Rosemary Kennedy

not many people know about rosemary kennedy people know all about the notable things that other kennedy members have done but there's a black cloud around rosemary the daughter of joe and rose kennedy rosemary was different at the time they labeled this difference as [ __ ] the definition of [ __ ] is delay or hold back in terms of progress development or accomplishment but nowadays this word is looked down upon because it was abusively used to mean stupid rosemary's life was heavily influenced by her controlling father joseph p kennedy but in the end joe cared more about keeping up a great public image for the family than the well-being of his eldest daughter rosemary the kennedys were very politically driven joe the patriarch went into politics and became the u.s ambassador to the united kingdom he married rose fitzgerald whose father was the mayor of boston their children were destined to become political figures and joe did everything in his power to see this happen everybody else was a senator or a tv star or a ceo or a nobel prize winner because to say the least you grew up in a competitive family very competitive and you know earning all the time your stripes and trying harder and you know with a lot of humor yes and a lot of joy and a lot of uh tenderness but still tough rose and joe had nine children joe jr john rosemary kathleen eunice pat bobby jean ann and ted john became president bobby was the attorney general and ran for president ted was the senator from massachusetts and gene was the ambassador their family lived on beale street in brookline massachusetts they tried to seem like the perfect family rosemary's childhood wasn't similar to other people her age people didn't understand why rosemary developed so differently than the rest of her siblings most likely the reason was her birth rose was pregnant when boston had a large outbreak of the spanish flu so doctors were very busy when rose went into label with rosemary she was at home with the nurse the doctor was running late because of his surplus of patience the nurse knew how to deliver a baby but also how to help delay the birth until the doctor was able to get there the nurse told rose to keep her legs closed and not to push until the doctor got there but rose kept progressing and the nurse chose to physically hold the baby in the birth canal until doctors got there rosemary's childhood was a difficult one she grew up in brooklyn massachusetts with her eight siblings and that meant she had a lot of people to compare herself to they would go on vacations to the cape and her brothers and sisters would go sailing and rowing rose wasn't able to do the same things as her brothers and sisters and often felt left out not only did joe hide rosemary's condition from people outside the family he also did it with the children i think she was partly epileptic as well as [ __ ] eunice recalled again afraid that people would begin to notice that rosemary was different from her siblings they began to think that sending her away and putting her into an institution would help fearing that she could also make her family outcasts made shipping her way to place where no one was able to see her disability seemed like a better alternative than telling the public the truth and dealing with it rosemary although different developmentally was very similar to other girls her age she left fashion and to go window shopping in coolidge corner she started her education at the devotion school while she was there she failed the first grade which prompted the school to give rosemary an iq test her score was very low her parents wanted to keep her in public schools because they feared that if rosemary quote went away to school where other children were slow she would not be challenged to meet her greatest potential she was being forced to be an overachiever and when she was struggling to keep up with the bare minimum she was forced to go to schools where she was constantly the worst in her class my children all went to the state schools when they were young i think it's very good training for them they get to know all sorts of people especially if they're going to be in politics i think they are to know one of her teachers once said rosemary's achievements in class work or seldom commiserate with her ability in an effort to be made to bring her work up to the standard she's really capable of this is a difficult task as she has so definitely acquired the idea that her abilities are negligible and that her work cannot reach any higher standard end quote she spent a long time feeling like she was disappointing people that even the littlest compliments made her really happy she was missing validation in her life and rosemary loved her father very very much and she wanted to please him all the time and she she would she was frustrated often because she felt that she was disappointing him and she did disappoint him and he let her know that in his world view he thought that if she understood that he was disappointed in her behavior or her lack of progress in school he felt that that would motivate her to do better but actually it served only to frustrate her more which created a cycle of anger and anxiety and she would act out in frustration so it was a very difficult relationship she loved him deeply in the letter she sent to him she says i would do anything to make you happy i hate to disappoint you in any way come see me very soon i get very lonesome every day [Music] um and i think the reason that joe took this risk is he he himself was frustrated he felt that he had done everything that he could to provide for rosemary but she was um she was becoming more and more difficult to handle he had continued to enroll her in convent academy schools that were not appropriate environments for a 22 year old 23 year old young woman and the the administrators the teachers the nuns the priests couldn't handle rosemary and she wanted to live a life as an independent woman like her sisters and her brothers and so i think they were fearful that she would be taken advantage of that she would be kidnapped maybe and ransomed for money i'm sure joe and rose were afraid that she might be sexually vulnerable or become sexually active so his decision to have her lobotomized was in sort of out of frustration but also he wanted rosemary taken care of and he didn't want to have to worry about him her anymore he wanted to concentrate on the careers of his sons and he didn't want anything to happen that might embarrass the family so he made the decision to have her lobotomized he did talk to rose about the procedure and rose went to their daughter kathleen who they called kik and kathleen was a journalist in a newspaper in washington dc at the time and she investigated lobotomies and the work that the two doctors were doing at george washington university hospital and she told her mother that the outcomes were just not good they were bad and that they should not do this to rosemary so i have no doubt that rose told that to joe but joe made the decision to go ahead and have her lobotomized anyway the goal of a lobotomy at the time was to try to perform a surgery that would help control someone's behavior make them less aggressive or less erratic in their behavior a lobotomy technically would be to actually remove a lobe the frontal lobe and but most of what we call lobotomies were actually leukotomies and that means actually cutting the white matter the connection from one part of the brain to another part in this case under cutting the frontal lobe so that basically the frontal lobe can't communicate with the rest of the brain they ended up sending her to an institution by the end of her life she was barely able to talk and walk if joe was looking for a way to silence her then he did because now she was relying on someone else for the rest of her life there's also a lot of privacy around this it wasn't until joe senior suffered a stroke that the other children began to speak up about the issue when jfk was running for president eunice asked for the permission to talk about rosemary it had been almost 20 years since her lobotomy he gave her permission and she wrote an article for the saturday evening post yuna says my mother found an excellent catholic institution that specializes in the care of [ __ ] children and adults rosemary is there now living with others of her capacity she's found peace in a new home where there is no need for keeping up or for brooding over why she can't join in activities as others do she never mentions the lobotomy but it was more than joe senior ever said [Music] rosemary is always different but looking at it through a modern day lens being different is embraced joe's control over the family ended up determining the rest of rosemary's life she got a lobotomy when she was 22 in 1941. she lived until 2005 spending the last 64 years of her life in an institution she had a long life ahead of her but she could have lived a much fuller life if joe hadn't been so set on her being fixed if something like this happened today the whole situation would have been different certainly in modern day most people who have significant behavioral difficulties or mental illness are treated with medications because we now know that these kinds of problems are not just focused just in the frontal lobe and so you wouldn't want to cut that area of the brain out you can control behavior a lot better with careful medication balance so that you hopefully can calm people down without making them unable to perform normal cognitive function eunice herself said it fills me with sadness to think that this change might not have been necessary if we had known what we've known today you can't keep things like this secret anymore she might have been able to live a full and happy life but the public image of her family ultimately took priority over rosemary's life in joe's eyes luckily today the family has done a lot for people with disabilities but you have to wonder if they're just making up for what happened to their [Music] sister you

Channel: Becky Mason

Views: 1,046,094

Rating: 4.6052828 out of 5

Keywords: kennedy, kennedyfamily, documentary, seniorproject, rosemarykennedy, lobotomy, specialolympics

Id: XUo8nwWHGDM

Length: 11min 40sec (700 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 10 2018