Posted on 01/09/2005 4:43:44 AM PST by billorites
When JFK ran for president in 1960 the official family story was that Rosemary was shy and had devoted her life to teaching children in a Wisconsin convent.
Rosemary was only mildly retarded, and considered the prettiest of the Kennedy daughters. She was presented at Court along with her sister Kathleen when her father was the American Ambassador to Britain. When the bombing started, Ol' Joe sent his wife and other children home but Kathleen stayed in a British convent near London. She wrote her father some very sweet letters about how she wanted him to be proud of her.
But when she and Joe returned home puberty must have set in. She saw the difference in treatment between her dating younger sister and herself and she would fly into rages at times. Once she even attacked her small grandfather, 'Honey' Fitzgerald. She would slip out of the house at night, and the parents became terrified that she might get into 'trouble'.
Joe Kennedy did some research on a new technique that promised to calm down people, to make them more placid and agreeable. When Rose was gone on a trip he had Rosemary lobotomized, supposedly without her mother's knowledge. The ice pick-like instrument was inserted under the frontal lobes of the eyes and swished back and forth through the frontal brain.
It was a disaster for Rosemary. She lost her ability to read, write, think, plus her personality and continence. Joe stuck her away in the Wisconsin convent and by all accountants never saw her again. The only family members that ever visited Rosemary were her mother and sister, Eunance.
I just did a Google search and Rosemary was mildly retarded. She was living a productive life. The procedure was used for severe cases only. Joe Sr. didn't even tell the family or his wife, her mother, about the Lobotomy. That tells me, Joe Sr. may very well have known or had an idea of what the out come would be.
Talk about comparing apples and oranges, comparing a Lobotomy to Prozac.
Dear God! I knew she had a lobotomy, but I didn't realize she was only mildly retarded. That's so much worse. I know many people who are mildly retarded, and they are wonderful, usually happy people. The idea of any of them being lobotomized is horrendous.
What a horrible family.
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