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The Kennedy Curse, Part 4
42 Plays1 day ago
We are back with a new episode and a format change! Joy and I are reworking how we create and present the pod. You'll hear Nikki's voice more and Joy is doing the heavy lifting behind the scenes, but both of our opinions and ideas will still be heard.
In today's episode, we dive into the "lost Kennedy," Rosemary Kennedy. Could what happened to Rosemary been an early predictor of where we are now with her uncle Robert F. Kennedy Jr.? We talk about Rosemary's early life, her teenage and young adult years, and the dangerous ideologies of the time that led her wealthy parents to make a lot of terrible choices regarding her development and care.
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 and Hosts
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Fixate Today Gone Tomorrow. I'm Nikki and I have ADHD. Joy is autistic and we are letting our hyper fixations fly. Today we are fixating on the Kennedy curse.
00:00:14
Speaker
Music
00:00:23
Speaker
Welcome back, everybody.
Podcast Structure Changes
00:00:25
Speaker
ah we have some housekeeping stuff to address before we continue on in our series on the Kennedy family. Joy and I have decided to make some changes about how we are doing the pod.
00:00:38
Speaker
Part of Joy's autism is that she finds it difficult to find the words she wants to say in the moment. She's been feeling a bit more self-conscious about this lately, and it's caused some really unnecessary anxiety for her. So for the foreseeable future, or possibly forever, we're not sure, you'll mostly be hearing just my voice on the episodes. Joy will be taking on more of a producer role. However, this is still absolutely a joint venture. She and I will be working really hard to make sure that her perspective, thoughts, and ideas are included. Her physical voice may not be heard, but her voice is still integral to the podcast.
00:01:19
Speaker
Just because you hear me more doesn't mean that she's going anywhere. She's just going to be doing more of the heavy lifting behind the scenes.
Kennedy Family Background
00:01:27
Speaker
So let's get back to the series. We are talking about Rosemary Kennedy today. So far, we've talked about Patrick and Bridget, the first Kennedys in the U.S. We've talked about PJ and Honey Fitz, who established the family's political power in Boston.
00:01:45
Speaker
We've talked about the romance and union between PJ's son, Joseph, and Honey Fitz's daughter, Rose, and their establishment of the Kennedy name as a national powerhouse.
00:01:56
Speaker
Now we are going to start talking about the next generation, beginning with the couple's first daughter, Rosemary. Rosemary Kennedy's story is a precursor to where we are now with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Joe Kennedy's Unconventional Methods
00:02:10
Speaker
and medical misinformation.
00:02:12
Speaker
Joe wanted to go outside of accepted medical science to attempt to cure his daughter. Joy brought up a great question. If there was a vaccine that cured autism, would RFK Jr. allow it to be used?
00:02:29
Speaker
Joy also brought something up that I hadn't considered too much. There have been allegations that Joe Kennedy was sexually abusive in some way to Rosemary.
00:02:41
Speaker
This is absolute speculation, but some see the lobotomy of Rosemary as a means of keeping her quiet. I'll do my best to point out where Joy could see this possibly being the case or fitting in patterns. I don't necessarily agree about this theory, but hey, is that the beauty of the podcast?
00:03:00
Speaker
Check out the numerous plentiful amount of sources that we used in the series. They're in the show notes. Rosemary was born on September 13, 1918. It was a traumatic birth for both Rose and Rosemary. We talked a bit about this birth in the last episode where we talked about Rose, but if you'll remember, the doctor was running late, so the nurse that was with her did everything she could to prevent Rose from actually giving birth, including pushing the baby back into the birth canal.
00:03:40
Speaker
Rosemary was the third child and the first girl born to Joe and Rose. For Rose, domestic and religious obligations came above all else. This made her intensely self-disciplined and desiring perfection.
00:03:55
Speaker
Rose believed that children brought her closer to God, but would not become all consumed with motherhood. She felt that it was her role to make the home happy and comfortable for Joe, who in return gave her material support in any way she requested.
Rose Kennedy's Parenting Style
00:04:10
Speaker
What we'll see going forward is this dichotomy really of all, almost all the Kennedys, but we'll see it so deeply in this section about Rosemary, about that dichotomy of Rose as a person,
00:04:24
Speaker
This ah push and pull of wanting to be the ideal mother, but also having these insanely high standards that nobody could possibly meet. And therefore she was not an ideal mother, let's say.
00:04:37
Speaker
After each time that Rose gave birth, Joe would send Rose on a vacation by herself. This is one of those times that Joy pointed out could be a little iffy in the Joe was abusive camp. You know, it is, it I can see how it would be strange that the strong patriarch of the family would manage the house after his wife gave birth, but Let's let's keep going on and see.
00:05:01
Speaker
Joe would manage the home and kids while Rose was gone. He had to follow her rigid rules, utilizing index cards that Rose made to keep everything in order.
00:05:12
Speaker
She was a living contradiction, the paradigm of the American mother, but also not willing to be uncomfortable as a mother. Her contentment defined the marriage in the family,
00:05:24
Speaker
I think contentment's an interesting word. It was Rose's contentment, not her happiness or joy or just excitement, anything like that. Just her contentment is what defined the marriage and the entire family.
00:05:39
Speaker
She was called, quote, the model of American efficiency, but she called it, quote, Kennedy desperation. Side note, I think I hate being called the model of American efficiency. I think I'd be so offended if that's what I was known as ah in my roles as being a wife and mother. I'd hate that.
00:05:58
Speaker
But moving on. Rose was obsessed with hers and her children's weight. This was an ongoing issue, especially between her and Rosemary. The discipline that Rose gave out was physical, but she was the only parent that was allowed to give physical abuse as a punishment.
00:06:17
Speaker
In the Kennedy home, only winners were allowed, no losers. So we're going to take a little ah side quest. That's a terrible way to phrase it when we're talking about what we're talking about.
00:06:29
Speaker
We are going to use this time to define some horrible things that are related to this story. That sounds better.
Eugenics and the Kennedys
00:06:36
Speaker
Let's talk about everyone's favorite topic, eugenics. Barf. Eugenicism at the time was being discussed more and more, especially amongst the wealthy elite.
00:06:49
Speaker
Now, what is eugenics? Eugenics is the theory that selective breeding can improve the genetics of the human population. Those with, quote, desirable traits were encouraged to reproduce together.
00:07:01
Speaker
And those deemed, quote, unfit in society would be prevented from reproducing through sterilization and segregation. The goal was essentially to squash all negative traits from humanity.
00:07:16
Speaker
Mind you, quote, negative traits... include disabilities, race, mental illness, and even poverty. In general, Rose was against eugenics, but her faith blamed parents for any differences in children, which was caused by the sin of the parents.
00:07:35
Speaker
Joy made a great point saying this is still related to eugenics, and she even called it eugenics curious. The Catholic Church at the time had been denying communion to intellectually disabled children, and there was still pretty intense social stigmas tied to parents who had children with disabilities. So for Rosemary's godparents... Jo's sister, Margaret, was selected to be the godmother. And a friend of Jo's named Eddie Moore was her godfather.
00:08:05
Speaker
So Eddie was a friend of Jo's, but he was also on the payroll. He was like a personal secretary or kind of a fixer. i equate him with, um when we get to the Ted Kennedy sections of this series, A Kennedy cousin named Joe Gargan, think, served kind of a similar role. But like i said, we've got a little while before we get there.
00:08:28
Speaker
So Eddie Moore and his wife Mary were childless themselves, but they were utterly devoted to Rosemary. They absolutely adored her. Rose was pregnant again by Rosemary's first birthday.
00:08:41
Speaker
Joy brought up the stereotype of the, quote, Irish twins, which we, of course, know it is derogatory and not acceptable. It's just one of those, again, kind of paradigm things of Joe Kennedy seeking so much to escape the stigma of his Irishness, but then kind of falling into one of the stereotypes of having so many children so quickly.
00:09:06
Speaker
Rose and Joe noticed that Rosemary had been developing differently than her older brothers, but they thought it was a difference in gender and temperament. Once Rosemary's little sisters, Kick and Eunice, were born, Rosemary's issues became more evident.
00:09:21
Speaker
The younger girls were hitting milestones before their older sister. And in the Kennedy family, being different meant being excluded. And Rosemary just wasn't able to compete with her siblings in the way that all of the siblings had learned to compete with one another.
00:09:37
Speaker
Rosemary started kindergarten at five years old, but fell behind pretty quickly. Rose started adding supplemental instruction time outside of school to try to bridge the gap. But that was incredibly difficult to manage, of course, with so many other children.
00:09:53
Speaker
When it was decided that Rosemary would not move on to the first grade the following year, Rose and Joe started bringing her to doctors. Her mental impairments were determined by IQ tests.
00:10:04
Speaker
Okay, I'm going to do a blanket statement now. The R word is used quite a bit in this portion. um At the time, it was the normal yeah word to be used. i am in I'm uncomfortable saying it even if it's from a quote. So I'm going to say r word for what that's going to stand in for the actual word. So...
00:10:27
Speaker
Rosemary was diagnosed with, quote, mental R-word and arrested growth. She had to repeat the first grade, and she had to do so a couple of times, making it so girls her age were going into the fourth grade when she was still in first. Rose tried to get Rosemary to be more athletic like her other kids.
00:10:44
Speaker
Joe even purchased an ambulance for one of the hospitals in the area in an attempt to bribe the doctors to, quote, cure Rosemary. Fixing her was the goal.
00:10:56
Speaker
Not acceptance or accommodation or even celebration of what made her unique. They needed her to be just like the rest of their kids. Once her siblings were all in school, Rosemary really struggled at home.
00:11:09
Speaker
And it was so difficult that Joe and Rose began considering sending her to an institution. When Rosemary was just 11 years old, she was sent to a private boarding school after Joe and Rose couldn't find any alternatives.
00:11:22
Speaker
All of the Kennedy kids, I'm pretty sure all of them, went to boarding schools. But for the girls, at least, they were sent to a boarding school when they were just a bit older.
00:11:32
Speaker
Rosemary was sent to Devereaux School in Pennsylvania. which was created for students with disabilities. She struggled to settle in at first, but her grades quickly improved.
00:11:44
Speaker
But her anxiety about being away from home, being in a new environment, all of the changes led to physical outbursts. She would get easily upset if she wasn't doing well. She lost progress on summer breaks. And over summer breaks, Rosemary started running away, which terrified Rose, who was incredibly anxious after the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby.
00:12:09
Speaker
After the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, kidnapping actually became a really big concern amongst the upper class and even investigators. Police could often even dismiss her a missing child from lower classes because those families didn't have money for ransom. So they couldn't fathom why they would even be targeted. But this was kind of across the board, ah a fear amongst parents after the tragedy of the Lindbergh baby.
00:12:38
Speaker
Rosemary would be transferred from school to school when one could no longer serve her or when Joe and Rose thought a different school could help more. During this time, Joe was vocal about agreeing with some of Hitler's ideologies, including the implementation of a sterilization program, a faction of the eugenics ideology.
00:12:59
Speaker
Let's move on to Rosemary's teenage years and her early adulthood. While at school, Rosemary wrote home frequently and would describe her social activities. She was a teenage girl, so she started hanging out with friends and even boys. This worried her parents because she was continuing to develop physically, but her intellectual development wasn't keeping pace.
00:13:22
Speaker
This is when Rose and Joe began medicating her to attempt to slow her endocrine system. I don't know if it's endocrine or endocrine, but you know y'all get it. It's it's fine.
00:13:33
Speaker
Also, this could be another sign of potential improprieties on Joe's end toward his daughter. Again, just going to highlight it when I seize it. Rosemary went to Miss Horrigan's residence school in Manhattan as an older teenager. This was a school for young women ages 17 21.
00:13:54
Speaker
Rose hired a tutor named Amanda Road to accompany Rosemary. But Amanda struggled with her, saying Rosemary at times weaponized her own difficulties and struggles. But honestly, i feel like Rosemary was the type of young woman who knew how to play the card she was dealt.
00:14:13
Speaker
That summer, Rosemary went to a summer camp for girls in Maine. And I'm going to try to say it, guys. I'm going to do it. I i swear. Wyanagonic. Wyanagonic?
00:14:27
Speaker
Wyanagonic. No, Wyanagonic camp for girls in Maine. Listen, I hit every single letter, so I don't know what to tell you.
00:14:37
Speaker
After camp, she then went on a European tour with her sister Eunice. Before she returned to school, Miss Horrigan wrote to Joe and Rose saying that they were unable to serve Rosemary any further.
00:14:51
Speaker
The Kennedy children had to prepare for their roles in Joe's thriving career. Quote, the Kennedy children, well-fed, well-dressed, attractive, charming, and rich, offered a hopeful and idyllic view of family life.
00:15:05
Speaker
Another part of this Joy pointed out was that the Kennedys had like perfect teeth. Oral hygiene specifically mattered a lot, it seems. And I think this is another reflection of the times where hygiene was like a reflection of morality and status.
00:15:21
Speaker
Rosemary had basically been taught not to speak in
Rosemary's UK Experience
00:15:24
Speaker
public, another red flag for Joy's theory, but this backfired because it kind of made her more mysterious and alluring.
00:15:34
Speaker
She was also regarded as the most beautiful of the Kennedy girls. In April 1937, Rosemary was admitted to the New England Baptist Hospital in Boston.
00:15:45
Speaker
Rose told everyone that she was there for a physical and would be observed for a week. She was really there for March 23rd to April 13th. There's no way of knowing...
00:15:57
Speaker
why she was actually there, what what prompted the stay, but it was likely that it stemmed from anxiety. On April 20th, 1937, Rosemary and Eunice moved to England with the rest of the family.
00:16:11
Speaker
Rose had them come two weeks later than the rest, so she had time to prepare the home and the staff. The next priority for Rose, once Kick and Rosemary had arrived, would be presenting them to high society.
00:16:25
Speaker
So this is like the equivalent, I think, in the U.S. of like a debutante ball where the young women are presented. and to me, it seems like with the hope of landing them a man. But I don't know.
00:16:38
Speaker
I don't know how that all works. The girl's debut was the first time Rosemary was the main public focal point. Everyone was worried she'd reveal her delays somehow or she would say something inappropriate.
00:16:52
Speaker
Historically, British aristocracy frowned upon the intellectually disabled at the time, which, like, given the inbreeding of the British, I aristocracy, up to then. i think it's a little hypocritical to frown upon intellectually disabled, but whatever.
00:17:10
Speaker
What do I know? Rosemary's only faux pas was stumbling in front of the king and the queen, but she recovered well and she completed her curtsy. And it seemed like others in the room, specifically her mother, who was furious,
00:17:25
Speaker
took it more seriously than Rosemary did. And even most of the people that were there kind of thought it was like charming. It was endearing. And she, she recovered beautifully.
00:17:37
Speaker
Rosemary became a favorite in both the UK and the US, and she began getting more and more attention from boys. Because of this, she always had to be accompanied if she went on any outings and And it bothered her because her little sister, Kick, had so much more freedom than she did.
00:17:58
Speaker
Rosemary would be enrolled in the Covenant of Assumption School, where she thrived. It was a Montessori school, so they were able to make everything a lesson. The nuns allowed her to have the title of junior teacher, and she was allowed to work with the three-year-olds.
00:18:13
Speaker
She was doing so well that she remained behind when the rest of the family fled due to threats of war. This section is a pretty big red flag for Joy so much that Joe and Rosemary were left on their own.
00:18:30
Speaker
And it could be, but you know, I can understand why that would, ah why that could be questionable, but let's go on. Rosemary was really happy that her father stayed behind as well.
00:18:42
Speaker
Joe required accommodations be made at the convent, including a phone that would allow him to directly contact the convent. Rosemary's correspondence was sent via his highly protected diplomatic pouch of official government correspondence.
00:19:00
Speaker
Could be two reasons for this. Could be to hide what she was writing if it was not appropriate, or it could be to hide her lower-level writing skills that perhaps seemed more childish than she was from the public.
00:19:19
Speaker
Joe adored her, but he did see her as a liability to the Kennedy brand. The German invasion threatened Rosemary's stability, and Joe and the convent tried to do everything they could to allow her to stay in the UK.
00:19:35
Speaker
But even with this, we see dual motives again. While, sure, it's probably best that Rosemary's world not be upturned again, her her patterns disrupted, her life changed, especially when she's thriving.
00:19:51
Speaker
But also, the Kennedys all found their lives to be a bit easier with Rosemary being away. When the Germans made it to Paris in May 1940, it was decided that Rosemary had to return to the U.S., which was absolutely heartbreaking for everyone.
00:20:07
Speaker
But she and Joe got out just in time, because the bombings in the U.K. started very shortly after. But it was destabilizing for Rosemary to be back home with her demanding mother.
00:20:18
Speaker
Kennedy life happened around Rosemary. Joe and Rosemary's siblings always made sure to try to include her, even if she could embarrass her siblings at times.
00:20:29
Speaker
But the chaos and the competition of the Kennedy home was really hard on her. When Joe had to return to England, Eunice became the only person who could calm Rosemary.
Challenges Back in the US
00:20:40
Speaker
Rosemary started losing all of the gains she had made while she was in England. She became even more physically violent when angry and even has started having convulsions. And it was more and more obvious that she was really attracted to the attention that boys and even men gave her.
00:20:57
Speaker
Eunice later learned that Rosemary was being given barbiturates to manage her anger outbursts. She would get physical when angry, even once beating her grandfather, Honey Fitz.
00:21:10
Speaker
Joy and I kind of talked this through. And I know one of my children, when he was angry, when he was he was a young, but when he would get angry or frustrated, his outbursts would be directed toward primarily me because i was the person that he loved the most. I was the safe person. He knew I wouldn't go anywhere.
00:21:32
Speaker
and I would maintain a safe place for him. So I do wonder if it was perhaps something like that, because I know that they had a good relationship with their grandfather, i if I'm remembering correctly. Y'all, I got so much research in this brain about the Kennedys. I'm trying to keep everything straight.
00:21:50
Speaker
When Rosemary was 22 years old, being too old to attend summer camp, she was able to go to Camp Fernwood in Massachusetts. This exception was made probably because Rose didn't give the camp director the full truth about Rosemary, not taking other campers and staff into consideration whatsoever.
00:22:12
Speaker
When Rosemary arrived at camp, her shoes were way too small, so small that her feet were bleeding. During camp, she wandered off regularly, even needing to sleep in the owner's private quarters at night to make sure she wouldn't wander away.
00:22:29
Speaker
All through camp, she wept because she missed Joe so much. Three weeks into camp, the director contacted Rose to come collect Rosemary. Rose tried to fight it, even saying they would have to figure out how to get her home.
00:22:45
Speaker
Eventually, her godfather and his wife, Eddie and Mary Moore, went to get her, and Eddie started looking for a new placement for Rosemary. But these multiple transitions to different schools were really hurting her self-esteem,
00:22:59
Speaker
on top of always being worried about disappointing her father. At this time, her state of mind began a serious decline. Her rage outbursts were happening more and more frequently.
00:23:12
Speaker
She was enrolled in St. Gertrude's School of Arts and Crafts, which was a school for high-risk girls. Even there, she continued sneaking out. And again, this school was apprehensive about taking her back after her summer break.
00:23:28
Speaker
Rose had gotten so frustrated that she told Rosemary that she would not be allowed to come home if her grades were bad. Her letters to her father at this time were heartbreaking, both begging to come home because she missed him and being so scared that she was letting him down. This is one of those things that Joy pointed out that could raise a red flag also.
00:23:49
Speaker
Well, I think this is a good place to stop. What we're going to see next is how joe And then Rose decided to try to deal with their daughter.
00:24:03
Speaker
And we will see they both made terrible decisions. Next week's episode, we will discuss Rosemary's lobotomy.
Teaser for Next Episode
00:24:12
Speaker
and her life after the operation.
00:24:16
Speaker
So I hope you come back next week. I hope that the kind of change in structure that we are trying out works for everybody. i think it's going to work okay for us.
00:24:30
Speaker
And we will talk again next week. Thank you so much, everyone. See you later.
00:24:45
Speaker
you