Rosemary Kennedy
Rose Marie Kennedy was the third child and first daughter of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. She was a sister of President of the United States John F. Kennedy and Senators Robert F. Kennedy and Ted Kennedy. In her early young adult years, Rosemary Kennedy experienced seizures and violent mood swings. In response to these issues, her father arranged a prefrontal lobotomy for Rosemary in 1941 when she was 23 years of age. The procedure left Rosemary permanently incapacitated and rendering her unable to speak intelligibly.
About Rosemary Kennedy in brief
Rose Marie Kennedy was the third child and first daughter of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. She was a sister of President of the United States John F. Kennedy and Senators Robert F. Kennedy and Ted Kennedy. In her early young adult years, Rosemary Kennedy experienced seizures and violent mood swings. In response to these issues, her father arranged a prefrontal lobotomy for Rosemary in 1941 when she was 23 years of age. The procedure left Rosemary permanently incapacitated and rendering her unable to speak intelligibly. She spent most of the rest of her life being cared for at St. Coletta, an institution in Jefferson, Wisconsin. The truth about her situation and whereabouts was kept secret for decades. Accounts of Rosemary’s life indicated that she was intellectually disabled, although some have raised questions about the Kennedys’ accounts of the nature and scope of her disability. Rosemary read few books but could read Winnie-the-Pooh. Diaries written by her in the late 1930s, and published in the 1980s, reveal a young woman whose life was filled with outings to the opera, tea dances, dress fittings, and other social interests.
Kennedy accompanied her family to the coronation of Pope Pius XII in Rome in 1939. In 1938, Kennedy was presented to King George VI and Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace during her father’s service as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom. Kennedy never discussed the tripped and nearly fell incident and treated the crowd as if nothing had happened. According to Eunice Shriver, when Rosemary returned from the UK in 1940, she regressed and would often experience convulsions and fly into violent rages in which she would hit and injure others during this period. At age 15, Rose Mary was sent to the Sacred Heart Convent in Providence, Rhode Island, where she was educated separately from the other students. Her reading, writing, spelling, and counting skills were reported to be at a fourth-grade level. Her mother arranged for her older brother John to accompany her to a tea-dance and she appeared ‘not different at all’ during the dance.
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This page is based on the article Rosemary Kennedy published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 10, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
