Rosemary Kennedy
Rosemary Kennedy ( * September 13, 1918 in Boston, USA, as Rose Marie Kennedy, † January 7, 2005 in Fort Atkinson ( Wisconsin)) was a sister of John F. and Robert F. Kennedy.
Rosemary Kennedy was the third child and first daughter of Joseph and Rose Kennedy. Since her birth, she was very shy and also suffered from dyslexia. She learned late run, but swam thrilled liked to dance and wrote diaries. An intelligence test had shown a mild mental retardation (retardation ), but this finding is controversial. In 1939, she earned a degree in Montessori education. She took active part in the social life and visited a passionate opera performances, sporting events and other social occasions, and grew up to be a fun-loving, good-looking young woman. After Rosemary had reached adulthood, she was described to irascible and difficult to tame in character often than obstinate. Perhaps one reason was that they realized they could not keep up with her older siblings successful. The parents began to fear that Rosemary bring through their behavior the reputation of the entire family into disrepute and that it could possibly be an unwanted pregnancy - a way that triggered in the strict Catholic Kennedy family unrest.
When Rosemary was 23 years old, leaving her father, who feared for the reputation of the family, work carried out by his friend Walter Freeman a lobotomy. This operation was considered a possibility, people with uncontrolled instinctive life to " appease ", but the engagement was already highly controversial. In the case of Rosemary the operation had catastrophic consequences. The hoped-for improvement was made by the Father; Instead, her condition worsened after surgery so much that she could childlike hinbrabbeln right just yet, became incontinent and was partially dependent on a wheelchair. Joseph Kennedy, who was ashamed of his now severely disabled daughter, she had to be posted in the St. Coletta mental hospital in Wisconsin, where she spent the rest of her long life. He never visited and fell into a rage, if you asked him about it, because she was a " loser ".
The operation had caused without consultation and knowledge of the mother's father, and this is considered together with the subsequent introduction as one of the reasons for the emotional abandonment of her mother Rose Kennedy by her husband Joseph P. Kennedy. Rose called her daughter a " gift from God " that have taught the others respect for disability. Even her older brother John F. Kennedy pleaded not until 1960 that publicly to her.
Rosemary's disease led to her younger sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver in 1968, the Special Olympics brought to life and also otherwise started for people with disabilities. As Rosemary Kennedy died at the age of 86 years at the Fort Atkinson Memorial Hospital, were her surviving siblings, including U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy, at her side.