Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter (9 page)

Dear Eunice, I miss you very much, Didn’t we have fun together when I was home? I was so sorry I had to leave all of you. so soon. Tell the girls to write me as much as they can . . . I will see you quite soon, sweetheart. I’m dying to hear frm [
sic
] Mother and Daddy. Tell Mother to send me
my box of candy that she gave me Easter. I feel very upset when I don’t hear from Mother tell her that. Write me a long long letter and make it as long as you can, darling. I know you will dear, love Rose.

When Rosemary returned to Devereux in the fall of 1931 for a third year, she was thirteen. The Kennedy girls’ teenage years posed a particular dilemma, apparently, for Rose. When Kick turned thirteen, in 1933, Rose shipped her off to boarding school. “She was tremendously popular with the boys,” Rose later wrote, “who were always telephoning her and asking her on dates . . . So boarding school was the answer, no phone calls or distractions from study, with girls her own age and whose families we all know.” Keeping her girls under control was a significant priority.
There is no explicit record of Rose’s thoughts on Rosemary’s sexual maturation. She had read the literature of the era, however, on female “defectives”—how they were more likely to become promiscuous, to have children with similar disorders or worse, and to create a more dangerous “class” of criminals, prostitutes, and “feebleminded” offspring.

During the spring of Rosemary’s third year at Devereux, after the horrific kidnapping and murder of the baby son of aviator and national hero Charles Lindbergh, the country witnessed a sickening rise in kidnapping-for-ransom cases. Rose began to worry that the teenage Rosemary “would run away from home someday and get lost, or that she would meet with an accident, or that she would go off with someone who would flatter her or kidnap her.”
Given the Kennedy family’s modest fame but enormous wealth during the depths of the Great Depression, Rose’s kidnapping concerns were not unfounded. Rosemary or any of the younger
Kennedy children could have been easy targets of ruthless kidnappers. But her use of the phrase “flatter her” suggests that Rose feared sexual as well as financial exploitation.

That spring, Rose was busy again with a new baby. Edward Moore Kennedy, named after Eddie Moore, was born in February 1932. “Teddy” would be Rose and Joe’s ninth, and last, child. Even with Joe Jr. and Jack at Choate, Rosemary at Devereux, and Kick off to boarding school in the fall, there were still five children at home. A bus from the private boys’ day school in Riverdale brought Bobby back and forth every day, and Eunice, Pat, and Jean were now ensconced in new schools in Bronxville.

When Rosemary was home, however briefly, during the school year, Rose made sure that she was watched and that she stayed occupied as much as possible. Rosemary continued to test her parents’ patience, and her actions played on their fears. She resented having a companion join her when she traveled by train, and she would occasionally deliberately run away from caretakers. Sometimes she delayed returning home after doing an errand for her mother, setting Rose on edge until she finally appeared in the doorway.
Rose was still devoting her own time and care to Rosemary. Neighbors in Bronxville remember Rose taking long walks with Rosemary alone. Paul Morgan, a teenager when the Kennedys moved into the upper-class neighborhood, recalled that whenever Rose and Rosemary walked by, his family’s Great Danes would run out to greet them. Rose would wait patiently while Rosemary, then fourteen, would play with the giant dogs.

Believing that the special education Rosemary was receiving at Devereux was no longer benefiting her in ways they had hoped, and perhaps with the encouragement of Devereux’s staff, Rosemary’s parents transferred her to Elmhurst, the Convent of
the Sacred Heart school in Providence, Rhode Island, in the fall of 1932. Their expectations were clear: they wanted Rosemary to progress in school as though her intellectual limitations were something easily overcome. A school such as Devereux, for “slow” children, had never been their permanent plan for Rosemary. Rosemary seemed high-functioning in many ways; her teachers at Devereux had assured her parents of her social skills.
These attributes lent credence, in Rose’s and Joe’s minds, to their belief that she could achieve academically. Rose and Joe may have given Margaret McCusker, the director of Elmhurst, the same kind of initial impression. By the end of her two years at Elmhurst, however, Rosemary’s handwriting seemed no better than when she had left Devereux. In a letter written to her parents in June 1934, Rosemary’s poor penmanship, spelling, and grammar remained similar to that of a ten-year-old, though she was fifteen years old at the time:

Dear Mother and Daddy,

Thank you very much for the lovely letter you sent me. I got three bottles of perfume, but it is allright. I am satisfied. I like the handkerchief lot. Thank you very much for everything I appreciated it so much. EveryBody thought the Picture was grand.

I cannot thank you enough for everything you have done to make Elmhurst so happy. Thanking you again for your kindness.

. . . I gave a birthday party for Alice Reddy. We had eight Children to the Party . . .

. . . Latin test I had. Pray very hard that I will get some place. I tried as hard as I could.

History Doctrine are the last.

I went to the First and Second Elementary prizes. They were as Darling as they could be.

I will be so happy to see you all.

lots of kisses,

Rosemary

By the fall of 1934, Rosemary, at age sixteen, was enrolled in another private school, this time in Brookline, the suburb of Boston in which she had been born and had spent her early childhood years. A letter from Elmhurst’s Margaret McCusker to Rose that October gives few clues as to what may have prompted the move to yet another school. It is clear only that Rosemary’s lack of achievement at Elmhurst had once again undermined Rose and Joe’s hopes for her advancement. After thanking Rose for a subscription to
Illustrated London News
and for the roses she believed Rosemary had sent to the convent school’s Mother Superior, McCusker expresses regret that the students and sisters had not heard from Rosemary: “Of course we are deeply interested in her progress—and any item of news about her arouses attention. Mother Forbes still grieves—and
all
regret her absence. So do send her back if at any time, you think a return would spur her on.”

The new school in Brookline was housed in a large mansion on Powell Street and run by Helen Newton and her mother, Adeline Newton. Rosemary’s progress beyond the third- or fourth-grade level was frustrating, unnerving, and wearisome. The Kennedys were now pinning their hopes on Miss Newton’s School, which offered a rigorous but supportive educational program that Rosemary’s parents believed was more suited to her need for individual attention and encouragement. The Newtons provided instruction
to gifted students as well as those who struggled with meeting scholastic challenges.

Each new school—this one was her third in five years—meant weeks of adjustment for Rosemary. A new living and learning situation posed anxieties that manifested in moodiness, uncooperativeness, and emotional instability. This pattern emerged early in Rosemary’s childhood, yet her parents continued to move her from school to school with regularity. Barely a month into the first semester, Joe wrote Rose, who was then vacationing in Paris, that Rosemary “raised Cain first week but Miss Newton and her mother have both written me saying you would never know the child.”
But Joe was hiding the entire truth. A little more than a week later, he was reassuring Helen Newton: “I had a very firm talk with Rosemary and told her that something must be done, and I am sure she really wants to do it. It is something else besides herself that must be blamed for her attitude. By that I mean, it is her inherent backwardness, rather than a bad disposition.”

Helen Newton had spent time exploring the latest techniques to teach “retarded children,” she told Rose.
In a letter to her father, Rosemary excitedly revealed that she was enjoying a challenging academic program with a more varied curriculum than at Elmhurst. She was taking French, and by October she was showing her father her latest homework in French vocabulary and phrase exercises. Such gains may seem remarkable, but it was with a great deal of help and supervision that Rosemary was able to perform. Newton observed that Rosemary could not concentrate on her studies for more than two and a half hours.
Her limited attention span thwarted attempts to educate her, and in spite of Rosemary’s frequent claims that she was working harder and performing better, the truth was she couldn’t really do any better.
At sixteen, she remained far behind the academic achievements of her peer group in regular classrooms, clearly evidenced by her simple letters from Brookline to her parents—letters, given their misspellings and other errors, that were likely composed with some help from the Newtons:

October 1, 1934

Darling Daddy,

J’ai beaucoup trvaille a vous donner plaisir.

I have a travel book about Europe, and I am looking up and answering all the questions.

I have a French book, called, ‘que Fait Gaston?’ I am sending you a few lines from it.

The book is written all in French, and I have to translate it.

I am learning some History way back in the beginning when men lived in caves, and did not even know how to cook . . .

Did you receive my postcards and my letter? I am going to take some dancing lessons to get ready for the first Dance.

I hope soon to send you a letter in French. give my love to all the family.

Rosemary

Rosemary’s placement in a school in Brookline had its advantages. Her being near family members—including Rose’s parents, Honey Fitz and Josie, and aunts and uncles—and close family friends, who checked in on her and helped entertain her on weekends, relieved some of the anxiety her parents felt and the loneliness she experienced. Ruth Evans O’Keefe, a childhood friend of Rose’s, and O’Keefe’s daughter Mary, who also attended Miss
Newton’s School as a regular student, frequently hosted Rosemary in their home in Lynn, Massachusetts. The O’Keefe family included her in family outings, such as trips to the theater, movies, and skating, and in cookouts. She enjoyed the O’Keefes’ game nights, playing cards and Monopoly with Mary’s siblings, and she attended dances and other social events with them.

Joe asked Jack and Joe Jr. to keep in touch with Rosemary. Joe was a freshman at nearby Harvard College during Rosemary’s first year at Miss Newton’s School, and was able to take her on outings. “I think it is fine the way you are contacting Rose because it gives her a little more confidence,” her father wrote to Joe Jr. “Keep suggesting to her that she should work very hard in order to get all she can . . . She must not feel she is there for social purposes and nothing else.”
Suggesting that the Kennedy men were now keenly concerned with whether Rosemary could “pass” in elite social situations, Joe Jr. reported that one of his classmates had met Rosemary and “thought she was very nice. Bob Downes also thought she was good looking, as did Francis Shea, so I think she is coming along finely. All these came from a clear sky, so they were not meant to be the old bunk.”

Oddly, given his closeness to Rosemary, Joe Jr. held quite conservative views about the disabled. After graduating from Choate, in 1933, he spent a year studying in London rather than immediately enrolling at Harvard, where he had been accepted that spring. His father arranged for him to travel extensively and to meet some of the leading financial, literary, political, religious, and academic leaders of the day. Unrest was brewing abroad as the effects of the Great Depression destabilized economies and financial institutions across Europe even more deeply than in the United States. By the time Joe Jr. arrived in Europe, Adolf Hitler had come to power in Germany, and persecution of the Jews was
on the rise. After visiting Germany, Joe wrote to his father that he had heard much “condemnation of Hitler and his party” while in London, but that he believed Hitler should be given a chance. As a consequence of economic devastation following World War I, Germans were “scattered, despondent, and . . . divorced from hope.” Hitler gave them hope, and a common enemy, the Jews. “It was excellent psychology,” Joe Jr. wrote, “and it was too bad that it had to be done to the Jews. This dislike of Jews, however, was well founded.” Spewing Nazi propaganda like a fresh convert, Joe went on to claim that the “brutality . . . must have been necessary . . . to secure the whole hearted support of the people . . . In every revolution you have to expect some kind of bloodshed.” Perhaps more shockingly, Joe also believed that Hitler’s sterilization program was “a great thing. I don’t know how the Church feels about it, but it will do away with many of the disgusting specimens of men which inhabit this earth.”
Hitler’s sterilization program was deeply rooted in bigoted eugenics ideology that sought forcibly to sterilize anyone suffering from a number of physical and mental diseases, including “1. Congenital mental deficiency, 2. Schizophrenia, 3. Manic-depression, 4. Hereditary epilepsy, 5. Hereditary St. Vitus’ Dance (Huntington’s Chorea), 6. Hereditary blindness, 7. Hereditary deafness, 8. Serious hereditary physical deformity . . . [and] anyone suffering from chronic alcoholism.” Between July 1933, when Hitler signed the “Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases,” and 1945, when World War II ended, four hundred thousand people had been sterilized.