she
was slow on the tennis court, well, they congratulated her
for whatever she could do. On the tennis court. When
they'd go sailing. She didn't know how to sail, but
she would be their sailing partner and when they won
(12:18):
a race, they would congratulate her too. They were really
good about that, and I credit Joe and Rose for
making sure that Rosemary was always included. And of course
that speaks to Unice as an adult becoming this head
of Special Olympics and the issue of inclusion and accommodating
people with different abilities. So that was like the magic
(12:38):
of what the Kennedys did. But Joe was becoming very
frustrated and so was Rose, and they were concerned because
they wanted their children to excel at everything in Rosemary
just wasn't. And by the time she was eleven years old,
they decided that they would send her to a special
school outside of Philadelphia called the Devereaux School, and it
(12:59):
was like one of a kind in the country. It
was developed by Helen Devereaux, who had devised this program
for children with intellectual disabilities in Philadelphia, and she created
private school out of it, so it was a boarding school, unfortunately,
and eleven year old Rosemary was sent to this boarding
school away from this family cocoon that loved her and
(13:23):
nurtured her and accommodated her and made her feel whole
to this school far away, and she fell apart. Another
issue that the Kennedy's had to confront and deal with
is because they were to devout Catholics, particularly Rose who
(13:43):
was deeply, profoundly invested in her faith. The Catholic Church
had a very it was not a very enlightened view
of people with disabilities, particularly intellectual disabilities, and they had
a policy to not give first communion to confirmation to
(14:06):
young people with intellectual disabilities. They argued that they were
not cognitively aware enough to accept Jesus into their lives
and understand what being a good Catholic was all about.
So they routinely refused to give the sacraments to children
with Down syndrome and other people with different intellectual disabilities,
(14:29):
and they that practice continued through the twentieth century. So
Joe and Rose, whatever they did, they made sure that
Rosemary was able to quote unquote pass those tests. And
she did. I mean she could. She as a young girl,
she could. She was giggly, she could talk. But as
she aged, you know, she probably was like an eight
(14:50):
year old. But she was twenty years old, so she
could do those Catholic requirements and those sacraments given her
particular intellectual level. But it certainly must have been a
concern for Rose and Joe at the time. For many
children with intellectual disabilities, they're also emotionally immature as well.
(15:11):
So she really could not handle being in this school.
But the school had these rules, and two of them
were they had to behave and they had to do
well in school, and if they didn't, they would not
be able to go home for Thanksgiving. For Rosemary, that
was an impossible requirement. And so her letters in the
(15:33):
library are so touching. She's writing her letters so she's
eleven years old, and there's lots of punctuation errors, spelling errors,
but she gets the message across, particularly to her father. Oh, Daddy,
guess what. I'm getting a's in all my classes and
I'm doing really well. You know, I basically can't wait
to come home for Thanksgiving. In the meantime, the teachers
(15:54):
and the administrators are writing him and telling him she's
getting c's and d's. She doesn't understand that. Of course,
they're going to tell her parents what the truth is
I do not know she went home for Thanksgiving. I
would imagine that she did, knowing rose would have wanted
her to come home anyway, until she was eighteen, For
(16:15):
the next seven years, she went to five different boarding schools.
The goal of the parents was to get her educated,
and they felt that all these different schools were failing her. Well,
of course they weren't equipped because they didn't know how
to do that and Rosemary. They didn't want to accept
that Rosemary was intellectually disabled. And Joe went on this campaign,
(16:37):
interviewing doctor after doctor, taking Rosemary to so many different
doctors to cure her. And you're listening to the story
of Rosemary Kennedy as told by Kate Clifford Larson, author
of Rosemary, The Hidden Kennedy Daughter. And Rosemary is clearly
having troubles learning and by almost any standard as cognitive disabilities,
(17:04):
but Joe and Roe simply refused to accept that, and
they keep pushing her to excel like her siblings, and
that's just not possible. Five more boarding schools after the
first in Philadelphia, and of course this had to create
tremendous emotional discord for the girl, who well her real
(17:24):
family that took care of her and loved her like
none else while she was separated from them. Add to
that the burden of her cognitive disabilities and the burden
of having to be what she couldn't be. When we
come back more of this remarkable story, the story of
Rosemary Kennedy, and the story of so much more, particularly
(17:45):
how the world and the Catholic Church viewed cognitive disabilities.
Here on our American stories, and we returned to our
(18:09):
American stories and the story of Rosemary Kennedy and her
father's unwillingness to accept his daughter's intellectual disability. Let's return
to Kate Clifford Larsen. I recall notes from one particular
doctor in Boston. He was a specialist in into chronology.
(18:29):
He was famous at the time, and he wrote Joe
that he was thinking he would give Rosemary hormone injections
every week for like a year, and he guaranteed that
she would be one hundred percent. Okay, So here's this
fourteen year old girl already going through puberty, and this
doctor in the early nineteen thirties is injecting her with hormones,
(18:53):
and Rosemary starts becoming emotionally unstable. It's sort of like
she's developing bip hole, or she has these tremendous highs
and lows. She lashes out at people. She has these
rageful events where she hits people and screams and kicks,
and life is very difficult for Rosemary and for the
people around her. In the meantime, all the other kids
(19:17):
are growing up and they're doing well in school and
they're the pride and joy of their parents. Rosemary is
now twenty years old. The family moves to Great Britain
because Joe, who's been involved in FDR's administration during the
Great Depression, and he has been appointed to several positions
(19:37):
in the government, and for a reward for doing so well,
he is appointed the ambassador in Great Britain. And they
go and rose is just thrilled to be on the
world stage, and she's such a political human being. She
just loved all that attention and the politics and the
pomp and circumstance. But they decided to bring all the children.
(19:59):
They do everything as a family, so everyone goes over,
including Rosemary. But they have to protect Rosemary. They don't
want her out in public because they realize that if
people or reporters talk to her. Within a few minutes
you figure out there's something different about Rosemary. So they
protect her and they hide her. They have her presented
(20:21):
the King and Queen of England during the Debutante season,
along with her sister Kick. She's the rave of London
newspapers because Rosemary is so beautiful. They just can't get
over how beautiful she is. And because she has been
taught by her parents not to say much in public,
she appears coy and shy, but her smile is so captivating.
(20:43):
The press just can't get enough of her. And interestingly,
rose was disappointed inness. She wanted them to pay attention
to Kick. But Kick was outgoing and friendly and all
of that, but she wasn't quite as beautiful as Rosemary.
But they struggled and how to keep her busy and learning,
(21:04):
and it was up against Rosemary wanting independence. She sees
Joe and Jack, her older brothers, going out and partying,
her sister Kick going out with them and partying, and
she resented that she wasn't allowed to go out. And
in some of her letters she mentioned she likes boys
and she wants to go to dances, and her family
is so frightened of that and her brothers. You know,
(21:26):
whenever they went to functions, her brothers would fill out
her dance cards so that they would always be dancing
with her, and she resented that she wanted to dance
with other young men. So the family was always on
high alert. So, you know, I think we can underestimate
the stress that the Kennedy's were under in trying to
keep Rosemary with them as much as possible. In the
(21:50):
Kennedy Library, in the letters, there are so many people
that are advising them to put her an institution and
just leave her there. And rose and Joe were adamant
that she was not going to be committed to an
institution and live out her days there. But they were
very concerned. You know, during the Great Depression there was
the kidnapping craze. I'll put you quotation marks around that.
(22:11):
But they were afraid because they were one of the
wealthiest families in the country at the time of the
Great Depression, when so many people lost so much money,
and they were afraid that someone like Rosemary would be
kidnapped because she was so trusting and she would walk
up to people, and so they worried she might be kidnapped.
They started practicing in the United States, but when they
got to England they really doubled down on this. They
(22:33):
hired young women, British women or Irish women to be
Rosemary's companion no matter where she went, so that she
always had someone with eyes on her and she viewed
them as her girlfriends. And you know, it really was
very effective because they wanted Rosemary to travel around Europe
like all the other siblings were, and sometimes they'd allow
(22:57):
her to go separately on short little trips with these
young women that they hired to travel with Rosemary. A
lot of times they connected her with Catholic nuns in
different communities in around Europe, but she went everywhere with them.
When they did big trips together like skiing in the
Swiss Alps, or going to Khns, or going to Italy,
(23:20):
going to Rome to the Pope's coronation, Rosemary was always
there with them. She traveled with them, and you know,
she was part of all those pictures and movies that
the news media would take of all the kids traveling
around in Pompeii, you sightseeing, and they would show that
film in movie theaters around the United States. You know,
they'd have these news clips before the films would start,
(23:42):
and there Za Kennedy's, you know, walking around Pompeii. So
she was part of their life, but it was very
choreographed and very tightly controlled, which again she resented. But
they worried constantly that she would be lured away or
you know, some man would lure her away, because she
was anxious to meet young men and party and have
(24:05):
fun like her siblings, and they just knew that intellectually
and emotionally she could not. She would be taken advantage of.
They felt that danger was lurking and they could not
afford that any longer. At least Joe felt he had
to put a stop to her. Eventually, rose who had
a strong relationship with the Catholic Church, enrolled Rosemary in
(24:28):
an Assumption Academy school in London. The head of the school,
mother Eujaney, had been trained by Maria Montessori in Italy,
and she brought the Montessori method to this Assumption school
in London, And it turns out she decided to bring
Rosemary into the school and tell her that they were
(24:49):
training her to be a preschool assistant teacher. Because Rosemary
could read magazines and children's books, and so you know
that she could do that with a little children. And
she used Montessori methods with Rosemary to teach her things
like math, and they would have dishes that she would
have to do after dinner, so they'd have her count
(25:10):
the dishes and the silverware. That's just a simple example
of what sister Eujanie would do. It worked miracles with Rosemary,
and she felt so important and useful. But World War
two was knocking on the door of England and the
Kennedy's felt they needed to evacuate the kids in the
(25:30):
fall of nineteen thirty nine as Hitler is starting to
march across western Europe. So rose left with all the
other children, except they decided to leave Rosemary because she
was so happy, and the school moved to the outskirts
of London so it wouldn't be in danger of being bombed, etc.
And she thrived there throughout the winter and into the
(25:52):
spring of nineteen forty, but it was getting too dangerous,
so they brought her back to United States. And you've
been listening to Kate Clifford Larson, author of Rosemary, They
Hidden Kennedy Daughter, And what a story she's telling about
this daughter of Rose and Joe Kennedy, and my goodness,
(26:15):
at the time, they are practically superstars, the Kennedy family.
And this is long before, of course, President Kennedy. Joseph
is an ambassador of the United States in Great Britain.
The whole family is along with him. Their lives are
captured in movie reels. Joseph Junior is a superstar in
his own right, and young Patrick is dashing and handsome
(26:37):
and capturing the world's attention too. And then there's Rosemary,
whom the Kennedy family worried about tremendously. And Joseph he
just simply refused to accept his daughter's cognitive disability, at
one point injecting hormones into her body in her mid
teens in an effort to just dwell see if he
(26:58):
could save her from her disability. When we come back
more of the story of Rosemary Kennedy, the hidden Kennedy daughter.
After these messages here on our American stories, and we
(27:37):
returned to our American stories. Rosemary Kennedy was thriving in
Britain during the winter and spring of nineteen forty, but
Hitler's march across Western Europe was making her stay too dangerous.
Let's return to Kate Clifford Larson. She was heartbroken, really heartbroken,
(27:58):
and she struggled deeply and it was a struggle for
rose too. Was not used to having Rosemary around all
the time. Eventually she was placed back into a convent school.
You know, she's twenty two years old and she's back
at a convent school in Washington, d C. She's angry
(28:19):
and frustrated, can't understand why this is happening to her.
She escapes from the convent at night and the nuns
find her at two o'clock in the morning, and she's
been drinking and her clothes are all disheveled. And so
the Kennedys were desperately afraid that something Toddrey was going
to happen, and so Joe investigated what was being touted
(28:41):
as a miracle cure for brain diseases and issues, and
that was the prefrontal lobotomy. And the experiments were going
on at the George Washington Hospital there in Washington, d C.
And the two doctors, James Watts and to Freeman, were
experimenting on people and they were telling the public that
(29:04):
these surgeries were a miracle that most people came out
of the surgery with their frontal lobes cut off basically,
and they were able to live happy, healthy, independent lives.
But when I looked at their research, it was the
exact opposite. Most people came out of the surgery not
able to live independently. Sixteen percent of them died. The
(29:28):
lobotomy was such a scary thing, and so there was
a European doctor he was from Spain who developed the
technique in the nineteen thirties. Eventually he won a Nobel
Prize for the procedure, which is shocking today and I
think doctors are just they can't believe that this man
was given this honor. It so, don't get me wrong.
(29:51):
It did help some people with very specific brain issues,
but it was used on far too many people, and
in the United States it started to be used a
lot on women who they viewed were out of control
quote unquote. Prostitutes were lobotomized. Teenage boys were lobotomized if
they seemed wild. Any person that's kind of strayed out
(30:14):
of the norm at the time could be subject to
a lobotomy. So Rose apparently learned of this surgery that
Joe was interested in having Rosemary undergo, and she talked
to Kick about it, who was then a reporter for
a newspaper in Washington. Kick investigated them and told her mother,
(30:35):
you know, mom, this is not good. We shouldn't have
Rosemary do this is not The results are just not good.
She knew, but Joe went ahead and had Rosemary lobotomized anyway,
and the doctor's cut too much, and she came out
of that surgery unable to walk, basically talk coherently. She
(30:56):
was incontinent. She was actually quite disabled on her left side.
And so, and sometimes when I tell the story to audiences,
people say, well, why didn't Joe go back and sue
those doctors. Well, then it didn't happen back then. It
just and first of all, he didn't want anyone to
know that she was lobotomized, so he wasn't about to
(31:18):
sue them. And that's what happened to Rosemary. And also
when I looked for her records there, I could not
find them. So whether they had been sealed because of
the hippo laws that were passed back in two thousand,
I don't know, but I could not find a trace
of her in the records, and she certainly was not
able to live independently. She was now requiring twenty four
(31:41):
hour care, so they placed her in Craighouse, which was
a psychiatric facility in Beacon, New York. Famous celebrities went there,
but it was not an appropriate facility for Rosemary. She
didn't have psychiatric issues at that time. She needed physical
and occupational therapy. She didn't get it there, and who
knows what kind of treatment she received there. Nobody saw Rosemary,
(32:05):
apparently except maybe Joe did. After the surgery. In November
of nineteen forty one, rose stopped including Rosemary in her
round robin letters that she would send out to all
the children. She would list all their names at the
top of the letter and send copies to all the children.
But Rosemary's name was no longer on those letters. She
(32:26):
just was dropped ted. Kennedy said one of his memoirs
that he remembered that Rosemary just disappeared. He was never
told what happened to her, and so he thought to
himself at nine years old, that he better behave or
he might disappear. To Joe and Jack and Kick did
(32:50):
correspond with their father about Rosemary's health. I do not
know if they knew that she'd had a lobotomy. I'm
sure Kick surmised that she did. But Jack didn't see
his sister until nineteen fifty eight, when he started on
the exploring in the campaign trail for the presidency. He
took a secret side trip to Jefferson, Wisconsin, which was
(33:13):
where Rosemary was eventually sent to a Saint Coletta's Catholic
facility for children with intellectual disabilities and adults, and what
he saw shocked him. I imagined that Unie saw Rosemary
for the first time about the same time. Rose did
not see her daughter until nineteen sixty two. That was
(33:34):
more than twenty years later. That was stunning to me
when I learned that she did not see her daughter
for more than twenty years, knowing what had happened to her.
According to the nuns that were taking care of Rosemary
at Saint Coletta's, when rose finally arrived at some point
(33:55):
in nineteen sixty two, this is after Jack had become
elected president, Rosemary saw her and hit her, screamed at her.
Sant Coletta's did provide really great care. They provided physical therapy,
different doctors and nurses worked with her so she was
(34:15):
able to walk again, She could say a few words,
she could make her needs known to people. She hadn't
lost her memory. She knew who she was, and she
knew who her family was. So when Rose walked in
the door after twenty years, you can imagine the anger
that had built up in her. Daughter Joe did not
(34:35):
see her again. He had a stroke that left him
unable to walk or talk in nineteen sixty one, which
seemed rather ironic to me. He died in sixty eight,
and then Rose started bringing Rosemary home to Hyenna's Port,
where they had their summer home and their Palm Beach residence,
for a week's vacation, one in the winter and one
(34:57):
in the summertime. The nuns would bring Rosemary and she
would get to know her siblings all over again, who
also started visiting her at St. Coletta's and her nieces
and nephews got to know their aunt, and all of
them loved her and adored her, and she affected them too.
(35:18):
Some of them really have been committed to helping change
the world for people with different types of abilities and disabilities,
so she had a huge impact on that family. Rose
lived with tremendous regret for the rest of her life,
and Rosemary died in two thousand and five as a
result of her atrophying muscles and her inability to eat
(35:43):
by the time she was eighty six years old. But
there can be no denial that Rosemary's legacy really lives
on and her siblings, not only because of the legislation
that was passed by her politician brothers, but Unics with
the Special Olympics. That's a direct lie to Unice growing
up being very close to Rosemary, helping to accommodate her disabilities.
(36:06):
And then Jean, youngest sister, who established Very Special Arts,
which is an arts program for people with intellectual and
physical disabilities, still going strong today. Kennedy Shriver's son, Anthony
Shriver started Best Buddies, which is a program to match
high school and college educated students with same aged young
(36:30):
people with intellectual disabilities, and that's going strong. And there
are other things that family members have done and have
felt committed to, and it's a huge testament to Rosemary
and the impact that she had personally on her siblings
and her nieces and nephews who are carrying on her
memory in their work and a terrific job on the storytelling,
(36:53):
editing and production by Greg Hengler and his special thanks
to Kate Clifford Larson, author of Mary, the Hidden Kennedy Daughter,
And what a tragic story this is having to do
that frontal lobotomy thinking it was the best thing to do,
and Joe Kennedy was not alone the overuse the frontal
lobotomies at the time. It was just tragic. Indeed, Tennessee
(37:17):
William's greatest regret was authorizing in o King the prefrontal
lobotomy on his sister Rose and the story also of
triumph in the end and Rosemary getting to know her
siblings and in the end the effect and impact Rosemary's
life had on her siblings. Eunice of course leading the
(37:38):
charge on the Special Olympics, and what a history lesson
for all of us. We tell a lot of stories
of how far America has come on the racial front,
how far we've come on the gender front, and now
we find out that, my goodness, what a different place
this is for the disabled or people with special needs
in this country. The story of Rosemary Kennedy, story of
(38:00):
America itself as it relates to disabilities and the disabled.
Here on our American Stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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