Free Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter by Kate Clifford Larson Page A

parents of “defectives” carried these bad genes—an idea that placed the blame and shame squarely on families. Some of the most prominent industrialists, scientists, and political leaders of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including President Teddy Roosevelt, supported these views. Wealthy industrialists John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, John Kellogg, Mary Williamson Harriman, and early feminist Victoria Woodhull became advocates of eugenics, funding spurious research promoting racial and ethnic discrimination through false claims of genetic deviance in nonwhite and ethnic minorities.
    Labels such as “moron” and “mental defective” further complicated an already difficult life for Rosemary and her family. For Rose, reading eugenics literature and hearing such words describing her lovely daughter were stressful and heartbreaking.
    Christian beliefs and biblical tenets were no more helpful. These overtly blamed parents for the physical, mental, and intellectual shortcomings and disabilities of their children, warning believers who failed to follow the Ten Commandments and the teachings of the Old Testament that God would punish them by “visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation
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”At that time the Roman Catholic Church routinely refused the sacraments of Holy Communion and Confirmation to intellectually disabled children, especially those with Down syndrome.Even today some local churches still refuse the sacrament to those with intellectual impairments, in spite of a directive from the church during the latter part of the twentieth century that clergy should offer the sacraments to them.Did Rose question a religion that would have excluded her child from some of the most holy of Catholic sacraments?
    If Rose and Joe were to reveal that their daughter was a “defective,” they and their children risked being ostracized and shunned. To survive spiritually and emotionally, Rose and Joe had to mold Rosemary into the likeness of themselves and her siblings, an impulse that fed their constant pursuit of a potential “cure” for Rosemary. “My parents, strong believers in family loyalty, rejected suggestions that Rosemary be sent away to an institution,” Eunice later recalled. She remembered her father arguing, “What can they do for her that her family can’t do better? . . . We will keep her at home.”But keeping her at home had become increasingly exhausting and difficult.
    Struggling to come to terms with Rosemary’s limitations and the stigma surrounding them, Rose and Joe reached a crisis point. By the time Rosemary was eleven, and after a year of private instruction at home, they decided to send her to a private boarding school. Her daughter’s young age must have made Rose hesitate; developmentally immature, Rosemary always had difficulty adjusting to new situations and demands. Living away from her home and family would be quite destabilizing for her, but the Kennedys felt they had no other acceptable alternatives. Her persistent lack of academic progress and the rising tension and frustrations facing the Kennedy household as it tried to accommodate her at home drove the decision to send her away sooner than they would their other girls. In contrast, Rose would wait until Kick turned thirteen before sending her to boarding school; Eunice went even later.

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Five Schools
    T HE KENNEDYS CHOSE the Devereux School in Devon-Berwyn, Pennsylvania, for Rosemary. Founded in 1912 by Helena Trafford Devereux, a former Philadelphia public-school teacher, the school provided specialized and individualized lesson plans for a wide range of intellectually challenged students. As a young teacher in Philadelphia, Devereux had observed that children who learned differently or were “slow,” developmentally delayed, or disabled were often kept from advancing to higher grade levels with their age-group peers. Educational instruction for