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The Kennedy Curse, Part 5
39 Plays23 hours ago
We are diving into the lobotomy of Rosemary Kennedy, the tragedy of the belief that she needed to be "fixed" in the first place, and her life post-lobotomy. Thankfully, she found peace and joy toward the end of her life. Keep a critical ear out for threads of where we are today with Rosemary's nephew, RFK Jr. and MAHA.
Check out our YouTube channel, Fixate Today: Grey Matters
Sources (there's a lot):
Books: The Kennedy Curse by Edward Klein, Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter by Katie Clifford Larson, The First Kennedys: The Humber Roots of an American Dynasty by Neal Thompson, After Camelot: A Personal History of the Kennedy Family 1968 to the Present by J. Randy Taraborrelli, Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed by Maureen Callahan, The Kennedy Imprisonment: A Meditation on Power by Garry Wills, Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates
Media: Grey Gardens (1975 documentary), JFK (1991 film), Thirteen Days (2000 film), Murder in Greenwich (2002 television film), Bobby (2006 film), Grey Gardens (2006 musical), Grey Gardens (2009 film), Parkland (2013 film), 11.23.63 (2016 series), Jackie (2016 film), Chappaquiddick (2017 film), Cover-Up (2018 podcast), The RFK Tapes (2018 podcast), The Last Podcast on the Left, Episodes 400-405: JFK (2020 podcast), The Last Podcast on the Left, Episode Relaxed Fit: Marilyn Monroe & The President’s Aspirin (2020 podcast), The Last Podcast on the Left, Episode Side Stories: The Bullet in the Backseat (2023 podcast), Wine & Crime, Episode 366: Lobotomy Crimes (2024 podcast), The Last Podcast on the Left, Episode 1046: The Miseducation of Ed Larsen - JFK & Government Conspiracies (2025 podcast), United States of Kennedy (2025 podcast), Dead Certain: The Martha Moxley Murder (2025 podcast), Wine & Crime, Episode 456: Family Curses (2026 podcast), Love Story (2026 series)
Websites: historyhit.com, Scientific America, CNN, PBS, CBS News, BBC, Autistic Self Advocacy Center, InStyle, Best Buddies International, All Things Interesting, USA Today, Today in Civil Liberties, Cambridge Dictionary, Kennedys and King, RJP Books, New York Post, Boston Magazine, Time, The Moth, Vanity Fair, Voices Center for Resilience, Reddit, Washington Association of Black Journalists, NPR, The Ringer, The Daily Express, The Harvard Crimson, Wikipedia
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Fixate Today Gone Tomorrow'
00:00:06
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okay
00:00:13
Speaker
welcome oh goodness Welcome to Fixate Today Gone Tomorrow. I'm Nikki and I have ADHD. Joy is autistic and we are letting our hyper fixations fly.
00:00:25
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Today we are fixating on the Kennedy curse.
The Kennedy Family's Struggle with Rosemary's Condition
00:00:34
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Welcome back to part two of our series, our series within a series about Rosemary Kennedy. When we left off, Joe and Rose were running out of options for how,
00:00:49
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for how to manage their oldest daughter, Rosemary's disabilities. But Joe had a terrible, terrible, horrible, awful idea.
00:01:01
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As always, please check our sources listed in our show notes. There are just so, so many. i can't say them all.
00:01:20
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Joe and Rose feared that Rosemary's condition was getting worse. Joe believed that Rosemary's behavior was negatively impacting the Kennedy brand.
00:01:34
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both parents were Both of her parents were concerned that she could be sexually exploited or kidnapped. And Joe was working to secure his son's political future.
Joe Kennedy's Interest in Lobotomies
00:01:50
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Rose and Joe had read an article about lobotomies as a cure for different mental ailments. So let's talk about lobotomies. a lobotomy is a neurosurgical procedure. that severs nerve endings in the prefrontal cortex of the brain with the goal of calming patients who are struggling with epilepsy, but especially with mental illness or depression or ah melancholy.
00:02:21
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edit that. With the goal of calming patients who are struggling with epilepsy or a list of... Fuck. Sorry, Joy.
00:02:32
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or just a plethora of different mental illnesses.
00:02:39
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The goal was to turn
The Decision to Lobotomize Rosemary
00:02:40
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these people, but nine times out of 10, the women who were, quote, moody or sad or sexually promiscuous into, quote, useful members of society.
00:02:54
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Rose was really skeptical. She Kik do some research about it for her, and Kik reported back that it was not something they would want that it was not something that they would want done on Rosemary.
00:03:10
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with that With that, Rose figured that they had just dropped it and moved on, but Joe continued reading about it. and he found dr walter fried And he found Dr. Walter Freeman and Dr. James Watts from George Washington University.
00:03:31
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Freeman and Watts were using patients as case studies. They were truly experimenting on patients with techniques and seeing what they could do and what they shouldn't do during lobotomies.
00:03:47
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As I said earlier, women were given more lobotomies than men.
00:03:54
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And even though his wife had protested, Joe took matters into his own hands.
Legal and Family Ramifications of the Lobotomy
00:04:01
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Now, the laws at the time allowed for Rosemary to be hospitalized without consent.
00:04:07
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Side note, right now, it is May 5th, 2026,
00:04:14
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I worked today, so I did not have the chance to check the news, but there was going to be, I think, a hearing um specifically about a lawsuit regarding Article 504 of, oh gosh,
00:04:30
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of oh gosh I don't think it's Individuals with Disabilities Act, but I can't remember off the top my head. You can see I prepared really well for this.
00:04:40
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All that to say, ah RFK Jr. right now is involved in a lawsuit that would make it easier to institutionalize people. So i
00:04:54
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full transparency, we had some audio issues, and I'm recording this a second time. And the first time I recorded it, I hadn't known about this. So I'm seeing this from a just ah this massive lens of something like this happened to members of RFK Jr.'s family.
00:05:16
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This was his aunt. And now he's, whatever, he's, I have lot to say about him. And we will have, i think, at least two episodes down the line.
00:05:27
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But it's just so interesting to me that he has a direct link to things like this happening in his family.
00:05:41
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he doesn't care or doesn't make the connection. I don't know. But I guess it's stuff to think about. Yeah.
Rosemary's Life Post-Lobotomy
00:05:54
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So when she was institutionalized, it was because the doctors had told Joe that it was a good idea to pursue this. And even though she didn't need to give her consent, Rosemary did always comply.
00:06:07
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Because she always wanted to make her father happy. One of Joy's red flags for, as we talked about last time, the theory that Joe may have been inappropriate with Rosemary, perhaps even sexually abusing her.
00:06:26
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i'm going to try to point out those moments again in this episode.
00:06:33
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Without Rose or his children knowing, Joe requested that the procedure be done as soon as possible.
00:06:43
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Sometime between November 10th and 28th, 1941, Rosemary was admitted to George Washington University Hospital. She was only 23 years old.
00:06:57
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She was one of 28 patients who would be operated on between between April and December
00:07:14
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In the doctor's files, she was referred to as patient case study 10. and then And there was a note in her file that said she was being dramatic about the need to shave her head.
00:07:29
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They had to promise her that they would, quote, spare the curls. Let's be very clear, she wasn't being dramatic. She was raised that she had to be perfect all the time, and now somebody has the audacity to say they have to shave her head.
00:07:45
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She wasn't being dramatic. She was being terrified that her mother would be furious with her.
00:07:54
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Rosemary was strapped to a table and given a local anesthetic to numb near her temples. The doctors told her that it would be painless.
00:08:19
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Two holes were drilled into either, two holes were drilled into her temples. She was wide awake during the procedure. She was in extreme distress and she was able to see the doctors working and she could hear the tools.
00:08:39
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Dr. Watts, to see how the procedure was going, i guess, with his patients, he would do things to kind of test their responses. So he would like tell stories or sing songs or he would just do things to see how the patients were behaving as he's doing the operation.
00:09:00
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So at first, Rosemary was responsive to these prompts. But this made him grow more emboldened.
00:09:11
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When he cut the... At the fourth cut of nerve endings in her brain, Rosemary stopped talking. Doctors quickly realized how badly this had turned.
00:09:27
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Rosemary was unable to walk and talk. She would never fully recover use of her limbs. And she was completely unable to care for herself at all.
00:09:39
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One of the nurses who attended the surgery actually left the profession of nursing after how badly this procedure went.
00:09:54
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Rose's recovery after the surgery was just brutal. She was expressionless, confused, and scared. She was incontinent and constantly vomiting.
00:10:06
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Rosemary was left functionally as a two-year-old.
00:10:12
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She would never again be the same Rosemary.
00:10:18
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As for the good doctors, Watts would abandon this work in the 50s, but Freeman would double down and he would perform procedures like he was a showman.
00:10:30
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He performed thousands of lobotomies, one day performing 20. twenty One day he did 20 lobotomies.
00:10:45
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He even created a modified ice pick that was designed to enter the patient through the eye socket.
00:10:57
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Back to Rosemary. After her recovery at George Washington University Hospital, she was transferred to Craig House Psychiatric fit <unk> she was transferred to craig house psychiatric Facility of New York City.
00:11:19
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This was an institute that a lot of the upper echelon of society either went to or, let's be honest, had their spouses sent to.
00:11:30
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Zelda Fitzgerald, wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of Great Gatsby, stayed there in 1934. Henry Fonda's second wife, Frances Seymour Brokaw, stayed there in 1950.
00:11:48
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She would later go on to end her life in her bedroom.
00:11:56
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craig howut Craig House was for the wealthy in that it was a discreet facility, but it was not equipped for Rosemary's now profound physical disabilities.
00:12:08
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Despite this, she remained at Craig House for seven years, and there is no evidence of any of her family beyond Joe stopping in a handful of times ever visiting her there.
00:12:23
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However, Mary Moore, wife of her godfather Eddie Moore, visited there quite often.
00:12:47
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During her stay, Joe paid for, quote, private duty nurses, laundry, a hairdresser, druggist, stationer, tailor, etc. for Rosemary exclusively.
00:13:00
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He told reporters that she was teaching, quote, mentally R children in a different state.
00:13:09
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I mentioned this last episode. I'm not comfortable using the word even in the context of a quote. So our word it is.
00:13:24
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you
Managing Public Image and Rosemary's Care
00:13:51
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Oh, Sorry, I scrolled too much. Completely lost where I was. okay
00:13:57
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Okay. Joe kept up the positivity about Rosemary to the family, but it was unclear what he had told his children that about what had happened to her.
00:14:08
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Her siblings just had to keep moving forward, accepting the hard truth that things may be easier for them at times without Rosemary around.
00:14:20
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Eunice suffered the most, becoming depressed. She would later say that she didn't know where Rosemary was for a decade. Eunice will go on to really be an advocate for Rosemary.
00:14:36
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and when we get to the episodes about Eunice and her husband Sarge, his Her whole family really took up for Rosemary and dedicated their lives to working for the intellectually disabled. Excuse me.
00:14:56
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As well as physically disabled, um just in the way of serving the public.
00:15:05
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By the end of the 1940s, Joe had grown uncomfortable with Rosemary being so close to the New York elite. His son's political careers were really starting to take off, and they would be forced to explain what happened to their sister.
00:15:20
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Remember, Rosemary was kind of a public favorite. ah The British press and the U.S. press loved her, and she was gorgeous, and she was...
00:15:33
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endearing and she just really charmed them so it was noticeable that she hadn't been around as much publicly
00:15:45
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rosemary had become rosemary had become a public relations threat it was too risky for joe to be seen visiting her but no
00:15:58
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For Joe, it would have been almost better or easier for her to have some sort of visible reason for her incapacitation, like a back injury or broken bone or a stroke even, something that could be seen by the public, rather than for her to be on medication for, God forbid, depression or anxiety.
00:16:31
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All
00:16:34
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all right, let's talk about life after the lobotomy.
00:16:41
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In 1949, Rosemary was moved to St. Coletta at Hanover in Jefferson, Wisconsin. Another one of Joe's friends and business associates, John Ford, visited Rosemary there frequently. He handled the finances as well as any, like, in-between communications between Joe and the nuns that were caring for Rosemary.
00:17:06
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After the lobotomy and... Nope. Nope. After Rosemary was sent to Wisconsin, Joe would never see his daughter again.
00:17:19
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Sister Margaret Ann oversaw Rosemary's adjustment, which came with much trauma at first. Joe paid for a one-story brick cottage to be built for her and two nuns who were specially trained for her care.
00:17:33
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The cottage
Legacy of Advocacy for Disability Rights
00:17:34
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was informally called the Kennedy Cottage, and she would live there for the next 60
00:17:42
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She was forbidden from seeing visitors without her parents' consent, and they said this was to protect her from journalists that could be sneaking in to find her and speak with her.
00:17:55
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I'd argue that's true, but they didn't want the journalists to find her and report the story about her. It would be embarrassing for them.
00:18:05
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Rosemary's trust fund, plus Joe's contributions, paid the bills, purchased a car for her caregivers, and kept her in clothes elegant enough for a Kennedy girl.
00:18:17
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Rosemary began making friends and settling in. The Kennedy family's power continued growing in the U.S., and the question of where Rosemary was needed to be addressed.
00:18:28
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The family just continued pushing the narrative that she simply wanted privacy.
00:18:35
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In 1959, her brother Jack visited while he was campaigning for his second term in the Senate. This visit gave Jack a sense of responsibility for disability legislation. Eunice talked to her father about using Kennedy Foundation resources for studying disabilities.
00:18:55
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We will get into the Kennedy Foundation of it all, again, in the Eunice episodes. Um...
00:19:05
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But the Kennedy Foundation was created in Joe and Rose's oldest son, Joe Jr.'s name after his death, which we will also get into, as a foundation for doing good in the country.
00:19:23
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um They always kind of preached the values of serving those around you. And the Kennedy Foundation is how that they how they did that. At the time, Eunice had become a trustee of the Kennedy Foundation and worked with her husband Sarge Shriver.
00:19:40
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i don't know why i felt like I said that wrong. I didn't. Sarge Shriver to establish charitable institutions. Joe would go on to transfer control of the foundation to Eunice.
00:19:51
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Once Jack was elected president, he began pushing this legislation. His campaign said that Rosemary had suffered from spinal meningitis.
00:20:10
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However, once he won, he released a statement saying, quote, the president-elect has a mentally R-word sister who is in an institution in Wisconsin.
00:20:22
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So kind of a two-step forward, one-step back thing because the statement left out any mention of the lobotomy. But it was the first time that the family publicly acknowledged Rosemary's differences.
00:20:37
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Eunice persuaded Jack to create the Committee on Mental, R-Word, and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. And the Shrivers became a lobbying force. In 1961, Camp Shriver was launched.
00:20:54
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Camp Shriver was a day program for mentally handicapped and disadvantaged kids on the Shriver compound. Eunice, Sarge, and their children were all hands-on with the camp.
00:21:12
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Eunice's kids were incredibly close to their Aunt Rosemary, and Camp Shriver ultimately led to the creation of the Special Olympics in 1968.
00:21:26
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However, with Jack's assassination, Eunice lost access to the White House to move any more legislation. And also, Rosemary had seen the assassination happen live on TV.
00:21:39
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She had grown accustomed to only seeing her brothers on the television.
00:21:47
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Ted Kennedy took up the legislative causes as senator from Massachusetts.
00:21:58
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Rose visited Rosemary in 1968, which caused an anger outburst from Rosemary. This upset Rose so much that she kind of stopped visiting.
00:22:10
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Rose began writing to the convent with gift ideas to purchase for Rosemary. Oh my gosh, the rose and Rosemary of it all. Rose began writing to the convent with ideas of gifts to purchase from her to Rosemary for the holidays, and Rose always made sure she was just spoiled with material things.
00:22:33
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But Rose would still worry about Rosemary's weight, even from afar. The nuns who cared for Rosemary would later say that they didn't mind Rosemary overdoing it with the chocolate because she had so few pleasures in life.
00:22:50
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After Joe died in 1969, Eunice took over Rosemary's care, including making sure the family remained focused on her. Any medication adjustment, medical care, or nuns charged with caring for her caused frustration and anxiety in Rosemary.
00:23:08
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She didn't do change. She didn't do transitions well.
00:23:13
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Rose only told all of her children where Rosemary was after Joe died.
00:23:22
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Eunice made sure that arrangements would be made for twice-yearly visits from Rosemary to the Kennedy homes.
00:23:31
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Rosemary would travel with a nurse. Rose was unable to handle Rosemary on her own, but she was pleased to be with her. Despite this visits often ended with mother and daughter simply being more estranged from each other.
00:23:50
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Rosemary really didn't know her adult siblings' spouses and children, which could leave her uncomfortable, but the family would work really hard together to make her visits really special and joyful.
00:24:03
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But still, every visit, she had to be convinced and even bribed to leave St. Coletta's to go see her family.
00:24:13
Speaker
In 1972, Eunice first spoke publicly about the lobotomy to the author of Rose's biography. Rose told her niece, Ann Gargan, that she didn't know about the lobotomy for 20 years, but her memoir showed that she had at least discussed it before.
00:24:32
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In her memoir, Rose said, joe quote thought the lobotomy would help her but it made her go all the way back it erased all those years of effort i had put into her all along i had continued to believe that she could have lived her life as a kennedy
The Kennedy Family's Continued Influence and Rosemary's Peaceful Life
00:24:47
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girl just a little slower but then it was all gone in a matter of minutes
00:24:56
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In 1977, Rose's secretary discovered Rosemary's diaries from the late 1930s. The diaries revealed a typical girl who was developmentally behind but not as disabled as she was now.
00:25:11
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Rose told her to throw out the diaries.
00:25:23
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Rosemary's fits of anger continued to be aimed at her mother. Last episode, we talked a little bit about how sometimes anger outbursts can be directed at the people that someone feels the safest with or the closest to or even loves the most.
00:25:38
Speaker
I don't think that's the case anymore for Rosemary. On a trip, Rose was swimming in their indoor pool when Rosemary's nurse wheeled her onto the pool deck and left her wheelchair right in front of Rose where she was swimming.
00:25:55
Speaker
And this was just to let Rosemary have the opportunity to look down on her mother. So even the even the nurses were a little little petty. I love it.
00:26:09
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Eunice and Sarge's family adored Rosemary, and they took the lead in her care.
00:26:16
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Their son, Anthony Shriver, founded Best Buddies International in 1981.
00:26:22
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The mission statement from bestbodies.org. Quote, Best Buddies International is a nonprofit organization dedicated to establishing a global volunteer movement that creates opportunities for one-to-one friendships, integrated employment, leadership development, inclusive living, and family support for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
00:26:48
Speaker
Anthony had an addition built on his Florida home so Rosemary could come and visit comfortably. It was really important to him that she was involved in the lives of his children.
00:27:03
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Rosemary died at the age of 86 with all of her living siblings by her side on January 7, 2005. She held on until her siblings there.
Conclusion and Preview of Next Episode
00:27:13
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she held on until all of her siblings got there She is buried with her parents. Her temper calmed a bit as she got older because she had learned how to self-soothe and to communicate her needs. Her comfortable routine in Wisconsin made made the end of her life just full of peace and full of love.
00:27:43
Speaker
Well, ladies and gentlemen, that is the conclusion of the... Well, ladies and gentlemen, that is the conclusion of our episodes about Rosemary Kennedy.
00:27:56
Speaker
Next week, we will be talking about, I think, my favorite Kennedy, Kathleen Kick Kennedy. She was... just seemed so cool. She was spirited. She was free-willed.
00:28:11
Speaker
She wanted to do amazing things. And she was the rebel. um So weird. Someone with justice sensitivity and the need to push back when everyone anyone tells me what to do.
00:28:26
Speaker
Really likes the Kennedy sister that did the same. So weird. i don't get it. Well, i hope that the format change is going well. um
00:28:40
Speaker
And hopefully we will see you guys next week. Thank you so much for thank you so much for listening. have a good one