July 9, 2025 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, before the world knew JFK, his sister Rosemary was already suffering behind closed doors. A botched lobotomy changed her life forever, and her story became one of the family’s most closely guarded secrets. Kate Clifford Larson, author of Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter, sheds light on the woman history forgot. We'd like to thank the Library of Congress for allowing us access to this audio.
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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 rive 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,
But Kennedy no one knew much about. When we return
(07:06):
here on Our American Stories, leeh Habib here, as we
(07:30):
approach our nation's two hundred and fiftieth anniversary, I'd like
to remind you that all the history stories you hear
on this show are brought to you by the great
folks at Hillsdale College. And Hillsdale isn't just a great
school for your kids or grandkids to attend, but for
you as well. Go to Hillsdale dot edu to find
out about their terrific free online courses. Their series on
Communism is one of the finest I've ever seen. Again,
(07:53):
go to Hillsdale dot edu and sign up for their
free and terrific online courses. 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 patience 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.
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 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 a girl. And
(09:09):
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 much later.
(09:29):
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 she 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
(11:20):
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,
and Rosemary was noticing this. It was like, you know, hey,
what's going on here. And one thing I have to
(11:42):
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
looking out for the younger ones. But they were a community,
they were a family unit, and they came first, and
(12:03):
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 did know how to 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
(12:23):
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
of what the Kennedys did. But Joe was becoming very
frustrated and so was Rose, and they were concerned because
(12:46):
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 Devereux, who had devised this program
(13:07):
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 nurtured her and accommodated her and made her
feel whole, to this school far away, and she fell apart.
(13:34):
Another issue that the 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
(13:55):
of people with disabilities, particularly intellectual disabilities, and they had
a policy to not 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
(14:15):
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,
and they that practice continued through the twentieth century. So
Joe and Rose whatever they did, they made sure that
(14:37):
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, 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
(14:58):
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. So
she really could not handle being in the school. But
the school had these rules, and two of them were
(15:19):
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 library
are so touching. She's writing her letters, so she's eleven
years old, and there's lots of punctuation errors, spelling errors,
(15:42):
but she gets the message across a 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 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
(16:04):
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, 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
(16:24):
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 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 Larson, 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 story,
(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 by or. She has these
tremendous highs and lows. She lashes out at people. She
has these rageful events where she hits people and screams
(19:08):
and kicks, 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
(19:28):
Britain because Joe, who's been involved in FDR's administration during
the 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.
(19:51):
She just loved all that attention and the politics and
the 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
(20:12):
few minutes, you figure out there's something different about Rosemary.
So they protect her and they hide her. They have
her presented to 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
(20:32):
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. 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
(20:54):
friendly and all of that, but she wasn't quite as
beautiful as Rosemary. But they struggle 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
(21:17):
to go out, and in some of her letters she
mentions she likes boys, 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
(21:38):
always on high alert. So, you know, I think we
can under estimate 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
(21:58):
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 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
(22:21):
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
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
(22:44):
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 her to go separately
on short little trips with these young women that they
hired to travel with Rosemary. A lot of times they
(23:05):
connected her with Catholic nuns in different communities around Europe,
but she 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'd
traveled with them, and you know, she was part of
(23:27):
all those pictures and movies that the news media would
take of all 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
(23:48):
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 fun like her siblings, and
they just knew that intellectually and emotionally she could not.
(24:11):
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 an Assumption academy school
in London. The head of the school, mother Eugene, had
(24:36):
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 training her to
be a preschool assistant teacher because Rosemary could read magazines
and children's books and so you know, she could do
(24:59):
that with 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
(25:20):
and useful. 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
(25:44):
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 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, DC. 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 tawdrey was going to happen, and so
(28:38):
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,
(28:58):
Watts and Freeman were experimenting on 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
(29:19):
was the exact opposite. Most people came out of the
surgery not able to 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
(29:39):
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 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
(30:01):
a lot on women who they viewed were out of
control quote unquote. Prostitutes were lobottomized. Teenage boys were lobotomized
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
(30:22):
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, 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 doctors cut too much,
(30:47):
and she came out of that surgery unable to walk,
basically talk coherently, She was incontinent. She was actually quite
disabled on her left side. So and sometimes when I
tell this story to audiences, people say, well, why didn't
(31:08):
Joe go back and sue those doctors. Well, that it
didn't happen back then, and first of all, he didn't
want anyone to know that she was lobotomized, so he
wasn't about to 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.
(31:30):
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. 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
(31:52):
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, apparently,
except maybe Joe did. After the surgery in November of
nineteen forty one, rose stopped including Rosemary in her round
(32:15):
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 just
was dropped ted. Kennedy said in one of his memoirs
that he remembered that Rosemary just disappeared. He was never
(32:36):
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 did
correspond with their father about Rosemary's health. I do not
know if they knew that she'd had a lobotomy. I'm
(32:57):
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 was
where Rosemary was eventually sent to a Saint Coletta's Catholic
(33:18):
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 was
more than twenty years later. That was stunning to me
(33:39):
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 some point
in nineteen sixty two, this is after Jack had become
elected president, Rosemary saw her and hit her screamed at her.
(34:06):
San Coletta's 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 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
(34:26):
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 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,
(34:51):
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 would bring Rosemary and she
would got to know her siblings all over again, who
also started visiting her at Saint Coleta's and her nieces
and nephews got to know their aunt, and all of
(35:14):
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 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
(35:37):
result of her atrophying muscles and her inability to eat
by the time she 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 Eunus with
the Special Olympics, that's a direct line to Junis growing
(36:02):
up being very close to Rosemary helping to accommodate her disabilities.
And then Jean, 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 Schrever's son,
Anthony Shrever started Best Buddies, which is a program to
(36:24):
match high school and college educated students with same aged
young 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
(36:45):
siblings and her nieces and nephews who are carrying on
her memory in their work.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
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 lobotomies at
(37:14):
the time. It was just tragic. Indeed, 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 had on
(37:35):
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 this country. The
(37:57):
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 rive 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,
But Kennedy no one knew much about. When we return
(07:06):
here on Our American Stories, leeh Habib here, as we
(07:30):
approach our nation's two hundred and fiftieth anniversary, I'd like
to remind you that all the history stories you hear
on this show are brought to you by the great
folks at Hillsdale College. And Hillsdale isn't just a great
school for your kids or grandkids to attend, but for
you as well. Go to Hillsdale dot edu to find
out about their terrific free online courses. Their series on
Communism is one of the finest I've ever seen. Again,
(07:53):
go to Hillsdale dot edu and sign up for their
free and terrific online courses. 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 patience 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.
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 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 a girl. And
(09:09):
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 much later.
(09:29):
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 she 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
(11:20):
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,
and Rosemary was noticing this. It was like, you know, hey,
what's going on here. And one thing I have to
(11:42):
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
looking out for the younger ones. But they were a community,
they were a family unit, and they came first, and
(12:03):
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 did know how to 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
(12:23):
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
of what the Kennedys did. But Joe was becoming very
frustrated and so was Rose, and they were concerned because
(12:46):
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 Devereux, who had devised this program
(13:07):
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 nurtured her and accommodated her and made her
feel whole, to this school far away, and she fell apart.
(13:34):
Another issue that the 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
(13:55):
of people with disabilities, particularly intellectual disabilities, and they had
a policy to not 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
(14:15):
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,
and they that practice continued through the twentieth century. So
Joe and Rose whatever they did, they made sure that
(14:37):
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, 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
(14:58):
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. So
she really could not handle being in the school. But
the school had these rules, and two of them were
(15:19):
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 library
are so touching. She's writing her letters, so she's eleven
years old, and there's lots of punctuation errors, spelling errors,
(15:42):
but she gets the message across a 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 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
(16:04):
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, 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
(16:24):
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 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 Larson, 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 story,
(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 by or. She has these
tremendous highs and lows. She lashes out at people. She
has these rageful events where she hits people and screams
(19:08):
and kicks, 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
(19:28):
Britain because Joe, who's been involved in FDR's administration during
the 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.
(19:51):
She just loved all that attention and the politics and
the 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
(20:12):
few minutes, you figure out there's something different about Rosemary.
So they protect her and they hide her. They have
her presented to 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
(20:32):
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. 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
(20:54):
friendly and all of that, but she wasn't quite as
beautiful as Rosemary. But they struggle 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
(21:17):
to go out, and in some of her letters she
mentions she likes boys, 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
(21:38):
always on high alert. So, you know, I think we
can under estimate 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
(21:58):
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 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
(22:21):
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
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
(22:44):
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 her to go separately
on short little trips with these young women that they
hired to travel with Rosemary. A lot of times they
(23:05):
connected her with Catholic nuns in different communities around Europe,
but she 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'd
traveled with them, and you know, she was part of
(23:27):
all those pictures and movies that the news media would
take of all 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
(23:48):
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 fun like her siblings, and
they just knew that intellectually and emotionally she could not.
(24:11):
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 an Assumption academy school
in London. The head of the school, mother Eugene, had
(24:36):
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 training her to
be a preschool assistant teacher because Rosemary could read magazines
and children's books and so you know, she could do
(24:59):
that with 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
(25:20):
and useful. 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
(25:44):
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 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, DC. 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 tawdrey was going to happen, and so
(28:38):
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,
(28:58):
Watts and Freeman were experimenting on 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
(29:19):
was the exact opposite. Most people came out of the
surgery not able to 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
(29:39):
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 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
(30:01):
a lot on women who they viewed were out of
control quote unquote. Prostitutes were lobottomized. Teenage boys were lobotomized
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
(30:22):
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, 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 doctors cut too much,
(30:47):
and she came out of that surgery unable to walk,
basically talk coherently, She was incontinent. She was actually quite
disabled on her left side. So and sometimes when I
tell this story to audiences, people say, well, why didn't
(31:08):
Joe go back and sue those doctors. Well, that it
didn't happen back then, and first of all, he didn't
want anyone to know that she was lobotomized, so he
wasn't about to 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.
(31:30):
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. 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
(31:52):
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, apparently,
except maybe Joe did. After the surgery in November of
nineteen forty one, rose stopped including Rosemary in her round
(32:15):
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 just
was dropped ted. Kennedy said in one of his memoirs
that he remembered that Rosemary just disappeared. He was never
(32:36):
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 did
correspond with their father about Rosemary's health. I do not
know if they knew that she'd had a lobotomy. I'm
(32:57):
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 was
where Rosemary was eventually sent to a Saint Coletta's Catholic
(33:18):
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 was
more than twenty years later. That was stunning to me
(33:39):
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 some point
in nineteen sixty two, this is after Jack had become
elected president, Rosemary saw her and hit her screamed at her.
(34:06):
San Coletta's 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 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
(34:26):
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 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,
(34:51):
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 would bring Rosemary and she
would got to know her siblings all over again, who
also started visiting her at Saint Coleta's and her nieces
and nephews got to know their aunt, and all of
(35:14):
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 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
(35:37):
result of her atrophying muscles and her inability to eat
by the time she 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 Eunus with
the Special Olympics, that's a direct line to Junis growing
(36:02):
up being very close to Rosemary helping to accommodate her disabilities.
And then Jean, 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 Schrever's son,
Anthony Shrever started Best Buddies, which is a program to
(36:24):
match high school and college educated students with same aged
young 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
(36:45):
siblings and her nieces and nephews who are carrying on
her memory in their work.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
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 lobotomies at
(37:14):
the time. It was just tragic. Indeed, 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 had on
(37:35):
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 this country. The
(37:57):
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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