Photo: JFK Library Foundation
This past Thursday, September 13th, would have been the 100th birthday of Rosemary Kennedy, the eldest daughter of Joseph P. Kennedy and his wife, Rose. And for one family in Ireland, the occasion is a chance to look back on the sweet young woman who had an intellectual disability and underwent a lobotomy in 1941, at her father’s insistence, which left her with the mental capacities of a small child.
To mark her birthday, the Smyth family in Ireland is sharing a look at some of the letters Rosemary wrote to Dorothy Smyth, who served as Rosemary’s companion and chaperone while she was visiting Ireland in the 1930s.
Joe Kennedy, then the ambassador to Great Britain, and wife Rose had asked Dorothy to be their daughter’s companion and show her the local sights.
People
In the months that followed, Rosemary wrote to Dorothy about her subsequent travels. “There is a childish innocence about the letters,” says Fisher, a journalist in Monaghan County, Ireland. “The letters are evidence of what Rosemary was like, her personality and her childlike manner, before the lobotomy. Once she got the lobotomy operation, she seemed to have faded from public view.”
In one letter, dated Aug. 1, 1938, Rosemary thanks Dorothy for “the lovely time you gave me. I injoyed [sic] going a lot of places with you.”
In another, written from the South of France, where Rosemary and her siblings spent part of the summer, she writes that her family often dines late “…and my brothers go to the casino every night.”
And in a third, written to Dorothy’s mother, who she had visited, she closes the letter in writing, “Remember me to Mr. Smyth and your family. Best love from your darling sweetheart. Love, Rosemary.”
“Rosemary’s voice had been silenced for so long and she would want her voice to be heard,” says Kate Clifford Larson, author of the 2015 Rosemary biography,The Hidden Kennedy Daughter. “And Rosemary needs to be heard and to remind the public what happened to her. As do the voices of millions of others who are suffering and their families who are suffering. Her 100th birthday, and the letters she wrote to the Smyth family, are both vehicles to do that.”
“There’s still stigma, especially with mental health issues,” Larson notes. “And it’s important to talk about these issues because people need resources to treat mental illness and to be able to live full lives and be welcome in their community.”
“The letters are noteworthy because she sounds like an adolescent girl and there is real affection that the Smyth family had for Rosemary and she for them,” Larson notes. “And they speak to who Rosemary was as a young girl. She was mentally disabled, and she had a happy and full life. She writes about going to St. Moritz and meeting Marlene Dietrich and that she may go to finishing school in Paris. It was a struggle for her parents to figure out a life for her but what an amazing life she had.”
When Rosemary was in the South of France, she wrote about spending time with Marlene Dietrich’s daughter, Maria. “Marlene would begin an open affair with Rosemary’s father, Joe, that summer,” Larson explains. “Rosemary wrote that Maria, who was seven years younger than Rosemary, was ‘very attractive.’ "
Overall, Larson says, “the letters speak to the fact Rosemary was included in many things and the family accommodated her. And then they didn’t.”
Larson says the last two letters that Rosemary wrote to Dorothy in April 1940, less than two months before Rosemary returned to the United States, “are very confusing and disjointed. Those letters reveal the beginning of a marked decline in Rosemary’s writing and intellectual skills. Within 18 months, Joe would coerce Rosemary to undergo a debilitating prefrontal lobotomy, the effects of which would require Rosemary to spend the rest of her life with round-the-clock care in an institution for the disabled.”
Meanwhile, Dorothy Smyth, who went to volunteer for the American Red Cross during the Second World War, and worked at a girls secondary school, saved the letters for many years.
“My mother decided the letters should be returned to the Kennedy family so they were put in an envelope and given to then-ambassador to Ireland Jean Kennedy Smith, with the hope they would be made available at the Kennedy library someday,” explains Fisher. “She said she would be glad to share the letters with her family. But then it always puzzled me we never heard anything more about it.”
The intention, says Fisher, “was that the story of Rosemary would be made known to a wider world.”
In the years that followed, her story has become more public, thanks largely to Larson’s book. As Fisher says, “At last Rosemary is getting the attention she deserves.”
source: people.com
