Rosemary, The Hidden Kennedy

My mother handed me an article this week from her People Magazine, dated September 14, 2015 that I found very interesting and sad. The reason I wish to share this story is because it is very similar to my life and what could have happened. Most people know that JFK had a sister that was mentally ill, but the actual story was hidden from the public for decades.

Rosemary Kennedy, one of Rose and Joseph Kennedy’s 9 children was born on September 13, 1918. For some strange reason the nurses were fighting with Rose not to push her out during labor and insisted she wait, causing the child to not get enough oxygen, exposing her to brain damage. For two hours the child was laying in the birth canal and the nurse held her head, forcing it back. Finally the doctors arrived, delivered the child who at the time looked healthy, yet showed many signs of problems when compared to the other children.

Schooling was difficult of course and the kindergarten teacher would not promote her to the first grade calling her “Retarded”. The mental illness had caused her some growth problems and the intellectual disabilities masked the seriousness of her condition. At 11 years old her suffering seemed to be from seizures and she was prone to tantrums, and sent to a boarding school. Unfortunately, she never made it past a fourth grade reading level. Rosemary was strikingly beautiful with lovely, but sexual features, was attracting many men and her parents found her sexuality dangerous.

Rosemary and her sister Eunice were extremely close in 1938. To cut the story short, in 1941 at the age of 23 with mental problems, her father Joe ,without informing Rose, her mother, rushed his daughter into having a Lobotomy, a brain surgery that includes drilling holes on both sides of Rosemary’s head and using a flexible spatula to scrape away deeper and deeper from the front to the back of the brain, removing all the good parts.

When the surgery was complete poor Rosemary was incoherent and stopped speaking as well as almost going completely immobile. She never recovered the full use of her limbs. She walked with one leg and foot and partial use of one of her arms with a handful of words. Now Eunice credited Rosemary with inspiring her to founding the Special Olympics for athletes with disabilities decades later.

Rosemary survived until 2005, a horrible way to live all those years after that surgery and her family put her into hiding for 20 years.

She had become The Hidden Kennedy.   

My story is similar in what would have happened to me if the Neuro-Surgeon hadn’t found a problem on the left side of my brain as well as the right. I almost went through a brain surgery that would remove part of my brain, leaving me with tunnel vision and the possibility of STILL having seizures! I also would still have to be on medication for the rest of my life.

These days are different in how they treat disabilities, especially those of the brain, but if it’s not necessary, no doctor is scraping parts of my brain away.   

You can find the full story about Rosemary Kennedy In People Magazine here.

Check out these books coming soon from Amazon and Barnes & Noble:

Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter by Kate Clifford Larson

And

The Missing Kennedy: Rosemary Kennedy and the Secret Bonds of Four Woman by Elizabeth Koehler-Pentacoff