Rosie

She was born into an Irish American family at her parents' home in Brookline, Massachusetts, and named Rose Marie Kennedy after her mother, but was commonly called Rosemary. 

To her family, she was known as 

Rosie.

The Kennedy Family at Hyannis Port, 4th September 1931. 

L-R: Robert Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, Eunice Kennedy, Jean Kennedy (on lap of) Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy (behind) Patricia Kennedy, Kathleen Kennedy, Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. (behind) Rosemary Kennedy. 

Edward Kennedy was not born yet. 

Dog in foreground is "Buddy".

Rose sent Rosemary to the Sacred Heart Convent in Elmhurst, Providence, Rhode Island, at age 15, where she was educated separately from the other students. Two nuns and a special teacher, Miss Newton, worked with her all day in a separate classroom. 

The Kennedys gave the school a new tennis court for their efforts. 

Rosemary "read, wrote, spelled and counted" like a fourth-grader. 

She studied hard but felt she disappointed her parents, whom she wanted to please.

 During this period, her mother arranged for her brother Jack to accompany her to a tea-dance where, thanks to him, she appeared "not different at all".

By Massachusetts state law, the Binet intelligence test was given to her before first grade, as she twice failed to advance from kindergarten on schedule. 

According to Henry H. Goddard, she had personally suffered intellectual disabilities. 

Rosemary was deemed to have an IQ between 60 and 70 (equivalent to a mental age between eight and twelve). 

Her sister Eunice thought that Rosemary's problems arose because a nurse had delayed her birth awaiting the doctor who arrived late, depriving her of oxygen. 

Her mother's cousin thought the marriage of second cousins by her parents Josie and John F. Fitzgerald caused it. 

At the time, a low IQ was interpreted as a moral deficiency.

A biographer wrote that Rose did not confide in her friends and that she pretended Rosie was normal, with relatives beyond the immediate family knowing nothing of Rosemary's condition.

Younger sister Eunice surmised from various doctors' visits to their home that Rosemary was both "mentally ill" and epileptic.

Diaries written by her in the late 1930s, and published in the 1980s, reveal a young woman whose life was filled with outings to the opera, tea dances, dress fittings, and other social interests:

"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."

"Have a fitting at 10:15 Elizabeth Arden. Appointment dress fitting again. Home for lunch. Royal tournament in the afternoon."

"Up too late for breakfast. Had it on deck. Played Ping-Pong with Ralph's sister, also with another man. Had lunch at 1:15. Walked with Peggy. also went to horse races with her, and bet and won a dollar and a half. Went to the English Movie at five. Had dinner at 8:45. Went to the lounge with Miss Cahill and Eunice and retired early."

She read few books but could read Winnie-the-Pooh

Appearance at court

Rosemary was presented to King George VI and Queen Elizabeth during her father's service as the United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom. Her father presented his daughters instead of, more customarily, choosing about thirty young American debutantes, a decision which earned him favor in the press. 

Rosemary's "slowness" was also unconventional and daring for a debut (two of the queen's nieces remained in a mental hospital because they were mentally ill). 

Young women would practice the rather complicated royal curtsey, sometimes learning the performance at the Vacani School of Dancing near Harrods. 

Rosemary practiced for hours and hours. She wore a gown made of white tulle with a net train and carried a bouquet of lilies of the valley. 

Her sister Kathleen "was stunning, but she was only a shadow of Rosemary's beauty".

Just as Rosemary was about to "glide off" by stepping to the right, she tripped and nearly fell. Rose never discussed the incident and treated the debut as a triumph. The crowd made no sign, the King and the Queen smiled as if nothing had happened, and nobody knows if Rosemary was aware of her stumble.

One Kennedy family biographer called her "absolutely beautiful" with "a gorgeous smile". At twenty, she 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". She enjoyed dancing such as at her sister Kathleen's coming-out party.

Montessori teacher

Her parents told Woman's Day that Rosemary was "studying to be a kindergarten teacher", and Parents was told that while she had "an interest in social welfare work, she is said to harbor a secret longing to go on the stage". 

The Boston Globe wrote requesting an interview which was declined, but her father's assistant Eddie Moore prepared a response, which Rosemary copied out laboriously, letter by letter:

"I have always had serious tastes and understand life is not given us just for enjoyment. 

For some time past, I have been studying the well known psychological method of Dr. Maria Montessori and I got my degree in teaching last year."

Lobotomy

Placid and easygoing as a child and teenager, the maturing Kennedy became increasingly assertive in her personality. She was reportedly subject to violent mood swings. Some observers have since attributed this behavior to her difficulties in keeping up with siblings who were expected to perform to high standards, as well as the hormonal surges associated with puberty. In any case, the family had difficulty dealing with the often-stormy Rosemary, who had begun to sneak out at night from the convent where she was educated and cared for.

In 1941, when Rosemary was 23, doctors told her father that a new neurosurgical procedure, lobotomy, would help calm her mood swings and sometimes-violent outbursts.

Joseph P. Kennedy decided that Rosemary should have the lobotomy performed, but did not inform Rose until afterwards. At the time, relatively few lobotomies had been performed; James W. Watts, who carried out the procedure with Walter Freeman, described what happened:

"We went through the top of the head, I think she was awake. 

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." 

The instrument Dr. Watts used looked like a butter knife. He swung it up and down to cut brain tissue. 

"We put an instrument inside," he said. As Dr. Watts cut, Dr. Freeman put questions to Rosemary. 

For example, he asked her to recite the Lord's Prayer or sing "God Bless America" or count backwards. ... 

"We made an estimate on how far to cut based on how she responded." ... 

When she began to become incoherent, they stopped.

Aftermath

Rosemary lived for several years at Craig House, a private psychiatric hospital an hour north of New York City.

In 1949, she moved to a house in Jefferson, Wisconsin, where she lived for the rest of her life on the grounds of the St. Coletta School for Exceptional Children (formerly known as "St. Coletta Institute for Backward Youth").

Archbishop Cushing had told her father about St. Coletta's, an institution for more than three hundred people with disabilities, and her father traveled to and built a private house for her about a mile outside St. Coletta's main campus near Alverno House which was designed for adults who needed lifelong care.

The nuns called the house "the Kennedy cottage". 

Two Catholic nuns, Sister Margaret Ann and Sister Leona, provided her care along with a student and a woman who worked on ceramics with Rosemary three nights a week. Alan Borsari supervised the team and was able to call in specialists.

Rosemary had a dog and a car that could be used to take her for rides.

Because of her condition, Rosemary became largely detached from her family, but was visited regularly by her mother and by her sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver. Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., did not visit Rosemary at the institution.

Occasionally, following the death of her father, Rosemary was taken to visit relatives in Florida and Washington, D.C., and to her childhood home on Cape Cod.

Publicly, Rosemary was declared to be mentally handicapped. 

Perhaps because of the episode, Eunice later founded the Special Olympics, and Joe founded and endowed philanthropies for people with developmental disabilities.

In 1983, the Kennedy family gave $1 million to renovate Alverno House. The gift added a therapeutic pool and enlarged the chapel.

Death

Rosemary died from natural causes on January 7, 2005, at the Fort Atkinson Memorial Hospital in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, at the age of 86, with her sisters Jean, Eunice, and Patricia, and her brother, U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy, by her side.

She was buried beside her parents in Holyhood Cemetery in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Forty-three years ago this month in Brookline, Massachusetts, my mother and father were looking forward with great anticipation and joy to the birth of their third child. My oldest brother, Joe, was four years old, bright, strong, aggressive, with dark eyes, a fine smile. Jack, quick, slender, independent – even at three he was interested in everything and adored by everyone. My father was 30 and my mother was 28. They loved children and would be happy to have all that God would send them.

Rosemary was born September 13 at home – a normal delivery. She was a beautiful child, resembling my mother in physical appearance. But early in life Rosemary was different. She was slower to crawl, slower to walk and speak than her two bright brothers. My mother was told she would catch up later, but she never did.

Rosemary was mentally retarded.

For a long time my family believed that all of us working together could provide my sister with a happy life in our midst. My parents, strong believers in family loyalty, rejected suggestions that Rosemary be sent away to an institution. "What can they do for her that her family can't do better?" my father would say. "We will keep her at home." And we did. For years these efforts seemed to work. My parents and the other eight children tried to include Rose in everything we did. In Hyannis Port I would take her as a crew in our boat races, and I remember that she usually could do what she was told. She was especially helpful with the jib and she loved to be in the winning boat. Winning at anything always brought a marvellous smile to her face.

She loved music, and my mother used to play the piano and sing to her. At the dining table Rose was unable to cut her meat, so it was served to her already cut.

Later on, in her teens, it was more difficult for her. In social competition she couldn't keep up. She learned to dance well enough for my brothers to take her along to parties, but it wasn't easy when Rose would say: "Why don't other boys ask me to dance?"

Yes, keeping a retarded child at home is difficult. Mother always said that the greatest problem was to get other children to play with Rose and to find time to give her all the attention she needed and deserved. Like many retarded persons, Rose loved small children and wanted to be helpful with them. Often I heard her offer her assistance to Mother with a question like, "Can I take the young children rowing, Mother?"

She loved compliments. Every time I would say "Rose, you have the best teeth and smile in the family," she would smile for hours. She liked to dress up, wear pretty clothes, have her hair fixed and her fingernails polished. When she was asked out by a friend of the family, she would be thrilled. When my father became ambassador to England, Rose came to London with us and was presented to the king and queen at Buckingham Place with mother, dad and my sister Kathleen.

Mother was worried about Rosemary in London. Would she accidentally do something dangerous when mother was occupied with some unavoidable official function? Would she get confused taking a bus and get lost among London's intricate streets? Would someone attack her? No one could watch out for Rose all the time, and she was now a grown-up girl.

In 1941, when we returned to the US, Rosemary was not making progress but seemed instead to be going backward. At 22, she was becoming increasingly irritable and difficult. Her memory and concentration and her judgment were declining. My mother took Rosemary to psychologists and dozens of doctors. All of them said her condition would not get better and that she would be far happier in an institution, where competition was far less and where our numerous activities would not endanger her health. It fills me with sadness to think this change might not have been necessary if we had known then what we know today – that 75 to 85% of the retarded are capable of becoming useful citizens with the help of special education and rehabilitation. Another 10 to 20% can learn to make small contributions, not involving book learning, such as mowing a lawn or washing dishes. Only 5% – the most severely retarded cases – must remain completely dependent all their lives.

My mother found an excellent Catholic institution that specialised in the care of retarded children and adults. Rosemary is there now. She has found peace in a new home where there is not need for "keeping up", or for brooding over why she can't join in activities as others do. This, coupled with the understanding of the sisters in charge, makes life agreeable for her.

This is an extract from Hope for Retarded Children by Eunice Kennedy Shriver, which was first published in The Saturday Evening Post, 22 September, 1962.