Rosemary Kennedy was a sister of President John F Kennedy and Senators Robert F and Ted Kennedy.
21 Facts About Rosemary Kennedy
2.
Rosemary Kennedy spent most of the rest of her life being cared for at St Coletta, an institution in Jefferson, Wisconsin.
3.
Rosemary Kennedy was the third child and first daughter of Joseph P Kennedy Sr.
4.
Rosemary Kennedy was named after her mother and was commonly called Rosemary or Rosie.
5.
At age 15, Rosemary Kennedy was sent to the Sacred Heart Convent in Elmhurst, Providence, Rhode Island, where she was educated separately from the other students.
6.
Rosemary Kennedy's reading, writing, spelling, and counting skills were reported to be at a fourth-grade level.
7.
Rosemary Kennedy accompanied her family to the coronation of Pope Pius XII in Rome in 1939.
8.
In 1938, Rosemary Kennedy was presented as a debutante to King George VI and Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace during her father's service as the United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom.
9.
When Rosemary Kennedy was 23 years old, doctors told her father that a form of psychosurgery known as a lobotomy would help calm her mood swings and stop her occasional violent outbursts.
10.
Joseph Kennedy decided that Rosemary should have a lobotomy; however, he did not inform his wife of this decision until after the procedure was completed.
11.
Rosemary Kennedy swung it up and down to cut brain tissue.
12.
Watts told Kessler that in his opinion, Rosemary Kennedy did not have "mental retardation" but rather had a form of depression.
13.
Rosemary Kennedy initially lived for several years at Craig House, a private psychiatric hospital 90 minutes north of New York City.
14.
Rosemary Kennedy had a car that could be used to take her for rides and a dog which she could take on walks.
15.
The Rosemary Kennedy family did not publicly explain her absence until 1961, after John had been elected president.
16.
Rosemary Kennedy's lobotomy did not become public knowledge until 1987.
17.
Rosemary Kennedy was occasionally taken to visit relatives in Florida and Washington, DC, and to her childhood home on Cape Cod.
18.
Rosemary Kennedy never regained the ability to speak clearly, and her arm was palsied.
19.
Rosemary Kennedy's condition is sometimes credited as the inspiration for Eunice Kennedy Shriver to later found the Special Olympics, although Shriver told The New York Times in 1995 that Rosemary was just one of the disabled people she would have over to her house to swim, and that the games should not focus on any single individual.
20.
Rosemary Kennedy died from natural causes on January 7,2005, aged 86, at the Fort Atkinson Memorial Hospital in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin with her siblings by her side.
21.
Rosemary Kennedy was buried beside her parents in Holyhood Cemetery in Brookline, Massachusetts.