Posted on 01/07/2005 7:46:11 PM PST by West Coast Conservative
WASHINGTON -- Rosemary Kennedy, a sister of John F. Kennedy who was born mentally retarded and lived most of her life in an institution after undergoing a lobotomy, died Friday, her family said. She was 86.
Kennedy, the inspiration for the Special Olympics spearheaded by the Kennedy family, had been a patient since 1949 at St. Coletta School for Exceptional Children in Jefferson, Wis. She was the third child and first daughter of Joseph and Rose Kennedy, born a year after her brother became president.
In 1941, Joseph Kennedy, worried his daughter's mild mental retardation would lead her into situations that could damage the family's reputation, arranged for Rosemary to have a lobotomy. She was 23.
"Rosemary was a woman, and there was a dread fear of pregnancy, disease and disgrace," author Laurence Leamer wrote in his book "The Kennedy Women: The Saga of an American Family." He wrote that Rosemary, whose retardation possibly stemmed from brain damage at birth, had taken to sneaking out of the convent where she was staying at the time.
(Excerpt) Read more at seattlepi.nwsource.com ...
Sounds like that sad Francis Farmer story. Lobotomy became a "pop" surgical procedure.
LOL. It has been an age since I have "seen" you. How are you? It is always great to run across another lawyer.
As a child, I would look at the books detailing the Kennedy saga and was always struck that Rosemary was the prettiest of the Kennedy daughters.
If the quote is accurate, I suspect that if she was able to chronicle the events mentioned above, she was not "retarded" but instead suffered some sort of birth injury which may have made her 'slow" but not retarded (as we think of it today). My 2 year old neice is a bright, intelligent girl, a doll. But she was and is "slow" to reach the developmental milestones. Her vocabulary is good, but she talks to herself. She lives in her own world and lets others into to hers only to a point. She has been diagnosed as autistic.
To continue the myth that Rosemary was born with mental retardation is an insult to her dignity and a pardon for the sins of the father. What her father did to her was beyond the pale. No wonder leaving a woman to drown in the back of a car was no considered a murderous act in their family.
And Teddy champions himself as one who fights for human rights. There are no words to describe my disgust when I am face to hace with his hypocrisy.
yes, she was honey fitz' daughter, and without her knowledge o f politics jfk would have never gotten into the u.s. congress.
Don't forget, back then doctors were gods. Idolized. If a doctor told you 2 + 2 = 5, then that's what it was. This procedure was in it's infancy, and some doctor told Joe, if we do "this," she'll be "much better." Joe believed the guy.
An intersting tale I heard---and the best part is that it's true:
Whn the Kennedy girls were presented to the Queen Consort, Queen Elizabeth (later the Queen Mother) The Queen made a point to be extra nice to Rosemary. It turns out that King George VI's youngest brother was retarded as well---and lived to only 14. When the King met them, he too paid extra attention to her.
Class really can show......
I agree with you. What a bunch of slimebags! RIP Rosemary.
What I have no words for is that some people ACTUALLY stare these kinds of stories about Teddy in the face...and STILL consider him a champion for the little people...instead of a lowlife, marauding SOB.
Who or what is Honey Fitz? (forgive my Kennedy Clan ignorance)
This is the first I have read of this story. I'm just amazed at how bizarre the stories are.
The mistake was intentional. The mathmatical error was designed to distract everyone from focusing and reflecting what trash the Kennedy family is. As you can see this thread has mostly been hijacked by people pointing out this mistake at the expense of the attention that needs to be paid to the crime commited on this woman.
Yeah, the Queen Mum was awesome.
rose's father. he was mayor of boston. joe married rose because he wanted to piggy-back on the old man's popularity.
His SON'S sexual antics...WHAT ABOUT HIS? Ever hear of Gloria Swanson?
The math was a simple mistake. Cannot believe the elder kennedy could have a lobodomy done on his own daughter because he was afraid she would bring embarassment to the family? I guess he didn't really know his sons very well then did he? What a dysfunctional family. Rest in peace Rosemary....you are in heaven now. Shame on those kennedys's ... shame on them. The way they treated their own female family members. Cheating, lying, disgraceful, just disgraceful. And for anyone out there who thinks I am bashing...I'm not. It's just that President Kennedy was my first time to vote and I was drawn into that whole kennedy clan thing. Laughing on the outside... crying on the inside...that's what I imagine all the kennedy women did.
i'm going to bed. thanks for the fun. this thread has legs.
if you read the schwartz book, you'll love when fdr has ol' joe pull his pants down in the white house!
the kennedys would do anything for power!
http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/lobotomy.html
In 1936, Walter Freeman, an American physician, with his colleague James Watts, performed his first lobotomy operation. He was so satisfied with the results that he went on to do many thousands more, and in fact began a propaganda campaign to promote its use. He is also famous for invented what is called ice pick lobotomy. Impatient with the difficult surgical methods pioneered by Moniz, he found he could insert an ordinary ice pick above each eye of a patient with only local anesthetic, drive it through the thin bone with a light tap of a mallet, swish the pick back and forth like a windshield wiper and -- voilà -- a formerly difficult patient is now passive.
Freeman recommended the procedure for everything from psychosis to depression to neurosis to criminality. He developed what others called assembly line lobotomies, going from one patient to the next with his gold-plated ice pick, even having his assistants time him to see if he could break lobotomy speed record. It is said that even some seasoned surgeons fainted at the site. Even Watts thought he had gone too far.
Between 1939 and 1951, over 18,000 lobotomies were performed in the US, and many more in other countries. It was often used on convicts, and in Japan, it was recommended for use on “difficult” children. There are still western countries that permit the use of the lobotomy, although its use has decreased dramatically worldwide. Curiously, the old USSR banned it back in the 1940s on moral grounds!
(BTW, what kinda name is "Honey" for a man?)
Yeah, Old Joe chased her all over RMS "Aquitania" in 1924.
Hope she made across the pond OK......
yes, ma'am.
that's all detailed in schwartz' book.
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