Rosemary is quite possibly the greatest mystery of the Kennedy family as well as its greatest tragedy. We can theorize about what her condition was until the bowels of Hell freeze solid, and yet the fact remains that by medical standards of the day she was who she was no matter what her intellectual problems might have been. Having said that, almost every description out there is consistent with mild retardation. Mildly retarded folks can be quite clever, as I think we’re all aware.
I was thinking about this a night or two ago and not to toot my own kazoo, it does make a fair bit of sense. Consider this possibility: The family did their very best for Rosie, kept her right up front and excluded her from nothing. They missed the boat though perhaps in one vital area. How many fellers did Kathleen, Eunice, Jean and Pat have through the years compared to Rosemary? Yet there she sat, perhaps the prettiest of them all, undoubtedly keenly aware of just how different she was – if not in the eyes of her family, certainly in the eyes of other boys her age. I don’t recall the exact quote, but in something Rosemary wrote she’d asked why the boys didn’t ask her to dance – boys other than Joe & Jack, that is. Think what that must have been like!
Enter Papa Joe in search of a solution: “Isn’t there something to be done, Doctor Freeman?” Oh yes, said the quack – we’ve actually had quite a bit of luck with this procedure the past few years. It’s very simple and Rosemary will go on to lead a much calmer, happier life.” (Hypothetical as this might be, Walter Freeman gave these same assurances many times, as the film The Lobotomist illustrates.)
(Sexual assault would have been another risk, of course.)
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nemidwest
14 years ago
In one of the many books about the Kennedys, one of the nuns who took care of Rosemary(as an adult, not a youngster), said that Rosemary could not dress herself. She was cooperative,and could button some buttons, but needed assistance. Interesting, Rosemary could recite the Hail Mary, and anything she knew by heart were those things she learned before the lobotomy.
Even in the era of Joe Kennedy, the lobotomy was not a procedure recommended for mental retardation. It was not even a medically responsible choice at the time either.
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