The Tragic Life Of The Forgotten Kennedy Is What Nightmares Are Made Of
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As far as dynasty families go, there are none quite like the Kennedys. For generations their tragically misfortunate yet extremely privileged lives have fascinated the world. When we think of the Kennedy curse, many examples come to mind. John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy’s assassinations, their brother Joe’s World War II death, JFK Jr.’s fatal plane crash — the list goes on. But what most Americans don’t realize is that the greatest of the Kennedy family tragedies is one rarely mentioned in the family’s lore.
A version of this story was originally posted in May 2017.
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Inside the tragic life of Rosemary Kennedy
Rosemary Kennedy lived a life filled with abuse and neglect due to a mental disability she had since birth. Born in 1918, Rosemary was the eldest daughter of Rose and Joe Sr. and the younger sister of Joe Jr. and JFK. The couple would go on to welcome Kathleen, Eunice, Patricia, Robert, Jean and Edward.
The odds were stacked against Rosemary from birth. According to Kate Clifford Larson’s book Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter, when her mother, Rose, went into labor on Sept. 13, 1918, the nurse on duty tried to stall her progress by forcing her knees closed because the doctor was with other patients and the nurse didn’t want to deliver the baby herself, even though she was trained to do so. The baby was allegedly forced to remain in the birth canal for two hours, causing a critical loss of oxygen.
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Rosemary suffered developmental delays as a child, which did not fit in with her father’s vision for the perfect American family. Mental health issues and disabilities were frighteningly stigmatized in the 1920s so it’s likely the patriarch feared Rosemary could hurt the family brand.
After private tutors failed to yield the intellectual results he desired, Rosemary was shuttled off to a series of boarding schools. Letters from this period reveal a young girl desperate to please her father — in one she wrote, “I would do anything to make you so happy,” as revealed by The New York Times. Clifford Larson’s book alleges Rosemary she was forced to endure experimental injections meant to curb hormone imbalances her father believed were causing her mood swings.
Rosemary was by all accounts a sociable, happy girl, even making a stunning debut at Buckingham Palace while her father was the U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain. But a sudden move back home to the U.S. from her British boarding school caused a massive regression in her intellectual development and she began acting out.
Rosemary’s younger sister, Eunice, was one of few family members who maintained a close relationship with Rosemary throughout her life. Her sympathy for those with intellectual disabilities would eventually become her life’s work as she went on to found a camp that later evolved in the Special Olympics. According to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Eunice would later write about the impact the move had on her sister: “Rosemary was not making progress but seemed instead to be going backward. At 22, she was becoming increasingly irritable and difficult.”
Rosemary Kennedy underwent a disastrous lobotomy in 1941
Fearful of a scandal that could prove disastrous to Joe’s dreams of a family political dynasty, and without telling his wife until after the surgery, he arranged a procedure that even the American Medical Association had already warned against: a prefrontal lobotomy.
The 1941 surgery was perfunctory and brutal. A surgeon drilled two holes in her head and scraped away at brain tissue while a psychologist asked a still-conscious Rosemary to sing songs and recite stories until she became incoherent, then finally silent. Once vivacious and charming, if a bit behind her peers, she was left with the mental capacity of a toddler, her entire left side nearly paralyzed. But her tragedy worsens.
Rosemary was shuttled off to a care home in New York State, and Joe allegedly continued to lie to his wife and other children about what happened to her, telling them that a doctor informed him the best thing for Rosemary was to be institutionalized with absolutely no contact with anyone. And for 20 years, that’s exactly what happened — no one knew where she was and could not even visit her.
It wasn’t until a stroke incapacitated Joe that Rose finally visited her daughter after a 20 year separation. It was not a happy reunion. In her book The Missing Kennedy, author Elizabeth Koehler-Pentacoff wrote that when Rose opened her arms to embrace her daughter, Rosemary “beat her mother’s chest with her fists shrieking with a primordial ‘AAAARRRCK!'” She recognized the fact that her family had abandoned her for the previous two decades.
From then on, until her 2005 death, Rosemary spent more and more time with her family, although her brothers John and Robert never did visit her before their deaths and the relationship with her mother remained tense. Rosemary died at her nursing home in 2005 with her four surviving siblings by her side.
The tragedy that befell Rosemary was partially due to the times in which she lived — children with special needs were hidden away then, especially by upper-class and Catholic families who saw their presence as shameful — and partially due to her father’s unbridled ambition for a political dynasty. While her story was greatly overshadowed by the lives and deaths of her brothers, it’s a dire warning to women who dare stand in the way of a man’s ambition — even if, like Rosemary, they were never given any choice in the matter.
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