Rosemary Kennedy

Rose Marie Kennedy (September 13, 1918 – January 7, 2005) was the third child and first daughter of Joseph and Rose Kennedy, born a year after U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Although she was christened Rose Marie Kennedy, she was commonly known as Rosemary. To her family and friends, she was known as Rosie.

Rosemary was a shy and reportedly mentally slow child, symptoms which some believe point to dyslexia or some slight brain damage at birth. I.Q. tests reportedly indicated a mild retardation. Diaries written by Rosemary in the late 1930s and published in the 1980s, however, reveal a sunny, slightly backward 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." (fair use quotation, see Gibson)

She also was "presented" to King George VI and Queen Elizabeth during her father's tenure as U.S. Ambassador to Britain. On her way out of the "presentation" she tripped and almost fell — an embarassing faux pas.

Placid and easygoing as a child and teenager, however, the maturing Rosemary became increasingly assertive in her personality and subject to violent mood swings that some observers have since attributed to her difficulties in keeping up with her active siblings as well as the hormonal surges associated with sexual maturation. In any case, the family had difficulty dealing with the often stormy Rosemary — she had begun to engage in physical fights and to sneak out at night from the convent where she was being educated and cared for — and feared that without the proper supervision or medical treatment, she might become pregnant or perhaps publicly embarrass the family in another fashion.

In 1941, when Rosemary was 23, her father was told by doctors that a lobotomy would help his mildly retarded daughter to calm her "mood swings that the family found difficult to handle at home." [1] Joseph Kennedy had the procedure done by the neurologist Walter Freeman, the director of the laboratories at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C. According to author Laurence Leamer, Rosemary Kennedy was "probably the first person with mental retardation in America to receive a prefrontal lobotomy." [2] In Kennedy's case, instead of producing the desired result, the operation reduced her to an infantile mentality that left her incontinent, staring blankly at walls for hours; her verbal skills became unintelligible babble. Although Freeman performed more than 3,000 lobotomies on individuals with mental illness during his career, [3] today, his lobotomy treatments are completely discredited in the eyes of the mental health community.

Was Rosemary retarded, or mentally ill?

At variance with writer Leamer mentioned above, investigative reporter Ronald Kessler shows Rosemary's problem was probably mental illness.

She was slower than the other childen, speaking late, had problems reading, could not keep up with school work. "Joe [Kennedy her father] could not tolerate losers, any more that he could tolerate crying. He banned Rosemary from the house" (Kessler, 222) Rosemary lived with Joe's aide Edward Moore's family for many years before the family went to London when Joe became ambassador. Edward Moore said "She's not quite right" tapping his head. (Kessler, 69) From Marymount Convent school in Tarryington, NY, she then went to a special boarding school in London during her father's ambassadorship.

Returning from London, aged 22, she retrogressed in mental skills, she became "tense and irritable, upset easily and unpredictably … tantrums … rages … convulsive episodes." (Rose Kennedy, A Time to Remember, quoted by Kessler.)

Kathleen Kennedy's boyfriend, John White, claimed that Kathleen admitted to him the secret that Rosemary had learning problems, but what really concerned her father were "mood changes" and a "new neurological distubance" and that "the family considered Rosemary 'a disgrace and failure'". (McTaggart, quoted by Kessler, 224)

Joe Kennedy had taken Rosemary to the best specialists. (Kessler, 69) Joe decided on a lobotomy, using the services of Dr. Walter J. Freeman, Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington and professor of neurology at George Wahington University School of Medicine, and his partner Dr. James W. Watts, MD from University of Virginia, neurosurgery training at Massachusetts General Hospital, later Chief of neurosurgery at George Washington University Hospital. Highly regarded, Dr. Watts became the 91st president of the Medical Society of District of Columbia.

At the time Joe asked for the surgery, they had only perfomed 66 lobotomies; they would eventually perform 4000. Their technique changed over time. For the record, here are the details of this particular case.

Dr. Watts did the surgery, Dr. Freeman supervised. Kessler interviewed Dr. Watts:

"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 that 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 asked Rosemary questions. For example, he would ask her to recite the Lord's Prayer or sing "God Bless America" or count backward. … "We made an estimate on how far to cut based on how she responded." … When she began to become incoherent, they stopped. (Kessler, 226)

"Dr. Watts told the author that, in his opinion, Rosemary had suffered not from mental retardation but from a form of depression. … 'It may have been agitated depression, You're agitated, you're shaky. You talk in an agitated way.'" … "A review of all records by the two doctors confirmed Dr. Watt's [sic] declaration. … None of the papers listed any of the patient as being mentally retarded. … According to a review in the American Journal of Psychiatry of all reports of lobotomies ever done, the procedure was only used for psychiatric illness." (Kessler, 227)

Rose said that although it stopped Rosemary's violent behavior, it left her completely incapacitated. "Rose was devastated; she considered it the first of the Kennedy family tragedies." (Kessler, 237)

She was sent to St. Coletta in Wisconsin. She became a nonentity within the family. Publically, she was declared to be mentally retarded. This was more socially acceptable in a political family than mental illness.

"Only a few doctors who worked for the Kennedys knew the truth about Rosemary's condition, as did the FBI", due to background check of Joe. Joe's attorney told them she had "mental illness". (Kessler, 233)

"One of the doctors who knew the truth was Dr. Bertram S. Brown, … executive director of the President's Panel on Mental Retardation. … According to Dr. Brown, the fact that Rosemary could do arithmetic meant that her IQ was well above 75, the cutoff used by most states for purposes of classification in schools to define mental retardation." At age nine she did problems like 428 x 32 = 13696, 3924 / 6 = 654. At age 16 she wrote to her father "I would do anything to make you so happy. I hate to disapoint [sic] you in anyway [sic]." Her diary reveals an ability to write about and understand various situations around her.

If she did division and multiplication, she was over an IQ of 75. She was not mentally retarded. … It could be she had an IQ of 90 in a family where everyone was 130, so it looked like retardation, but she did not fall into IQ 75 and below, which is the definition of mental retardation. … There is no way I can picture her at less that a 90 IQ, but in that family, 90 would be considered retarded.

In Dr. Brown's opinion, the family's treatment of Rosemary led to her mental illness. 'I think it's likely she was somewhat slower that the others. Then she was treated as if she was retarded. Then it becomes reactive depression, including rages and loss of control. That is mental illness… The reason she got depressed was that she reacted to being treated as lesser member of the family.' While the children tried to include her in their activities 'Given the highly competitive environment of the Kennedy family, they could not help but to communicate to her that she was not up to their standards.' The fact that Joe banished Rosemary to live with his aide demonstrated his rejecton of her. … 'The stigma of mental illness in those days was like tuberculosis or cancer or worse. Mental retardation is more benignly not your fault. … Even in [Dr. Watts's] day, performing a lobotomy on someone who was mentally retarded would have been medical malpractice.'

Dr. Brown called the suppression of the truth 'the biggest mental health cover-up in history.' Since the "public story" is still that Rosemary was retarded the 'lack of support for mental illness is part of a total lifelong family denial of what was really so… Some of us knew the secret and kept it secret …' (Kessler, 232–235)

Rosemary Kennedy inspired her sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver's work with the Special Olympics. Joe Kennedy made donations to philanthropic agencies he founded to help the retarded.

She lived at St. Coletta School for Exceptional Children in Jefferson, Wisconsin, a residential institution for disabled people, but visited relatives in other states. She died at the St. Coletta School at the age of 86, with her surviving sisters and brother, Senator Ted Kennedy, by her side. Hers was, and, currently, is, the only natural death among the deceased children of Joseph and Rose Kennedy, not counting the spiritual death of her lobotomy.

See also

• List of well-known U.S. presidential relatives
• Kennedy Curse

References

• Burns, James MacGregor, John Kennedy: A Political Profile, Harcourt Brace, 1960
• El-Hai, Jack, The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness (Wiley, 2004). ISBN 0471232920
• Gibson, Barbara, Rose Kennedy and Her Family: The Best and Worst of Their Lives and Times, Birch Lane Press, ISBN 1559722991. This book includes Rose Marie's diary from 1936-38. Gibson was Rose Kennedy's secretary. [4]
• Kennedy, Rose, Times to Remember, 1974, Doubleday, ISBN 0385476574
• Kessler, Ronald, The Sins of the Father: Joseph P. Kennedy and the Dynasty He Founded, Warner, 1996, ISBN 0446603848
• Leamer, Laurence, The Kennedy Women: The Saga of an American Family (Ballantine, 1996).
• McCarthy, Joe, The Remarkable Kennedys
• McTaggart, Lynne, Kathleen Kennedy, Doubleday, 1983
• Valenstein, Elliot S. Great and Desperate Cures: The Rise and Decline of Psychosurgery and Other Radical Treatments for Mental Illness (Basic Books, 1986).

External link

• Washington Post obituary January 8, 2005

• Rosemary Kennedy Bio & Photos Posted at fatboy.cc, an anti-Ted Kennedy site featuring political satire and Kennedy-related photographs, as well as speculative innuendo and attacks.