On January 20, 1961, the newly-elected President John F. Kennedy, at his inauguration in front
of the Capital, told Americans to “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what
you can do for your country.”
Over 800 miles away, in Jefferson, Wisconsin in an institution called “St. Coletta School
for Exceptional Children” lived a 43 year old woman, who perhaps was listening to the
address on the radio.
Her name was Rosemary Kennedy and she was President Kennedy’s little sister.
Rose Marie (“Rosemary”) Kennedy, born on September 13, 1918, was the third child
and first daughter for Joe and Rose Kennedy.
No source could quite pinpoint why Rose Marie had issues, but they were apparent very early
on.
As we now know, there can be several factors/reasons for development disorders – genetic, infection,
exposure to environmental toxins, and other complications.
Rosemary’s mother claimed several times that the nurses, due to the tardiness of the
doctor, tried to halt her labor, injuring the baby in the process.
Even early in life, accounts describe Rosemary to be “slower to crawl, slower to walk and
speak than her two bright brothers.”
She had a hard time “eating with a spoon and steering her sled.”
In first grade, she was having difficulty keeping up in school.
Despite all of this, many signs point to her having an otherwise happy, fulfilling life
as a child and teen, participating and remaining active as a part of the wealthy and well-known
family.
She was described as beautiful, sweet, great company, and loquacious, and, as put in Laurence
Leamer’s well-known book, The Kennedy Women: The Saga of an American Family, Rosemary was
“a picturesque young woman, a snow princess with flush cheeks, gleaming smile, plump figure,
and a sweetly ingratiating manner to almost everyone she met.”
Her parents reported to several media outlets (who were always requesting interviews and
information about the Kennedy kids) that she was training to be a Kindergarten teacher
and that she “has an interest in social welfare work, she is said to harbor a secret
longing to go on the stage.”
In fact, Rosemary kept a diary during this time that was only uncovered in 1995.
The diary is thought to cover 1936 through 1938, when Rosemary was 18 to 20 years old.
She describes trips, riding horses, dances, spending time with family, teas, and even
a meeting with King George VI and Queen Elizabeth.
In 1938, the whole Kennedy clan took a trip to England and was presented in front of the
royal couple.
As Joe Kennedy said at the time (recounted in the diary), “Rose, this is a hell of
a long way from East Boston.”
Rosemary, along with her sisters, performed the rather complicated royal curtsey.
By all indications, Rosemary had a fantastic time – though Leamer reports that Rosemary
nearly tripped and fell when presented.
The diary, itself, was written in simple, short prose, but not unlike what you would
read in a teen girl’s diary today:
“Went to luncheon in the ballroom in the White House.
James Roosevelt took us in to see his father, President Roosevelt.
He said, ‘It’s about time you came.
How can I put my arm around all of you?
Which is the oldest?
You are all so big.'”
This diary entries have led some historians and Kennedy biographers to believe that Rosemary
may not have had a severe developmental disorder, or at least not as severe as is often claimed.
There are theories that she had simple dyslexia (based on certain signs of it in her writing),
a learning disability, or depression (as will be described in a moment, she had severe mood
swings when she got older).
More nefariously, several books claim that Joe Kennedy didn’t like that she was “unlady
like,” “sexually active,” and “at times, unhappy.”
Whatever the case, in 1941, it seemed Rosemary’s normal good-natured demeanor changed.
In her mother, Rose Kennedy’s, memoirs, she describes “noticeable regression in
the mental skills that she (Rosemary) worked so hard to obtain” and “her customary
good nature gave way increasingly to tension and irritability.”
She was known to run away and Rose described her as being violent; “Since she was so
strong, her blows were quite hard.”
That same year, Joe consulted with doctors to try and find a way to help his daughter
(though some more nefariously speculate that he was simply worried about Rosemary embarrassing
the family) and came upon a “promising” new procedure developed by Portuguese physician
Antonio Moniz called a “leucotomy” or known today as a lobotomy.
It was seen as a last resort for those suffering from extreme psychiatric disorders, giving
the patient a “hope for contentment.”
The theory was that by severing the nerve connections to and from the prefrontal lobe,
it would “fix” certain mental illness, depression, and a host of other developmental
disorders.
Of course, by doing this, it potentially sacrificed the patient’s personality and some level
of their intellect; but, at the time, the potential benefits were often seen to outweigh
the potential drawbacks due to the lack of other viable treatments for possibly severe
mental disorders.
In the 1940s, performing lobotomies wasn’t on the fringes of science either.
In fact, Moniz won a Nobel Prize in 1949 “for his discovery of the therapeutic value of
leucotomy in certain psychoses”.
In November 1941, Joe Kennedy had a lobotomy performed on Rosemary at George Washington
Hospital by Dr. James Watts and Dr. Walter Freeman, who was a US advocate for the procedure
and called it “soul surgery”.
Joe made this choice, apparently, without approval from Rose (she would later say she
was never consulted).
As for the procedure, one of the surgeons stated, “We went through the top of the
head…
She had a mild tranquilizer.
I made a surgical incision in the brain through the skull.
It was near the front.
It was on both sides.
We just made a small incision, no more than an inch…
We put an instrument inside…”
At which point they began making blunt cuts of her brain with a butter-knife like object.
They finally stopped destroying her brain when she became incoherent and no longer could
respond to questions they asked her
While the surgery did make her docile, it also resulted in her being unable to speak,
walk, or communicate really at all.
It also rendered her incontinent and significantly diminished her previous mental capacity.
(She was much later in life able to recover some motor skills, such as the ability to
walk with the help of a walker).
Needless to say, Joe Kennedy was crushed.
The procedure that was supposed to help his daughter ultimately left her, for all intents
and purposes, completely incapacitated.
After spending seven years at a hospital in New York, she was sent to St. Coletta in Wisconsin
where “she would be better off for her own sake and ours if she went to a home where
she would be with people of her own mental capacity.”
When Rosemary went to Wisconsin in 1949, it was said that Joe Kennedy never visited nor
saw his oldest daughter ever again.
He passed away in 1969.
Rose paid her a visit once a year, as did some of the children.
Initially, Joe and Rose told reporters that Rosemary was “teaching retarded children
in Wisconsin and wanted to live a secluded life.”
Rose would later tell renown biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin that she never forgave Joe
for allowing the surgery to be performed on Rosemary, “It is the only thing I ever felt
bitter towards him about.”
As for John F. Kennedy’s own relationship to his sister, during the campaign, it was
claimed she was “too busy” to make public appearances.
It was only after JFK’s election in 1961 that they acknowledged that Rosemary was “mentally
retarded.”
On October 31, 1963, the President signed the Mental Health Work Bill, attempting to
free patients from lives stuck in institutions.
While never explicitly stated, this may been inspired by his sister Rosemary.
This was the last bill ever signed by JFK.
In 1962, Eunice wrote a heartfelt and, at the time, incredibly open article about her
sister published in several magazines.
She never mentions the failed lobotomy, but says that her family (mostly referring to
her mother) did the best they could with Rosemary.
She called her sweet, beautiful, and talks about the sadness they had in the family for
her, acknowledging that she was “mentally retarded” and “keeping a retarded child
at home is difficult.”
Eunice Shriver Kennedy would continue to talk about Rosemary the rest of her life and would
create the Special Olympics in dedication to her sister.
Rosemary Kennedy lived until she was 86 years old and passed away January 7, 2005 in Fort
Atkinson, Wisconsin.