Rosemary Kennedy: A Life of Promise, Tragedy, and Secrecy
- Daniel Holland
- Jan 7, 2025
- 7 min read
Updated: Nov 23, 2025
It often begins with a single photograph. Rosemary Kennedy standing beside her brother John in the late 1930s, smiling shyly while society photographers try to capture the charm of America’s rising political family. At first glance she fits perfectly into the glamorous Kennedy world of glittering balls, polished ambition, and well rehearsed public grace. Yet behind that photograph lies a story that is as compelling as it is quietly devastating. Rosemary’s life unfolded in the shadows of a dynasty that prized perfection, and her fate would change the course of disability rights in the United States.
Her journey began on Friday 13 September 1918. She was the third child and eldest daughter of Joseph P Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, born into a family that would become emblematic of American promise. Her brothers John, Robert, and Ted would dominate twentieth century political life, but Rosemary followed a different path, a path shaped by early medical trauma, social pressures, secrecy, and a single decision that altered her life forever.
This is the hidden chapter of the Kennedy story. And it begins at birth.
A Family Defined By Power And Pressure
To understand Rosemary’s life, it helps to understand the family she was born into. Joseph P Kennedy, her father, was a force of nature. The son of a Boston saloon keeper, he rose rapidly through banking, film, steel, property, and whisky. Wealth was not simply a comfort to him; it was a tool. He imagined a political dynasty long before his sons ever considered public life. Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, her mother, came from Boston’s Catholic aristocracy. Her father, Honey Fitz, had been mayor of Boston. She brought social pedigree, discipline, and deep religious conviction.
Together they raised nine children. Their lives became the stuff of American folklore. Joe Jr was groomed for the presidency but was killed in a 1944 wartime aviation mission. John reached the White House in 1960 but was assassinated three years later. Robert, attorney general and senator, was shot while running for president in 1968. Ted survived political scandal and personal turmoil after the Chappaquiddick incident in 1969. Kathleen died in a plane crash in 1948. Later generations continued to be marked by sudden loss and public tragedies.
People would call it the Kennedy Curse, but Rosemary’s story rarely receives the same attention. Yet her tragedy unfolded long before the nation began speaking of curses at all.
A Difficult Birth In A Difficult Time
Rosemary’s life began under grim circumstances. The 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic had paralysed communities around the world, and Brookline, Massachusetts was no exception. When Rose Kennedy went into labour, the doctor was delayed while tending to flu victims. The midwife present instructed Rose to hold the baby in place by keeping her legs tightly closed until the doctor could arrive. For two hours Rose obeyed, an instruction that almost certainly deprived the infant Rosemary of oxygen.
Years later, specialists would call it a uterine accident. But in practice it meant developmental challenges that followed Rosemary for life. She struggled with reading and writing, moved more slowly than other children, and found tasks that came easily to her siblings much more difficult.
In many families this would simply have marked Rosemary as a child who needed extra support. But the Kennedys were not just any family. Their status, ambition, and self presentation mattered enormously. The era’s expectations around disability were harsh and unforgiving. As a result Rosemary’s differences were often concealed, explained away, or hidden behind a polished façade.
She was moved through more than a dozen special schools in both the United States and the United Kingdom. Teachers described her as a cheerful child who tried hard but needed constant attention and reassurance. Rose Kennedy’s diaries occasionally reference “difficulties”, but the family rarely acknowledged the challenges openly.
They feared that public knowledge of Rosemary’s struggles could threaten the carefully curated Kennedy image.
A Brief And Bright Season In London
Ironically, Rosemary experienced her happiest years not in America, but in London. In 1938 Joseph Kennedy became the United States ambassador to the United Kingdom, and the family relocated to the heart of British high society. The Kennedy children were suddenly fixtures at London parties, charity events, embassy receptions, and dances.
Rosemary blossomed there. She and her younger sister Kathleen quickly became favourites of the British press. In May 1938, the two sisters were presented at Buckingham Palace to King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. Newspapers praised Rosemary’s beauty. The Evening Standard described her as “exquisite” in a gown of white silk embroidered with silver. For a moment, she appeared indistinguishable from any other privileged young woman preparing to take her place in the world.
Photographs from the time tell their own story. In many, Joseph Kennedy has a firm grip on Rosemary’s arm, guiding her subtly but insistently. He knew her limits and feared any public misstep that would call attention to them. Rosemary enjoyed the attention and the glamour, but she also felt the pressure. She was expected to appear poised, charming, and controlled at all times, roles that became increasingly difficult for her to sustain.
Still, London gave her something precious: structure, social inclusion, and a sense of belonging.
That stability would not last.
War, Return, And Rapid Decline
When the Second World War began in 1939, the Kennedys returned to the United States. Rosemary struggled immediately with the sudden change. The supportive environment she had enjoyed in Britain was gone. Her behaviour became more erratic and unpredictable. She experienced violent outbursts and tantrums. She would sneak out at night, meeting men, seeking independence and connection but putting herself at risk.
For Joseph Kennedy, this behaviour presented something he feared almost as much as war itself: a potential scandal. Rosemary’s actions could damage the image he had spent decades constructing.
Accounts describe her kicking and hitting her grandfather Honey Fitz during one of her rages. Attempts to manage her behaviour grew increasingly desperate. The family placed her in a convent, but the nuns wrote repeatedly that Rosemary was slipping out at night, ignoring curfews, and wandering the streets alone. They could not keep her safe.
Her father began considering options that were extreme even for the time.
The Lobotomy That Changed Everything
In 1941, without consulting Rose Kennedy or any of Rosemary’s siblings, Joseph Kennedy authorised a prefrontal lobotomy for his daughter. It was presented as a modern medical procedure that might stabilise her moods. In reality it was experimental, poorly understood, and dangerous.
Doctors Walter Freeman and James Watts performed the operation. Rosemary was awake throughout, as was customary. She was instructed to recite nursery rhymes and answer questions while the surgeons cut into her frontal lobes. The moment she stopped speaking, they knew they had gone too far.
Afterwards, Rosemary could no longer walk unaided. Her speech became reduced to single words, sighs, and cries. She lost control of her bladder and needed full time care for the rest of her life.
Joseph Kennedy never spoke publicly about the decision. Privately, he was said to be devastated. But the consequence was irrevocable.
Rosemary was quietly sent to Saint Coletta’s School for Exceptional Children in Wisconsin. Few outside the immediate family even knew where she had gone.
A Life Lived In Isolation
Rosemary remained at Saint Coletta for more than sixty years. She lived in a small private cottage on the campus, cared for by nuns who formed close bonds with her. Her parents rarely visited, partly on medical advice and partly due to their own discomfort and guilt.
Her siblings were not told the full truth at first. It was only after Joseph Kennedy suffered a severe stroke in 1961 that they re established contact with Rosemary.
For some of them, the shock was profound. John Kennedy Jr would later visit her with his wife Carolyn, and photographs from that meeting show a scene far removed from the elegance associated with the family. Rosemary was incontinent, unable to speak clearly, and often communicated by shrieking or grunting. Yet those who met her late in life often described her as affectionate, gentle, and responsive to music and familiar faces.
Her story profoundly shaped the life of her sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver. Determined that Rosemary’s suffering should not be repeated, Eunice became one of the world’s leading advocates for people with disabilities. In 1968 she founded the Special Olympics, directly inspired by her sister’s experience.
The Quiet End Of A Silenced Life
Rosemary Kennedy died in 2005 at the age of 86. By then she had lived longer than many of her more famous siblings. She had experienced privilege, pain, isolation, and moments of small happiness in the care of the Saint Coletta community.
Her life is sometimes treated as a tragic footnote in the Kennedy story, but it deserves more. It illuminates the pressures placed on families during a time of intense social stigma around disability. It shows how ambition can collide with compassion. And it reminds us that behind public legacies there are often private losses that shape them in ways most people never see.
Rosemary did not live the life her family imagined for her. But her existence changed the world. Through the work of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, her story helped shift American society toward a recognition that people with intellectual disabilities deserve dignity, visibility, and opportunity.
Her legacy lives on in every Special Olympics athlete and in every family whose experience has been met with support rather than silence.
Sources
• Larson, Edward J. “America’s First Experiment With Lobotomies.” Smithsonian Magazine.
• Cohen, Rich. “The Day Rosemary Kennedy Disappeared.” Vanity Fair.
• Kessler, Ronald. The Sins of the Father: Joseph P. Kennedy and the Dynasty He Founded. Warner Books, 1996.
• O’Brien, Elizabeth. “How Rosemary Kennedy’s Devastating Surgery Shaped the Family.” Biography.com.
• Larson, Erik. The Devil in the White City. Vintage Books, 2004. (Includes contextual background on early twentieth century medical experimentation)
• Shriver, Eunice Kennedy. “The Legacy of My Sister Rosemary.” Special Olympics Archives.
• Payne, Elizabeth. “The Tragic Story of Rosemary Kennedy and the Invention of Lobotomy.” The Irish Times.
• O’Donnell, Catherine. “Rosemary Kennedy, Mental Retardation, and the Politics of Privacy.” American Catholic Historical Association Review.
• Nasaw, David. The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy. Penguin Press, 2012.
• People Magazine Archive. “Rosemary Kennedy’s Hidden Life.”
• Saint Coletta Archives. “History of Rosemary Kennedy’s Care in Wisconsin.”
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