Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter (32 page)

Additionally, I was fortunate to be given access to the private personal papers of one of the Massachusetts camp directors who spent a month with Rosemary in the summer of 1940 and to interview her daughter, Terry Marotta. I interviewed Anthony and Timothy Shriver, two of Eunice Kennedy Shriver’s sons, who
recalled memories of Rosemary and her frequent visits to their home. They, like most of their generation of Kennedys, are as unclear about Rosemary’s early life as a Kennedy, her disabilities, and the reason for her tragic lobotomy as are most historians.

As the mother of a disabled child, I am grateful to Rosemary and to her siblings, particularly her sister Eunice, whose advocacy continues to give us the language to forge ahead with more conversations and action on behalf of the mentally ill and the disabled.

I
OWE A TREMENDOUS
debt of gratitude to the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation and the archivists at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. Their patience and dedication to providing an exemplary research environment, their extraordinary knowledge of the library collections, and their familiarity with resources beyond the library made my work possible. Stephen Plotkin, Michael Desmond, Stacey Chandler, Abigail Malangone, Karen Abramson, and the various interns whom I met over the years in Textual Reference were always cheerful and supportive, and offered valuable suggestions and guidance when I hit many a brick wall. To Maryrose Grossman and Laurie Austin in the Audiovisual Archives, thank you for tracking down every photograph of Rosemary you could find, and for pointing out film clips that I would have overlooked. These images gave me a glimpse of the vibrant young woman Rosemary was on the eve of her lobotomy, making the surgery all the more tragic to me.

I am grateful for early interviews with Anthony Shriver and
Timothy Shriver. Though they admittedly knew little about Rosemary’s life before the surgery, their love for her was clear through their reminiscences and helped me see her as a much-loved woman whose life had a tremendous impact on their entire family. Charles Baker, one of Joseph P. Kennedy’s nephews, remembered Joe Kennedy Sr. as a powerful force within the family whose decisions were never questioned. I deeply appreciate the Religious of the Assumption in Worcester, Massachusetts: Sisters Therese DuRoss, Nuala Cotter, and Coreena Garcia provided not only their personal recollections and biographical file on Mother Isabel Eugenie but also a warm afternoon with hot tea, cookies, and an introduction to their religious order and its mission.

I am very grateful to Terry Marotta—a beautiful writer and neighbor—who shared with me her personal family papers detailing her mother and aunt’s experiences with Rosemary at the camp they ran in western Massachusetts, and Rose’s callous treatment of them. Dr. Reese Cosgrove explained the current state of the practice of surgical lobotomy—an operation rarely performed today and highly regulated—and the important positive outcomes it can offer for certain severely mentally ill patients.

I am humbled by the extraordinary work of the many, many biographers who have researched and written about the Kennedy family over the past fifty years. I could not have written this biography if they had not conducted many of their interviews with Kennedy family members, friends, and acquaintances who are now gone. Some of them were privy to documents that are no longer available to historians because of legal issues and retractions by the Kennedy family. Fortunately, through their published works, I have been able to patch together many missing pages that have been pulled from the Kennedy family collections
at the Kennedy Library. I hope that someday all the documents in those collections, with the exception of medical records protected by HIPAA laws, will be opened for all researchers to access.

This book could not have happened without the unwavering support of my agent, Doe Coover, who saw Rosemary’s obituary at the same time that I did and knew that I should write about her. Thank you, Doe, for your excellent diplomacy, business sense, good humor, fabulous lunches, and deep friendship. And to my editor, Deanne Urmy, who is the best editor I have ever worked with, thank you for your patience. Your extraordinary eye for detail and skillful editing have made this a far better biography than I could ever have dreamed of writing.

And to my husband, Spencer, who, along with Doe and Deanne, endured years of stops and starts to this project, thank you for your loving patience and support, and for falling for Rosemary along with me. I could not have done this without you.

ABBREVIATIONS

1. A HOME BIRTH

[>]
The closing of theaters:
“City Sends Even Nurses to Boston to Fight Spread,”
Bridgeport (Conn.) Telegram,
September 20, 1918.

[>]
this viral infection:
J. K. Taubenberger and D. M. Morens, “1918 Influenza: The Mother of All Pandemics,”
Emerging Infectious Diseases
12, no. 1 (January 2006): 15–22,
http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/12/1/pdfs/05-0979.pdf
.

[>]
“All the city was dying”:
“Recollections of Miss East and Miss Franklin,” n.d., School of Public Health, Department of Nursing, box 8, folder 1, Simmons College Archives, Boston.

[>]
Nearly seven thousand residents:
Alfred J. Crosby,
America’s Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 60–61.

[>]
“If during the absence”:
Charles Sumner Bacon,
Obstetrical Nursing: A Manual for Nurses and Students and Practitioners of Medicine
(Philadelphia: Lea & Febiger, 1915), 151.

[>]
She could not give Rose an anesthetic:
Barbara Gibson and Ted Schwartz,
Rose Kennedy and Her Family: The Best and Worst of Their Lives and Times
(New York: Birch Lane Press, 1995), 47.

[>]
The nurse demanded:
Ibid., 54, based on interview with Barbara Gibson, Rose Kennedy’s longtime secretary.

[>]
“I had such confidence”:
TTR,
66, 68.

[>]
Dr. Good and his colleagues:
“Children Born at Home,” diaries, August 23, 1971, RFKP, box 5; see also ibid., 68.

[>]
When holding Rose’s legs together:
LL,
The Kennedy Women,
137, based on interviews with Luella Hennessey Donovan, a longtime Kennedy nursemaid and governess who did not help deliver Rosemary but spent many intimate years with the family; and an interview with Eunice Kennedy Shriver by Robert Coughlan, February 26, 1972, RFKP, box 10.

[>]
“A dainty girl”:
“Ex-Mayor Thrice a Grandfather,”
Boston Sunday Globe,
September 15, 1918.

[>]
“sweet and peaceable”:
“Children Born at Home,” RFKP, box 5; see also
TTR,
131.

[>]
“The quiet and peace”:
“Children Born at Home,” RFKP, box 10.

[>]
This pace:
DN, 57.

[>]
Classrooms were horribly overcrowded:
Martin Lazerson,
Origins of the Urban School: Public Education in Massachusetts, 1870–1915
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), 11–12.

[>]
Between the late 1890s and 1920:
William DeMarco,
Ethnics and Enclaves: Boston’s Italian North End
(Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1981), 21–24; see also Twelfth Census of the United States (1900), Thirteenth Census of the United States (1910), Fourteenth Census of the United States (1920), U.S. Bureau of the Census, Massachusetts, Suffolk County.

[>]
His decision to run:
DKG, 105–6.

[>]
He had run against Patrick Kennedy:
TTR,
23.

[>]
Rose during this heady time:
Scrapbook, 1907–1929, RFKP, box 121. An undated news clipping indicates that Rose was voted the “most beautiful girl graduate” by the male graduates of Dorchester High School. Rose later revealed that it was her father who used a friendly journalist to write up the article—much to Rose’s embarrassment, because she believed it was not true.

[>]
“his love for her”:
DKG, 91.

[>]
“To my mind”:
Ibid., 105.

[>]
“My father”:
TTR,
53–54.

[>]
her father was excessively conservative:
Ibid., 23.

[>]
Frustrated by the discrimination:
Thomas H. O’Connor,
The Boston Irish: A Political History
(Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1995), 150.

[>]
“safety valve”:
Lazerson,
Origins of the Urban School,
19–23.

[>]
“public schools were training grounds”:
Interview with nephew Edward Fitzgerald in DKG, 104.

[>]
Under the leadership:
Joseph W. Riordan,
The First Half Century of St. Ignatius Church and College
(San Francisco: Crocker, 1905), 199.

[>]
“the peril of the age”:
“People in Print,”
Donahoe’s Magazine
56 (July–December 1906): 385–86.

[>]
Fitzgerald enrolled his children:
DKG, 152–55.

[>]
Rose was eager:
Ibid., 132.

[>]
Fifty-five percent:
Boston, Massachusetts, School Committee,
Documents of the School Committee of the City of Boston for the Year 1910
(Boston: City of Boston Printing Department, 1910), 14–20;
only 12 percent of all students:
“School Document No. 16–1907,”
Annual Report of the School Committee of the City of Boston, 1907
(Boston: Municipal Printing Office, 1907), 38.

[>]
From 1900 to 1920:
Barbara Miller Solomon,
In the Company of Educated Women: A History of Women and Higher Education in America
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985), 46–47, 63–64; see also Thomas D. Snyder, ed.,
120 Years of American Education: A Statistical Self Portrait
(Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Studies, 1993), 69.

[>]
“There was screaming”:
Interview with Kerry McCarthy in LL,
The Kennedy Women,
61.

[>]
“heeding the siren call”:
DKG, 142–44.

[>]
“I was furious”:
LL,
The Kennedy Women,
61.

[>]
“My greatest regret”:
Interview with RFK in DKG, 144.

[>]
“the propagation of the devotion”:
Remigius Lafort and Cardinal John Farley,
The Catholic Church in America, Undertaken to Celebrate the Golden Jubilee of His Holiness, Pope Pius X,
vol. 2,
The Religious Communities of Women
(New York: Catholic Editing Company, 1914), 68.

[>]
“I knew Latin”:
Interview with RFK in DKG, 146.

[>]
“ethics, metaphysics”:
Lafort and Farley,
Religious Communities of Women,
445–46.

[>]
Rose’s course of study:
Tracy Schier and Cynthia Russett, eds.,
Cath
olic Women’s Colleges in America
(Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 46–47, 264.

[>]
“Let religion be”:
Women of the Spirit: A History of Convent of the Sacred Heart, Greenwich, 1848–1998
(Greenwich, Conn.: Convent of the Sacred Heart, 1999), 11–12.

[>]
“Under such training”:
Lafort and Farley,
Religious Communities of Women,
497.

[>]
“It took teamwork”:
TTR,
50.

[>]
Her father pushed other suitors:
DKG, 219–20.

[>]
Even Fitzgerald’s chauffeur:
TTR,
50–57.

[>]
The grandson of immigrants
and following: For a history of Irish Boston, see O’Connor,
Boston Irish,
128–65.