January 24, 2024 • 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 Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
And to share your stories, whether us 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.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Back in two thousand and five, Rosemary Kennedy died. It
was January and there was a beautiful obituary of her
in the Boston Globe and it was like two or
three paragraphs, 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
(01:14):
like New England Royalty, and I knew about Rosemary, but
I didn't know much. And at 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
(01:38):
thousand and eight, I finally went to 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,
(02:00):
letters and journals and things like that. They were part
of the Joseph P. 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 time table,
(02:22):
and that timetable goes out to 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
(02:43):
other children, and Rosemary's own letters 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
(03:05):
me fairly quickly that by putting Rosemary 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
(03:29):
project going through those voluminous papers, and 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,
(03:52):
which I will talk about in a minute, my son,
who was a freshman in college, developed 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,
(04:15):
and fortunately he's doing very well today, but it was
quite a long, 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
(04:36):
of what they did and what 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,
(04:56):
and thousands of people were dying, 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
(05:18):
our president. They had arranged for a 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 he was
(05:41):
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 arrive to deliver the baby. That was the protocol.
(06:02):
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 berth and the baby's coming quickly,
so she wants to push, and the nurses like, don't push.
Don't push. Well, any woman who has gone through childbirth
(06:23):
knows that you can't 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.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
And you've been listening to 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 of the story of Rosemary Kennedy,
the Kennedy no one knew much about. When we return
(07:06):
here on Our American Stories. Leehabibe here the host of
(07:30):
our American Stories. 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 Ouramerican Stories dot com and click
the donate button. Give a little, give a lot. Go
(07:53):
to Alamerican Stories dot com and give. And we returned
to our American Stories. On September thirteenth, nineteen eighteen, while
(08:15):
Rose Kennedy 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,
he 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
(08:40):
in a harmful loss of oxygen to Rosemary's brain. Let's
return to Kate Clifford Larson.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
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 they it was a gift
from heaven. And Rose was so happy because she had
this little girl. She had sisters who she loved, and
she had these two little boys, but she really wanted
(09:08):
a girl. And hears 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
the boys. She rolled over much later, she sat up
(09:29):
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,
boys are faster and developed faster and smarter and it's okay,
(09:50):
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 Kathleen her
kick in nineteen twenty and then immediately after that, Eunice
is born in nineteen twenty one, and they noticed that
Rosemary still seems developmentally slow. But then Kick comes along
(10:13):
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 Unice. As we came
to know, she was quite a powerful woman. So Rose
and Joe started to become concerned. Rosemary was having a
difficult time learning how to ride a tricycle. She couldn't
(10:34):
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
kept Rosemary back at least once, possibly twice in kindergarten.
(10:58):
So Rose and 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 career on
Wall Street would blossom more. And they enrolled Rosemary and
(11:20):
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, and Rosemary
was noticing this. It was like, you know, hey, what's
going on here? And one thing I have to say
(11:42):
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 looking out
for the younger ones. But they were a community, they
were a family unit, and they came first. And so
(12:03):
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 did not a sail but she would
be their sailing partner and when they won a race,
they would congratulate her too. They were really good about that,
and I credit Joe and Rose for making sure that
(12:24):
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 of what the Kennedys did.
But Joe was becoming very frustrated and so was Rose
(12:44):
and they were concerned because they wanted their children to
excel at everything, and 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 Devereux School, and it 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
(13:10):
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 nurtured her and
accommodated her and made her feel whole to this school
far away, and she fell apart. Another issue that the
(13:36):
Kennedys had to confront and deal with is because they
were devout Catholics, particularly rose who 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
(14:02):
give first communion to confirmation to 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
(14:26):
people with different intellectual disabilities, 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
past those tests. And she did. I mean she could
as a young girl could she was giggly, she could talk,
(14:47):
but as she aged, you know, she probably was like
an eight year old, but she was twenty years old,
so she could do those Catholic requirements and those sacraments
given her a 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
(15:10):
as well. 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
(15:33):
the 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.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
You know.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
I basically can't wait to come home for Thanksgiving. In
the meantime, the teachers 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 if she
went home for Thanksgiving, I would imagine that she did,
knowing rose would have wanted her to come home anyway,
(16:13):
until she was eighteen. For 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, interviewing
(16:38):
doctor after doctor, taking Rosemary to so many different doctors
to cure her.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
And you're listening to the story of Rosemary Kennedy as
told by Kate Clifford Laarson, author of Rosemary, The Hidden
Kennedy Daughter, and Rosemary is clearly having troubles learning and
by almost any standard as cognitive disabilities, but Joe and
(17:05):
rose simply refuse 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 family that took care
(17:25):
of her and loved her like none else. While she
was separated for them. Added 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 how the world and
(17:46):
the Catholic Church viewed cognitive disabilities. Here on our American stories,
(18:08):
and we returned to our 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 Larson.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
I recall notes from one particular doctor in Boston. He
was a specialist in endocrinology. 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,
(18:47):
and this doctor in the early nineteen thirties is injecting
her with hormones, and Rosemary starts becoming emotionally unstable. It's
sort of like she's developing bipl 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,
(19:09):
and life is very difficult for Rosemary and for the
people around her. In the meantime, all the other kids
are growing up and they're doing well in school, and
there 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
(19:33):
Great Depression, and he has been appointed to several positions
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
(19:55):
pomp and circumstance. But they decided to bring all the children.
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
(20:17):
protect her and they hide her. They have her presented
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,
(20:38):
she appears coy and shy, but her smile is so captivating.
The press just can't get enough of her. And interestingly,
rose was disappointed in this. 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.
(20:58):
But they struggled and how to keep her busy and learning,
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 mentions she likes boys
(21:20):
and she wants to go to dances, and her family
is so frightened of that, and her brothers, you know,
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
(21:42):
the stress that the Kennedys were under in trying to
keep Rosemary with them as much as possible. In the
Kennedy Library, in the letters, there are so many people
that are advising them to put her in 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
(22:04):
were very concerned. You know, during the Great Depression, there
was the kidnapping craze. I'll put you know, quotation marks
around that. 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
(22:26):
might be kidnapped. They started practicing in the in the
United States but when they got to England, they really
doubled down on this. They 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
(22:48):
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 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 around Europe, but she
(23:11):
went everywhere with them. When they did big trips together
like skiing in the Swiss Alps, or going to Cans
or going to Italy, 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
(23:32):
the kids traveling around in Pompeii, you know, sight seeing,
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 and there the Kennedy's, you know,
walking around Pompeii. So she was part of their life,
but it was very choreographed and very tightly controlled, which
(23:53):
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 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
(24:14):
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 an Assumption academy school in London. The
head of the school, mother Eugene, had been trained by
(24:37):
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 training her to be a preschool
assistant teacher. Because Rosemary could read magazines and children's books
(24:57):
and so, you know, 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 the dishes and the silverware. That's just
a simple example of what sister Eujaney would do. It
worked miracles with Rosemary, and she felt so important and useful.
(25:22):
But World War two was knocking on the door of
England and the Kennedys felt they needed to evacuate the
kids in the 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
(25:45):
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 spring of nineteen forty, but
it was getting too dangerous, so they brought her back
to the United States.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
And you've been listening to Kate Clifford Larson, author of Rosemary,
the Hidden Kennedy Daughter, and what a story she's telling
about this daughter of Rose and Joe Kennedy and my goodness,
at the time, they are practically superstars, the Kennedy family.
And this is long before, of course, President Kennedy. Joseph
(26:23):
is Ambassador of the United States in Great Britain. The
whole family is along with them. Their lives are captured
in movie reels. Joseph Junior is a superstar in his
own right, and young Patrick is dashing and handsome and
capturing the world's attention too. And then there's Rosemary, whom
the Kennedy family worried about tremendously. And Joseph he just
(26:46):
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 could save
her from her disability. When we come back, more of
the story of Rosemary Kennedy, the hidden Kennedy daughter. After
(27:06):
these messages here on our American stories, and we returned
(27:38):
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.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
She was heartbroken, really heartbroken, and she struggled deeply, and
it was a struggle for rose too, who 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
(28:16):
school in Washington, d C. She's angry 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 Towdrey was going to happen, and
(28:38):
so Joe investigated what was being touted 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
(29:02):
people and they were telling the public that 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
(29:23):
live independently. Sixteen percent of them died. The 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
(29:44):
they can't believe that this man was given this honor.
It did so, don't get me wrong. 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
(30:07):
were lobottomized. Teenage boys were lobottomized if they seemed wild.
Any person that's kind of straight out 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,
(30:29):
who was then a reporter for a newspaper in Washington.
Kick investigated them and told her mother, you know, mom,
this is not good. We shouldn't have Rosemary do this.
It's 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 was incontinent.
(30:58):
She was actually quite disabled on her left side. And
so and sometimes when I tell this story to audiences,
people say, well, why didn't Joe go back and sue
those doctors. Well, that 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 hippolaws 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 hour care,
(31:42):
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 in 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 too. Joe and Jack and Kick
(32:50):
did 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 surmise 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
(33:13):
was 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 imagine that Eunice saw
Rosemary for the first time about the same time. Rose
did not see her daughter until nineteen sixty two. That
(33:34):
was 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 Kletta's, when rose finally arrived at
(33:54):
some point in nineteen sixty two, this is after Jack
had become elected president, Rosemary saw her and hit her
screamed at her. San Colettas did provide really great care.
They provided physical therapy, Different doctors and nurses worked with
her so she was able to walk again, she could
(34:18):
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 see her again. He had a
stroke that left him unable to walk or talk in
(34:40):
nineteen sixty one, which seemed rather ironic to me. He
died in sixty eight, and then Rose started bringing Rosemary
home to Hyanna's Port, where they had their summer home
and their Palm Beach residents, for a week's vacation, one
in the winter and one in the summertime. The nuns
(35:00):
would bring Rosemary and she would got to know her
siblings all over again, who also started visiting her at
Saint Colda'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. Some of them really have
been committed to helping change the world for people with
(35:23):
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 by the time she
(35:44):
was eighty six years old. But there can be no
denial that Rosemary's legacy really lives on in her siblings,
not only because of the legislation that was passed by
her politician brothers, but Eunis with the Special Olympics. That's
a direct lie to Unis growing up being very close
to Rosemary, helping to accommodate her disabilities. And then Jean,
(36:08):
a youngest sister who established Very Special Arts, which is
an arts program for people with intellectual and physical disabilities,
still going strong today. Eunice Kennedy Schreiver's son, Anthony Shreiver
started Best Buddies, which is a program to match high
school and college educated students with same aged young people
(36:30):
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.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
In their work and a terrific job on the storytelling,
editing and production by Greg Hengler, and a special thanks
to Kate Clifford Larson, author of Rosemary, 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 of frontal
(37:13):
lobotomies at the time. It was just tragic in Tennessee.
Williams's greatest regret was authorizing and okaying 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
(37:34):
had on her siblings units of course leading the 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
(37:56):
this country. The story of Rosemary Kennedy, the story of
America itself as it relates to disabilities and the disabled.
Here on our American stories.
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
And to share your stories, whether us 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.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Back in two thousand and five, Rosemary Kennedy died. It
was January and there was a beautiful obituary of her
in the Boston Globe and it was like two or
three paragraphs, 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
(01:14):
like New England Royalty, and I knew about Rosemary, but
I didn't know much. And at 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
(01:38):
thousand and eight, I finally went to 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,
(02:00):
letters and journals and things like that. They were part
of the Joseph P. 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 time table,
(02:22):
and that timetable goes out to 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
(02:43):
other children, and Rosemary's own letters 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
(03:05):
me fairly quickly that by putting Rosemary 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
(03:29):
project going through those voluminous papers, and 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,
(03:52):
which I will talk about in a minute, my son,
who was a freshman in college, developed 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,
(04:15):
and fortunately he's doing very well today, but it was
quite a long, 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
(04:36):
of what they did and what 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,
(04:56):
and thousands of people were dying, 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
(05:18):
our president. They had arranged for a 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 he was
(05:41):
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 arrive to deliver the baby. That was the protocol.
(06:02):
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 berth and the baby's coming quickly,
so she wants to push, and the nurses like, don't push.
Don't push. Well, any woman who has gone through childbirth
(06:23):
knows that you can't 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.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
And you've been listening to 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 of the story of Rosemary Kennedy,
the Kennedy no one knew much about. When we return
(07:06):
here on Our American Stories. Leehabibe here the host of
(07:30):
our American Stories. 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 Ouramerican Stories dot com and click
the donate button. Give a little, give a lot. Go
(07:53):
to Alamerican Stories dot com and give. And we returned
to our American Stories. On September thirteenth, nineteen eighteen, while
(08:15):
Rose Kennedy 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,
he 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
(08:40):
in a harmful loss of oxygen to Rosemary's brain. Let's
return to Kate Clifford Larson.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
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 they it was a gift
from heaven. And Rose was so happy because she had
this little girl. She had sisters who she loved, and
she had these two little boys, but she really wanted
(09:08):
a girl. And hears 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
the boys. She rolled over much later, she sat up
(09:29):
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,
boys are faster and developed faster and smarter and it's okay,
(09:50):
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 Kathleen her
kick in nineteen twenty and then immediately after that, Eunice
is born in nineteen twenty one, and they noticed that
Rosemary still seems developmentally slow. But then Kick comes along
(10:13):
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 Unice. As we came
to know, she was quite a powerful woman. So Rose
and Joe started to become concerned. Rosemary was having a
difficult time learning how to ride a tricycle. She couldn't
(10:34):
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
kept Rosemary back at least once, possibly twice in kindergarten.
(10:58):
So Rose and 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 career on
Wall Street would blossom more. And they enrolled Rosemary and
(11:20):
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, and Rosemary
was noticing this. It was like, you know, hey, what's
going on here? And one thing I have to say
(11:42):
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 looking out
for the younger ones. But they were a community, they
were a family unit, and they came first. And so
(12:03):
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 did not a sail but she would
be their sailing partner and when they won a race,
they would congratulate her too. They were really good about that,
and I credit Joe and Rose for making sure that
(12:24):
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 of what the Kennedys did.
But Joe was becoming very frustrated and so was Rose
(12:44):
and they were concerned because they wanted their children to
excel at everything, and 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 Devereux School, and it 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
(13:10):
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 nurtured her and
accommodated her and made her feel whole to this school
far away, and she fell apart. Another issue that the
(13:36):
Kennedys had to confront and deal with is because they
were devout Catholics, particularly rose who 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
(14:02):
give first communion to confirmation to 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
(14:26):
people with different intellectual disabilities, 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
past those tests. And she did. I mean she could
as a young girl could she was giggly, she could talk,
(14:47):
but as she aged, you know, she probably was like
an eight year old, but she was twenty years old,
so she could do those Catholic requirements and those sacraments
given her a 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
(15:10):
as well. 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
(15:33):
the 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.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
You know.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
I basically can't wait to come home for Thanksgiving. In
the meantime, the teachers 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 if she
went home for Thanksgiving, I would imagine that she did,
knowing rose would have wanted her to come home anyway,
(16:13):
until she was eighteen. For 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, interviewing
(16:38):
doctor after doctor, taking Rosemary to so many different doctors
to cure her.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
And you're listening to the story of Rosemary Kennedy as
told by Kate Clifford Laarson, author of Rosemary, The Hidden
Kennedy Daughter, and Rosemary is clearly having troubles learning and
by almost any standard as cognitive disabilities, but Joe and
(17:05):
rose simply refuse 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 family that took care
(17:25):
of her and loved her like none else. While she
was separated for them. Added 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 how the world and
(17:46):
the Catholic Church viewed cognitive disabilities. Here on our American stories,
(18:08):
and we returned to our 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 Larson.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
I recall notes from one particular doctor in Boston. He
was a specialist in endocrinology. 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,
(18:47):
and this doctor in the early nineteen thirties is injecting
her with hormones, and Rosemary starts becoming emotionally unstable. It's
sort of like she's developing bipl 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,
(19:09):
and life is very difficult for Rosemary and for the
people around her. In the meantime, all the other kids
are growing up and they're doing well in school, and
there 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
(19:33):
Great Depression, and he has been appointed to several positions
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
(19:55):
pomp and circumstance. But they decided to bring all the children.
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
(20:17):
protect her and they hide her. They have her presented
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,
(20:38):
she appears coy and shy, but her smile is so captivating.
The press just can't get enough of her. And interestingly,
rose was disappointed in this. 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.
(20:58):
But they struggled and how to keep her busy and learning,
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 mentions she likes boys
(21:20):
and she wants to go to dances, and her family
is so frightened of that, and her brothers, you know,
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
(21:42):
the stress that the Kennedys were under in trying to
keep Rosemary with them as much as possible. In the
Kennedy Library, in the letters, there are so many people
that are advising them to put her in 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
(22:04):
were very concerned. You know, during the Great Depression, there
was the kidnapping craze. I'll put you know, quotation marks
around that. 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
(22:26):
might be kidnapped. They started practicing in the in the
United States but when they got to England, they really
doubled down on this. They 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
(22:48):
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 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 around Europe, but she
(23:11):
went everywhere with them. When they did big trips together
like skiing in the Swiss Alps, or going to Cans
or going to Italy, 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
(23:32):
the kids traveling around in Pompeii, you know, sight seeing,
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 and there the Kennedy's, you know,
walking around Pompeii. So she was part of their life,
but it was very choreographed and very tightly controlled, which
(23:53):
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 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
(24:14):
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 an Assumption academy school in London. The
head of the school, mother Eugene, had been trained by
(24:37):
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 training her to be a preschool
assistant teacher. Because Rosemary could read magazines and children's books
(24:57):
and so, you know, 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 the dishes and the silverware. That's just
a simple example of what sister Eujaney would do. It
worked miracles with Rosemary, and she felt so important and useful.
(25:22):
But World War two was knocking on the door of
England and the Kennedys felt they needed to evacuate the
kids in the 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
(25:45):
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 spring of nineteen forty, but
it was getting too dangerous, so they brought her back
to the United States.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
And you've been listening to Kate Clifford Larson, author of Rosemary,
the Hidden Kennedy Daughter, and what a story she's telling
about this daughter of Rose and Joe Kennedy and my goodness,
at the time, they are practically superstars, the Kennedy family.
And this is long before, of course, President Kennedy. Joseph
(26:23):
is Ambassador of the United States in Great Britain. The
whole family is along with them. Their lives are captured
in movie reels. Joseph Junior is a superstar in his
own right, and young Patrick is dashing and handsome and
capturing the world's attention too. And then there's Rosemary, whom
the Kennedy family worried about tremendously. And Joseph he just
(26:46):
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 could save
her from her disability. When we come back, more of
the story of Rosemary Kennedy, the hidden Kennedy daughter. After
(27:06):
these messages here on our American stories, and we returned
(27:38):
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.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
She was heartbroken, really heartbroken, and she struggled deeply, and
it was a struggle for rose too, who 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
(28:16):
school in Washington, d C. She's angry 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 Towdrey was going to happen, and
(28:38):
so Joe investigated what was being touted 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
(29:02):
people and they were telling the public that 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
(29:23):
live independently. Sixteen percent of them died. The 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
(29:44):
they can't believe that this man was given this honor.
It did so, don't get me wrong. 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
(30:07):
were lobottomized. Teenage boys were lobottomized if they seemed wild.
Any person that's kind of straight out 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,
(30:29):
who was then a reporter for a newspaper in Washington.
Kick investigated them and told her mother, you know, mom,
this is not good. We shouldn't have Rosemary do this.
It's 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 was incontinent.
(30:58):
She was actually quite disabled on her left side. And
so and sometimes when I tell this story to audiences,
people say, well, why didn't Joe go back and sue
those doctors. Well, that 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 hippolaws 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 hour care,
(31:42):
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 in 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 too. Joe and Jack and Kick
(32:50):
did 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 surmise 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
(33:13):
was 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 imagine that Eunice saw
Rosemary for the first time about the same time. Rose
did not see her daughter until nineteen sixty two. That
(33:34):
was 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 Kletta's, when rose finally arrived at
(33:54):
some point in nineteen sixty two, this is after Jack
had become elected president, Rosemary saw her and hit her
screamed at her. San Colettas did provide really great care.
They provided physical therapy, Different doctors and nurses worked with
her so she was able to walk again, she could
(34:18):
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 see her again. He had a
stroke that left him unable to walk or talk in
(34:40):
nineteen sixty one, which seemed rather ironic to me. He
died in sixty eight, and then Rose started bringing Rosemary
home to Hyanna's Port, where they had their summer home
and their Palm Beach residents, for a week's vacation, one
in the winter and one in the summertime. The nuns
(35:00):
would bring Rosemary and she would got to know her
siblings all over again, who also started visiting her at
Saint Colda'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. Some of them really have
been committed to helping change the world for people with
(35:23):
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 by the time she
(35:44):
was eighty six years old. But there can be no
denial that Rosemary's legacy really lives on in her siblings,
not only because of the legislation that was passed by
her politician brothers, but Eunis with the Special Olympics. That's
a direct lie to Unis growing up being very close
to Rosemary, helping to accommodate her disabilities. And then Jean,
(36:08):
a youngest sister who established Very Special Arts, which is
an arts program for people with intellectual and physical disabilities,
still going strong today. Eunice Kennedy Schreiver's son, Anthony Shreiver
started Best Buddies, which is a program to match high
school and college educated students with same aged young people
(36:30):
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.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
In their work and a terrific job on the storytelling,
editing and production by Greg Hengler, and a special thanks
to Kate Clifford Larson, author of Rosemary, 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 of frontal
(37:13):
lobotomies at the time. It was just tragic in Tennessee.
Williams's greatest regret was authorizing and okaying 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
(37:34):
had on her siblings units of course leading the 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
(37:56):
this country. The story of Rosemary Kennedy, the story of
America itself as it relates to disabilities and the disabled.
Here on our American stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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