Kennedy Sister Dies At 86

AP ^ | Friday, January 7, 2005 | LOLITA C. BALDOR

[West Coast Conservative]

WASHINGTON -- Rosemary Kennedy, a sister of John F. Kennedy who was born mentally retarded and lived most of her life in an institution after undergoing a lobotomy, died Friday, her family said. She was 86.

Kennedy, the inspiration for the Special Olympics spearheaded by the Kennedy family, had been a patient since 1949 at St. Coletta School for Exceptional Children in Jefferson, Wis. She was the third child and first daughter of Joseph and Rose Kennedy, born a year after her brother became president.

In 1941, Joseph Kennedy, worried his daughter's mild mental retardation would lead her into situations that could damage the family's reputation, arranged for Rosemary to have a lobotomy. She was 23.

"Rosemary was a woman, and there was a dread fear of pregnancy, disease and disgrace," author Laurence Leamer wrote in his book "The Kennedy Women: The Saga of an American Family." He wrote that Rosemary, whose retardation possibly stemmed from brain damage at birth, had taken to sneaking out of the convent where she was staying at the time.

[Syncro]

LOL

Thanks, saved me a lot of reading...

The funny thing is that things like that usually make sense to me.

:>)

[nopardons]

Eugenics has a far longer history,than its just cropping up in Hitler's Germany! It was all the rage in America and in England many decades prior to Hitlerian Germany. And yes, Joe Kennedy only wanted "perfect children".

[nopardons]

Indeed!

[nopardons]

Oh please.........she knew full well what Joe and Jack and Bobby and Teddy did.

[Protect the Bill of Rights]

I made it through without the hormones. Tried them but stopped as soon as I realized my cup size was growing. I hate wearing a bra and wear one only when I have to. When I am in my 90's and in the home, the grandkids will say "Grandma, That's disgusting! We aren't taking you anywhere unless you put this bra on." or "Why do I have to watch her---she doesn't wear a bra."
The cancer risks of hormones I can live with, but having to wear a bra all day long? No way.

[nopardons]

Try reading the myriad of other books about the Kennedy clan,instead of just blindly quoting from just one. :-)

[Protect the Bill of Rights]

Thanks, I will.

[Hildy]

It was quite the affair. It was rumoured that for something like the last 10 years of their marriage, Rose and Joe did not even speak. Here's an excerpt I found online from the book: THE SINS OF THE FATHER by Robert Kessler:

-After making his fortune on and off Wall Street, Joe was one of the first Eastern businessmen to grasp the potential of the movie business. By the mid-1920s, the American film industry was turning out 800 films a year and employed as many people as the auto industry. This was "a gold mine", Joe told several friends. After buying a chain of thirty-one small movie houses, Joe realized that the way to make real money was on the production side. Moreover, he was attracted to the glamour of Hollywood. Not only could he influence the way films were made, he could meet dazzling young women.

Gloria Swanson

- While his wife Rose was in Boston, pregnant with their eighth child, Joe was in Hollywood engaged in his notorious liaison with the superstar Gloria Swanson. - Swanson was by no means Joe's first extramarital adventure, but she was his first real affair. She was the perfect trophy to symbolize the great worldly success he had achieved.

-2-

- In 1926, Joe convinced a patron of his brokerage firm, named Guy Currier, to finance his plans to enter the movie business. Using insider information he received as a broker at Hayden, Stone, Joe bought the Film Booking Offices of America (FBO), sight unseen, from its British owners; and then received a commission of $75,000 from the trading company for the deal. Joe quickly changed the studio's focus to making cheap Westerns and dog pictures that could be turned out in a week for $30,000 to $50,000 each. Although they lacked artistic merit, the pictures sold, and FBO profits ballooned.

- The following year, Joe Kennedy used the profits from FBO to purchase the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) who had a new system for making motion pictures with sound. Now that Joe headed a studio, he wanted to buy a theater chain to distribute his pictures. This desire would eventually lead to the infamous "Pantages Scandal." [ see story below - How Joe framed an Innocent Man ]

- Kennedy purchased KAO (Keith-Albee-Orpheum Theaters Corp), a chain with 700 movie theaters in the US and Canada, and more than 2 million patrons daily. Edward Albee, the founder of KAO, had initially refused to sell out, but when Joe promised that he would remain in control of the chain, Albee agreed to Kennedy's offer. But once the papers were signed and Joe was chairman, Joe said bluntly, "Didn't you know, Ed? You're washed up. Through."

-3-

- In 1928, Joe was asked to serve as a special advisor on the board of Pathe Exchange Inc., a production company who produced a weekly newsreel. Joe soon became chairman of Pathe and began implementing his own ideas, beginning by slashing the salaries of the employees. The cost-cutting applied to others, however, and not to himself - he was drawing a salary of $100,000 from Pathe.

- Later that year, Joe merged FBO with his chain of theaters (KAO) to form the famous RKO. Joe then had RCA trade its FBO stock for stock in the new company, a deal which brought him $2 million.

-4-

- Joe Kennedy had become so entranced by Gloria Swanson and Hollywood that when his father PJ Kennedy died in May of 1929, Joe would not leave California to attend the funeral. Joe's cousin Joseph Kane later confronted him saying, "You son of a bitch, you didn't even go to your father's funeral. You were too busy on the West Coast chasing Gloria Swanson around."
- Joe replied, "I couldn't leave. If I left for two days, the Jews would rob me blind."
- A friend, Kane Simonian, observed, "Joe Kennedy didn't attend his father's funeral....When someone doesn't go to his father's funeral, you can believe he would do anything."

- Indeed, nothing so much illuminates Joe's character as his decision to remain in California while the rest of the family and many of Boston's most notable citizens paid their last respects to the man who had been responsible for so many of Joe's early successes. From Joe's entry into Harvard, to his job as bank examiner and designation as president of Columbia Trust, PJ had always been there to help his son. Now that his father could do nothing more to help him, Joe was too busy in Hollywood to say good-bye.

-5-

- In 1931, Joe Kennedy plundered Pathe Exchange. He arranged for RKO to pay Pathe insiders like himself $80 a share. The rest of the stockholders would receive just one dollar and fifty cents a share. Favoring insiders to such a degree was nothing more than robbery. Since Joe had acquired the stock for $30 a share, he more than doubled his investment in fewer than two years. Stockholders filed suit, but nothing came of it.

- Since Joe was in a position to dictate the terms of the deal, he was able to craft the transaction to enrich himself. Moreover, he took advantage of privileged information from the files of major stockholders in the movie companies who were clients of Guy Currier, his partner at RKO. While Currier was on vacation in Italy, Kennedy pillaged his files for inside information such as the size of holdings of other stockholders and their financial condition. He then used the information to further his own interests. When Currier returned, he discovered that RKO's value had plummeted, and he and his fellow investors had been betrayed. Joe Kennedy "did not behave in an honorable way," said Anne Anable, Currier's granddaughter. "Unfortunately, my grandfather didn't realize how corrupt Kennedy was," she said.

-6-

- Years later, Wisconsin Congressman John Schafer took to the floor of the House to denounce Joe Kennedy as the "chief racketeer in the RKO swindle." Another congressman, William Sirovich of New York, said the "inside group at RKO had committed fraud by unloading their stock, making millions." He called for an investigation of the movie industry, but by then Joe had become close to key congressional leaders as well as to President Roosevelt, and the probe was mysteriously halted.

- In Joe's papers, Doris Kearns Goodwin found letters from anguished stockholders of Pathe. Anne Lawler of Jamaica Plain in Boston said she lost her life savings. "This seems hardly Christian-like, fair or just for a man of your character," she wrote. "I wish you would think of the poor working woman who had so much faith in you as to give all their money to your Pathe."

-7-

- Joe Kennedy had been chairman of FBO for two years and nine months, chairman of Keith-Albee-Orpheum for five months, special adviser to First National Pictures for six weeks, special adviser to RCA for two and a half months, and adviser to Paramount Pictures for seventy-four days. In all, Joe had made an estimated $5 million in the movie business.

[Humidston]

>> born a year after her brother became president<<

Another lazy AP reporter. No wonder they're all liberal!

[thelastvirgil]

"Still, the wrong Kennedy was given a lobotomy."

That Karma can be a total beeyatch. May they all rot in hell.

[Lovergirl]

LMAO.. Same here. There are times I think about that, too.

[JudyinCanada]

I wonder if driving drunk, crashing your car into a lake, leaving a woman inside to die slowly as the car is sinking, then getting out, going home and sleeping the whole crazy thing off counts as torture. No, I suspect that counts as murder, or in the very least, manslaughter.

[Reform4Bush]

Truly sad what they did to her. Joe should have gotten the lobotomy, JFK style.

(crass and distasteful, I know. It's just so unbelievably horrible what he did to his daughter)

[LisaMalia]

I've read enough of these various Kennedy books to question whether Rosemary was retarded in any manner at all.

I have read many books on the Kennedys as well, and agree with you wholeheartedly. Possibly she had a severe form what is now referred to as A.D.D.?

Whatever the case, the old b@stard made sure she would never cause any "embarrassment" to the Kennedy clan.

Joe Sr. was arguably the dirtiest man in politics in the 20th century. He made his money the old fashioned way (bootlegging), sympathized with Hitler, and made deals with the mafia to get his son elected. Then he was arrogant enough to screw the mob over. We all know the possible consequences of that one.

Wonder how this will play in rest of the MSM? How wonderful Joe Kennedy of the Camelot Kennedy dynasty got the best doctors in the world to cure his daughter, but it didn't work? Bull! He knew exactly what he was doing.

Poor Rosemary. May she finally rest in peace.

[M-cubed]

How ironic that it was in fact Teddy that damaged the family's reputation"...<-- Hey!...It's not too late to get ol' Ted a lobotomy!.....He's embarrassed us enough!...its for the good of a Nation..

[N. Theknow]

How ironic that it was in fact Teddy that damaged the family's reputation"...<-- Hey!...It's not too late to get ol' Ted a lobotomy!.....He's embarrassed us enough!...its for the good of a Nation..

Nothing there to work on.

[ken21]

schwartz says she had problems in this country with education, but when the family went to england for joe's ambassadorship, that she did very well in school over there. unfortunately for her, ww2 entered her life.

[pttttt]

Weird. St. Coletta's is about 30 miles from where I live. Rumor had it in this area that she died years ago.

This would be consistent with the total information blackout about her even post-Internet - even when someone's in a coma, pictures get out and she couldn't have lived this long and been in a coma the whole time. Living persons are hard to hide when they stay in one place for decades. Someone would have had to have seen her and secrets have a way of getting out.

So much about this whole sad story doesn't add up. If you look at the few pre-lobotomy photos there are of her, she doesn't look profoundly retarded by any means. Might have been either nothing or a learning disability. Maybe old Joe thought she needed to be shut up. Could she have been threatening to blow the whistle on him for something?

I wonder who her surgeon was and who her guardian has been?

It would also be interesting to know if there has been anything unusual observed about this school or its staff. It's a remarkable "school" which can hold someone incommunicado for decades.

[Muzzle_em]

LOL
But seriously, what do you really think of them?

[ken21]

how many have you read? why don't you read all of them and report back?

as i said above, in addition to schwartz, i read klein.

klein summarizes the lates kennedy books.