The black sheep of the Kennedy family: the true story of Rosemary, the “lost” sister of the American president

jOhn, Robert, Ted and Caroline. The Dynasty of the Kennedy it is dotted with politicians, lawyers and successful people whose influence on postwar America has earned them an almost royal status. But behind the glitz and glamor lie the names of forgotten Kennedys, including RosemaryJFK’s younger sister whose tragic life inspired a new play.

Least Like the Others, an Irish National Opera production at the Royal Opera House, chronicles Rosemary’s early years: third child and eldest daughter of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., businessman, politician and ambassador to the United Kingdom, and Rose Kennedy, queen of social and philanthropic life. From the outset, the couple, who were descended from high-powered politicians, had clear dreams for their nine children – Joseph Jr. John, RosemaryKathleen, Eunice, Patricia, Robert, Jean and Edward – and was determined to continue the greatness of the family.

While their eldest sons, Joseph Jr (a future US Navy lieutenant who was later killed in WWII) and John (the 35th President and husband of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis) already built a brilliant career from childhood, the eldest daughter showed developmental delays from an early age. In fact, during her birth it seems that the baby had been without oxygen for too long.

«She was slower to crawlwalking and talking compared to his siblings and had learning difficulties when he reached school age», reads his online profile on the JFK Presidential Library website, «despite his obvious intellectual disabilities, Rosemary he participated in most of the family activities. In the journal he kept as a teenager he described every person he met, balls and concerts he attended, and a visit to the White House during Roosevelt’s presidency. When his father was named United States Ambassador to Great Britain in 1938, Rosemary moved to London and was presented at court along with her mother and sister Kathleen.

Teenage years, reconstructed with archival material, are the basis of the new 75-minute production by the director and designer Netia Jonescritically acclaimed, with Amy Ní Fhearraigh in the role of Rosemary and music by Brian Irvine.

The work takes place around the crucial moment in the life of Rosemary: the lobotomy suffered at the age of 23, on the indication of the father. L’horrible surgical procedure – which involved cutting off the connection between the frontal lobe and other parts of the brain – became popular in the 1940s and 1950s with American and British doctors who claimed they were looking for a “cure” for patients with certain mental health conditions deemed socially unacceptable.

According to the JFK Library, Rosemary’s behavior began to change once the family returned to the United States in 1940: “Rosemary he was not making progress, but instead seemed to be retreating,” Sister Eunice later wrote. The annotation claims that the father was «convinced that a lobotomy it would have helped calm her daughter and prevent her sometimes violent mood swings’ and authorized the procedure to be carried out.

“The disease of Rosemary she has never been a hindrance, an embarrassment, or anything overly negative. I always thought her mental condition was borderline normal and that her father Joe’s authorized lobotomy had really messed her up,” writes Harvey Rachlin, author of The Kennedys: A Chronological History 1823-Presentthat he told theindependent Rosemary’s death in 2005.

Barbara Gibson and Ted Schwarz, authors of the book about mother Rose Kennedy, The Best and Worst of Their Lives and Times, they write: «Joe had two concerns about Rosemary. The father thought that Rosemary’s sexuality was too extreme and not tempered by the moral rules the other Kennedy daughters adhered to. Joe destroyed part of her brain rather than risk the shame and rumors that would have resulted.”

The lobotomy was a disaster Without precedents: Rosemaryfrom that moment, assumed the capabilities of a two year old girl and became unable to care for herself for the rest of her life.

Following the surgery, Rosemary was sent to St. Coletta’s School for Exceptional Children in Jefferson, where she spent the rest of her life cared for by Catholic nuns in a cottage in Wisconsin. Rosemary was separated from her family forever: the father never visited his daughter, while Rose did not go to St. Coletta’s for 20 years. It is even claimed that the brothers of Rosemary weren’t even informed of their sister’s condition. Certainly, information about her was kept out of the public sphere and out of the press for decades. Only in 1961, after the election of John as president, the family adequately explained his absence. Lobotomy only became public knowledge in 1987.

In the last years of her life, Rosemary only had relations with her sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver: “She had a particularly close relationship with her older sister and great empathy for her,” according to the JFK Presidential Library. In 1962, Mrs. Shriver started a summer day camp in her backyard for children and adults with intellectual disabilities.

Rosemary Kennedy she died on January 7, 2005, at the age of 86. The work, however, tells nothing of the tortuous last years of his life. Instead, the focus is on the early years of a girl who was erased from Kennedy family history.