Rosemary: the part you don't know [View all]

[ucrdem]

The part we DO know is the failed lobotomy, the Wisconsin mental institution her mother never visited, the isolation, the tragedy:

She's the Kennedy daughter the world never got a chance to know – Rosemary Kennedy, the third of Joe P. Kennedy and Rose's nine children. Born in 1918, she was mentally impaired and had trouble keeping up with her competitive siblings. After undergoing a disastrous lobotomy in 1941, the once vivacious beauty was unable to form a complete sentence.

For the next sixty years, she was sequestered at Saint Coletta, a facility for the mentally disabled in Jefferson, Wisconsin, where she lived quietly, cared for by nuns.

But here's the part we don't hear much about: even though Rose never made it to Saint Coletta while Joe Kennedy was alive, Rosemary's brothers and sisters did:



And after Joe died in 1969, Rose went to Wisconsin, collected Rosemary, brought her back to Hyannis, and there she lived until she died, surrounded by her family:

Of all her siblings, Rosemary was closest to Eunice Shriver, who, inspired by her sister, founded the Special Olympics in 1968, for people with special needs. Even in Rosemary's younger years, author Kate Clifford Larson author of Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter, excerpted in this week's PEOPLE, says, "Eunice was the one person who could calm her down. They were exceptionally close."

http://www.people.com/article/rosemary-kennedy-never-seen-pictures-forgotten-kennedy