Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter (18 page)

Rose confirmed Lem Billings’s impressions of Rosemary’s state of mind that summer, recalling that she became agitated quickly
and unexpectedly. “Some of these upsets became tantrums, or rages, during which she broke things or hit at people. Since she was quite strong, the blows were hard.”
In Billings’s recollection, “Every day there would be one terrifying incident after another: physical fights where Rosemary would use her fists and hit and bruise people.”
She also experienced convulsions. These attacks may have been epileptic seizures or a type of psychogenic nonepileptic seizure, which usually develop in young women in their late teens and early twenties. Some sufferers also have additional problems, including learning disabilities. These nonepileptic seizures are often brought on by increasing psychological and emotional stress, with depression and anxiety a common contributing factor.
Though there is no way to tell what type of seizures Rosemary suffered from, any kind would have been frightening, exhausting, and debilitating. Treatment at the time would have included some form of sedative, like Luminal, the addictive barbiturate in red-pill form that Rosemary may have already been taking for years, to calm her after the worst of a seizure was over.
In those days, however, treatment for epilepsy and nonepileptic seizures was limited and mostly ineffectual.

Rosemary’s striking beauty—lovely features, a broad, perfect smile, and a buxom figure—continued to attract men’s attention. Rosemary had proudly told her father earlier that summer that even that “Saks man” told her “he things [
sic
] I am the best looking of the Kennedys.”
In a household both highly sexualized on the male side and notably repressed on the female side, Rosemary’s beauty was a special threat.

Lem Billings suggested an additional diagnosis to journalist Burton Hersh: Rosemary was “sexually frustrated,” a view surely more telling about Billings’s own sexual outlook than Rosemary’s, but his belief was rooted in common views about intel
lectually disabled and mentally ill women—attitudes shared and feared by Rosemary’s parents.
Twenty years after women had finally gained the right to vote, society’s lingering nineteenth-century ideas played heavily on social, religious, and scientific attempts to control women’s more public and expressive sexuality. This had devastating consequences for the country’s most vulnerable and weakest women, mentally ill and disabled women who faced victimization through forced sterilization and institutionalization at alarming rates.

Interestingly, in spite of being effervescent, outgoing, and flirtatious, the slim-figured Kick was viewed as less sexually suggestive than Rosemary. Though open and frank about sex in conversation, Kick had no experience with intimate sexual contact, and her male friends knew that her religious background would preclude her from engaging in any sort of premarital sexual activity.
In fact, Kick wished privately to her best friend, Charlotte McDonnell, as many of her friends were “pairing up” and getting married, that she could remain single forever and go to parties, instead, every night.
Yet no male contemporary of Kick’s ever described this party girl as “sexually frustrated,” and it was Rosemary’s potential and physically obvious sexuality that her parents found dangerous.

W
ITH SUMMER ACTIVITIES
at Hyannis Port in full swing, Rose found a way to insulate herself from the frenetic pace and the constant racket of so many people, radios, and dogs. She had built a small getaway cottage for herself on the family compound where she now retreated to read quietly, write letters, and relax while the hired help managed the chaos in and around the main house.

Rose already had made another arrangement to assure that Rosemary’s special needs—and her own need for tranquility—
were met for the balance of the summer. Rose had become used to not having Rosemary around every day, and she had agreed with Joe that Rosemary would have difficulty around her active, competitive siblings. In anticipation of Rosemary’s return, Rose investigated several summer camps, looking for options that would satisfy Rosemary’s need for structure, attention, and usefulness. At nearly twenty-two, Rosemary would be too old to be a camper, however. Through family acquaintances, Rose found what she believed to be a positive placement, Camp Fernwood, in western Massachusetts. She approached its owners and directors, Grace and Caroline Sullivan, to discuss Rosemary. The two women were the daughters of Michael Henry Sullivan, an attorney and former chairman of the Boston School Committee. In 1909, he had become the youngest judge ever appointed to the bench in Massachusetts. Located along the shores of Plunkett Lake, in Hinsdale, Camp Fernwood was a Catholic summer sleepaway camp for girls ages six to sixteen. Rosemary seemed excited about attending the camp and about what she might be doing there during the summer. She believed, and no doubt was told, that she would be a “junior counselor,” teaching youngsters as she had done in England. “But isn’t it interesting,” she wrote her father in London on the Fourth of July after arriving at the camp, “but [
sic
] me being a junior counsellor the first year. They thought I had experienced [
sic
] in
Arts
, and
Crafts
in Europe. So, I am teaching it now. I have
the
younger girls. And another girl Alice Hill, has the bigger girl in
Arts
, and
Crafts
. So, the two of us run it.”

Rose should have given the Sullivan sisters some indication that Rosemary, an adult woman, was intellectually disabled, but it seems she did not share much with them—certainly not that the staff would need to monitor Rosemary every day to be sure she rested, ate properly, completed her tasks, and remained composed
with the children; or that they would be called to calm her rages, to constantly reassure and compliment her, and to monitor her every move.

Whereas Kennedy family lore long perpetuated the myth that Rosemary was hired to be a counselor at the camp, Sullivan family records reveal a different story. In the spring of 1940, while Rosemary was still living in England and the Sullivan sisters met Rose in New York to discuss Rosemary’s placement, they were completely unaware of the extent of her disabilities. All they knew was that Rose was hoping her twenty-two-year-old daughter—who had received Montessori training in England to become a teacher’s assistant—could find a spot for the summer at the camp. She would require, Rose told them, a special counselor to accompany her at all times. Rose did not explain fully why this was so necessary.
Terry Marotta, Caroline Sullivan’s daughter, wrote that her mother later recalled that “she should have known the minute Mrs. Kennedy arrived [in New York] without her daughter that the girl was not as ‘able’ as Rose was leading them to believe.”
To Rose’s relief, the Sullivans accepted Rosemary into the camp program—not officially as a paid junior counselor, but rather as a camper who needed guidance herself.

In a July 1 letter from Rose’s secretary and the younger children’s governess, Elizabeth Dunn, to the Sullivan sisters, Dunn conveyed Rose’s requirement that the camp staff be “sure her [Rosemary’s] arch supporters are in her shoes correctly” and that Rosemary sit at the “diet table if you can encourage her to.” Additionally, Rosemary should “use Arts and Crafts Shop as much as possible. Have tennis lessons as often as practical,” and “do exercises for her arches.” These “very important” instructions were the ones Rose chose to convey—not suggestions on how to handle an adult woman prone to anger, or likely to be “fierce” with the chil
dren, or anxious about changes in her daily routine and environment.
Clearly, in spite of her instructions concerning Rosemary, Rose gave little thought to the campers or to the abilities of Fernwood’s staff to cope with Rosemary.

There were problems from the start. One family friend later recalled that the Fernwood staff did not realize that Rosemary’s shoes were ill fitting until they noticed her feet bleeding. Frustrated, the Sullivan sisters took Rosemary to their own podiatrist in nearby Pittsfield, Massachusetts, to help relieve her intense discomfort. Rosemary may have consciously followed her mother’s instructions about putting on a positive public face and not complaining, but in this case she was clearly carrying the mandate to the extreme.
The sisters were shocked when they discovered that Rosemary did not properly dispose of her stained sanitary napkins but rather stored them in her camp trunk.
They were deeply worried by Rosemary’s habit of wandering off. Caroline Sullivan, whom Rosemary called “Cow” because she could not pronounce Caroline’s nickname, “Cal,” eventually had Rosemary sleep in her private quarters, with a bed placed up against the door to prevent her from wandering off in the middle of the night.

After three weeks, the Sullivans had had enough, and they requested that Rose come and take Rosemary home. Rose told them she could not come to the camp and that it was up to them to get Rosemary to New York, where Eddie Moore and Elizabeth Dunn would meet them on July 22.
Before the Sullivans’ decision to send Rosemary home, Rose had inquired about visiting her on July 27, on a trip that would coincide with the annual summer concerts held in the Berkshires, allowing Rose to enjoy some cultural entertainment while there.
Now, however, it was important that she remain at the Maine Chance Beauty Spa, established by cosmetic pioneer Elizabeth Arden at her expansive estate on
Long Pond, in Belgrade, Maine. The news that Rosemary was once again going to be under her care, without Joe there to handle their daughter, as he had been doing to a greater degree while she was in school in England, sent Rose fleeing the turmoil.

On a “hot as hops” July day, Caroline Sullivan accompanied Rosemary to New York, requiring her to be away from the camp and her responsibilities there for two days. Posting a note from the Barbizon-Plaza Hotel, on Central Park South, after leaving Rosemary with Eddie Moore, Caroline wrote to her sister, Grace, that she “left the final ordeal at 7:10 [p.m.] with no mishaps.”

Incredibly, it would be nine months before Rose would pay the bill for Rosemary’s time at Camp Fernwood. After finally receiving a check from Rose, in mid-April 1941, which lacked her signature, the Sullivan sisters were stunned to read in the check’s accompanying letter that Rose was challenging them regarding the amount of the invoice. “I see there is a $200 charge for tuition, and I suppose it is a fair charge, although Rosemary was only there three weeks. I did not discuss all the financial arrangements with you at all, of course, and I shall pay whatever is customary. I am merely bringing it to your attention in case you had not considered all the circumstances.”
The sisters returned the unsigned check for its required signature and expressed their frustration with the way they were being treated, outlining the “circumstances” that they had indeed “considered”:

Our charge is based on a half season, that is, 4 weeks. Since we don’t accept anyone for a shorter period it is customary to receive tuition for the full period . . . We have charged you double the regular tuition of $100 per half season. This seems only fair since you requested that a counselor be particularly assigned to Rosemary and constantly be in charge
of her at all times. This was carried out and, as it so happened, she was so difficult of adjustment in our group of normal young children that, for the well-being of everyone I found it necessary to give my own attention to her, in addition to the special counselor assigned to her, in spite of my many other duties and heavy responsibilities. The situation turned out to be so impossible that after giving it every effort and a thoroughly fair trial, it seemed necessary to request from you the end of her stay at camp. There was such a very definite nervous effect upon the counselors that I did not feel it fair or safe to let any one of them accompany Rosemary to New York, and so it was my duty to do so although ordinarily my sister and I never leave the camp during the season.

The Sullivans assured Rose that Rosemary was “lovable and well meaning.” Her effect on the staff and campers was so adverse, however, that they felt they “should not have kept her at camp as long as we did.”
Years later, Caroline Sullivan still bore lingering anger and disbelief over the way Rose had treated her, in addition to shock over Rose’s disregard for the health and safety of her disabled daughter.

Eddie Moore barely had time to make arrangements for Rosemary; he had received a telegram from Joe in London on June 21 that Rosemary was leaving the camp immediately and that Elizabeth Dunn was heading to New York from Hyannis Port to help him take care of her. The two of them were expected to meet Rosemary and Caroline Sullivan on the evening of the twenty-second in New York. Fortunately, Moore had started investigating Rosemary’s placement for the fall as soon as they had returned from London. He had made inquiries of the sisters at Belmont
House about American Catholic schools with Montessori programs similar to theirs. Moore visited Ravenhill Academy of the Assumption near Philadelphia, where he found a “better layout” than at the Convent of the Sacred Heart at Noroton, where Kathleen and Eunice had gone. The head of the convent school was the Reverend Mother Ann Elizabeth, who was intimately familiar with the Assumption school in England “and all the Nuns there,” Moore reported. One of Ravenhill’s nuns was an Englishwoman whose sister was an Assumption nun at Belmont House. Both she and Reverend Mother Ann Elizabeth had heard about Rosemary and were open to having her enroll at the school. The campus was set in the beautiful Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia, and, Moore reported, “the Nuns are lovely.” The Montessori program “will interest Rosemary because she can continue her studies,” he assured Rose.
Moore wrote to Joe in London and asked whether Mother Isabel could be encouraged to write a letter to the Assumption nuns in Philadelphia, as a sort of introduction and assurance of Rosemary’s capabilities and potential. Though Moore had met the Reverend Mother in June with the idea that Rosemary would enroll in the fall, her failure at the camp forced a quick adjustment to those plans.
He quickly secured arrangements to take Rosemary to Ravenhill, where the nuns could take charge of her immediately.