our moderator this afternoon, eileen pick that mayor remarks is professor of journalism at brandeis university a former "boston globe" columnist, she won 1997 pulitzer prize for commentary only 18 months after she began writing her twice weekly column. she became a columnist after 20 years as reporter covering everything from the night police beat to the united states congress. as a sign of the times in which she lived and challenges she overcame, it should be noted that she began her career at the globe as a newsroom secretary. she is currently working on a biography of eunice kennedy shriver. speaking of mrs. shriver, last time she spoke heroes mary was very much on her mind. i thought it might be appropriate to share a brief excerpt of her remarks as part of this introduction.

>> you are r would you would not be surprised to know that believed that those same qualities were also the experience that shaped president kennedy. truthfully i believe rosemari' rejection had far more to go with the brillance of his presidency than anyone can understand. yes, he was our country's greater champion of what we all call mental retardation. to this day his legacy of innovation creating ichd, university affiliated centers, president's council remains today one of the great histories of our country. but beyond the work he did for people with intellectual disabilities, i believe it was rosemary's influence that centralized him and all of us to be aware of vulnerable people.

i think i can say, that not one among the thousands who have written about him has understood what really like to be a brother of a person who has mental retardation and tonight i want to say that i have never said before, more than any single individual, rosemary had the greatest influence. [applause] >> the new book concludes about describing work of various members of the shriver family who passed torch. tim the ceo of special olympics echoes his mother's observation suggesting that rosemary belongs at center of kennedy story because her siblings were touched by witnessing her early struggles and tragic turn in her life's trajectory. one can still picture rosemary in those years in england when the world was most kind to her, rereading christopher robin's words to his friend pooh.

promise me you always remember, braver than you believe, stronger than you seem and smarter than r that you think. due to circumstances beyond her control rosemary kennedy live a diminished life. yet we live in an age more fully sensitized to the bravery and strength of the vulnerable among us. and for that, may rosemary kennedy always be remembered. please join me now in welcoming kate clifford larson and eileen mcnamara to our stage. [applause] >> thank you all. we have feedback in here. i don't know if that is okay. okay. so, kate, could you have pick ad more challenging topic? you have a woman who disappeared from public view in 1941 when she was only 23 years old. where does biographer even begin

and, more importantly, maybe why? >> you know, those are two great questions. why is easier to answer. back in 2005 i saw rosemary's obituary in the newspaper and, it was like a three paragraph obituary in the "boston globe" and, for some reason it just hit me. i had been vaguely aware of rosemary and of course i was very aware of the kennedy family having grown up in new england and i just, i just thought, oh, this life, you know, what happened to her? as a women's historian my antenna went up right away, like why don't we know more about her? i tucked it in the back of my mind and i was working on another book project. i just had the sense i should investigate her life and that might be my next project. so when i did start researching her life, it might have been a little bit of naivete on my part, thinking, i would be able to unearth all of this information and it won't be any

problem and i can write about this beautiful, young woman and, you know, about what happened to her. the process took a lot longer than i thought because the record was, you know, a little bit spotty but over the years more and more papers became available so it made it easier but it is a challenge to write about somebody who disappears and leaves few papers behind but it is possible. >> tell us what you think about rosemary's life before the lobotomy in 19411? was she a happy child? was she integrated into the life of that family? >> rosemary was an adorable child. happy but also she struggled and suffered in trying to compete with her much more capable siblings. she was integrated into the family when she was home and her

siblings did a great job trying to accommodate her disabilities. they would play sports with her. they would go sailing with her. and they would take the helm but help her be part of that sailing. and tennis, all the sports activities that they were all capable of doing by themselves she needed help but they accomdated her. which influenced eunice as an adult to start the special olympics. she knew sports was important aspect for every human being but also for people with disabilities. and so she was happy on the one hand. on the other hand, she was very unhappy because of the struggles that she faced and her parent also sent her off to many different schools over a period of 10 years. and that was very hard on a young child, teenager, young adult woman who was constantly separated from her family who she loved very, very much and wanted to be with. so her life had bright moments

but also a lot of struggles. >> she was only 11, cord to your book she went to the first boarding school they sent her to in pennsylvania, if i'm correct. so, she didn't adjust very well when she had the big transitions in her life and she never stayed at these schools very long it seems. did it not occur to her parents at some point maybe this approach wasn't working for her? >> it's choo whether they understood this bouncing her from one school to the next was actually harming her. i think they tried really hard to find a place where she could learn and be safe and, achieve things, that, they expected her to achieve. and when those schools didn't seem to perform for them, they didn't, they didn't wait, they just put her in another school. that sun fortunate. and she suffered tremendously from the transitions from school

to school. >> in some ways that means to me they treated her a lot like their other children because teddy went to a dozen schools i think. all the children moved when rose would move down to florida for the winter, she would pull kids out of school and put them in school down there. so it must have just been standard operating procedure? >> it was partly standard operating procedure but also with rosemary she needed more time to make adjustments and that was very unfair to her. that was clear after the first transitions of a couple of different schools. and so it is unfortunate that rose and joe didn't take a step back, say, maybe we should pause here before we send her to a different school. they also had unrealistic expectations of her. and they expected that she would perform better in these schools, and she just couldn't. she was not capable. and at the time, most schools could not provide appropriate

kind of educational programing for people with disabilities like rosemary had. so, they just were determined that they were going to cure her and that those were their words, cure her of her disabilities when we know that in fact that's not possible. >> in fact, maybe that delusion, maybe that approach sort of explains a little bit her, she was fairly high-functioning young woman, wasn't she? >> she was. >> presented to the king and queen of england as a debutante? >> right. she achieved i would say about a fourth grade education level. her maturity level was probably about the same. hard to say because i never met her in person but given what she writes in the letters that are here at the kennedy library you can see her emotional level is, you know, quite immature. but she, she could function. and today she certainly would be mainstreamed into classrooms.

and as an adult, perhaps even live independently with resources and support systems. but in those day, none of that was available. >> and that stigma, did that stigma explain some of the duplicity you described in the book where rose and joe didn't exactly reveal everything about rosemary's abilities when they put her in one school or another school? they sort of suggested she was higher functioning than she was? >> the first school they sent her away to when she was 11 years old was the devereux school in pennsylvania and that was a specific school created for children with intellectual disabilities and the woman who ran the school was very successful with other students but because the kennedys believed that rosemary could be cured, they really were not willing to accept that label that she had disabilities. they were not pleased with her progress there. so they moved her to other

schools, traditional schools. and, she could not keep up with classmates, even though she might be put in a classroom with other 8th graders let's say, she could still only perform at fourth grade level, the kennedys, joe and rose, did not inform most teachers this was actually what was going on with rosemary. so they had expectations, the teachers had expectations of rosemary, her parent did. rosemary could not meet those expectations. so, they were duplicitous. i don't know how they thought these teachers were going to perform some miracle on rosemary, particularly after they go through two, three more schools and things are not changing. so, it seemed more like they just wanted rosemary sent away somewhere than really trying to find appropriate educational setting. >> was progress complicated by the family not recognizing or not wanting to acknowledge this wasn't simply a case of

intellectual disabilities? you make wonderful use of the primary sources here at the library where you quote teachers who talk about her belligerence, her acting out? it seems that there was mental illness combined with intellectual %isabilities? >> as rosemary aged, into her teen years, and young adulthood, it became apparent there was more going on than just simply, young person's frustrations at being, having expectations they can't meet, as many people have intellectual disabilities do have frustrations and they do lash out, but things were going on with rosemary indicate perhaps there were some mental health issues emerging in her teen years. certainly as a young adult woman, mental illness began to appear in rosemary and her parents. clearly were not sure what they should do about that, other than

quiet her, silence her. >> she never really received mental health treatment, did she? all these efforts were designed to improve her academic performance. doesn't sound there was much of an effort to deal with her emotional problems? >> no. of course you brought up the issue of stigma. first of all there was a stigma attached to having a child with intellectual disabilities. there were horrific phrases that they used at time period like, moron and imbecile and rose and joe, here they have this beautiful daughter, and they certainly don't want those labels placed on their daughter. so, they thought they could shift her away and hide those disabilities. but when it came to mental illness they weren't equipped to deal wit, frankly neither was the medical establishment as well. people were warehoused in horrific institutions. people who had mental illness, and, for rosemary, you know, there really weren't medications except for maybe a barbituate

that would have put her to sleep or calmed her down. so there were very few resources. rose and joe were smart enough to know that there might be mental health issues going on with rosemary because they did investigate placing her in a psychiatric, psychiatric institution in the fall of 1941. those records are here in the library. they ended up not doing that. i'm not clear why, but, they were aware, excuse me, that she had some mental health issues. >> it's interesting, as you say, the options weren't that many in the '40s. it wasn't until the late '50s we start getting psycho trope i can drugs that can help people with mental illness. >> right. >> lobotomies seemed like a logical choice although may sound horrific to us today? >> it is horrific and i feel pretty strongly that it was, it

didn't necessarily look like the best option. at the time that joe kennedy starting investigating lobotomies they were being done by a pair of doctors in washington, d.c., walter freeman and james watts. and they were basically experimenting. it was very rarely done across the world. and they had operated on fewer than 100 patients by the time they performed the lobotomy on rosemary. the american medical association was clear that spring and summer they reported that they felt that it was too experimental. the side-effects were too dramatic, and that lobotomies needed to be researched more before they continued performing them on live patients. joe was really smart man. he would have known that. he would have had that resource. he would have known that the american medical association was not recommending it. but he went ahead and had her robot mizeed anyway.

>> why? >> i think he felt he needed to silence her in a way, make her more as doctors would have told him, more compliant and more ply ant, less emotional. -- compliant. >> what were the consequences of that lobotomy for rosemary? >> the best-case scenario she would have been sort of devoid of feeling and ply -- pliable and compliant. rosemary became completely disabled, physically and intellectually disabled. she left the operation not being able to walk or talk. she had a permanent physical disability as a result of the lobotomy. she regained ability to speak a few words, a few phrases and she could never take care of herself again for the rest of her life. >> which leads to the question

that's really bothered everybody who heard this story since they read doris kerns good win book, in 1988 that she didn't see the daughter for 20 years after the lobotomy. how could that be and why? >> i wish i had an answer. as a mother i can't imagine not seeing my child for 20 years. i think perhaps, rose, always looked forward, her whole life, she had many disappointments but she was committed to looking forward and she looked to her faith to guide her and move forward. and i think she did with this instance as well. rosemary was going to be institutionalized and so she didn't need to see her daughter anymore. she would concentrate on the rest of her children. however, i, i still, you know, it is all well and good to say

that, really how do you not see your child for 20 years? i can't get my head around that, i really can't and joe of course maybe saw her for a couple years and he stopped visiting her as well. that is remarkable to me because rosemary was still cognizant. she knew her family. she remembered her siblings. knew her parents but she didn't see them. >> and she comes back into their lives in the early '70s. we start seeing, you know, they start to visit her and bring her back. joe was dead by then. >> right. >> so was the death of the ambassador like a precipitating act that brought her back into the family? >> i think that was part of it. i think, eunice did a tremendous amount of work bringing out the story of rosemary who hadn't lex wall disabilities after the president had been elected, her

brother jack had been elected. during the 1960s the public was becoming more and more used to having conversations about people with intellectual disabilities so they could talk about rosemary more and once the many a ambassador died in 1969, i think rose, who was becoming quite elderly herself, now had more time to reconnect with her daughter and re integrate rosemary into the phamfamily. i think the shrivers were spending time with rosemary anyway, but by 1970s rosemary made trips to eye hyannis port and spenting sometime with siblings and. they were getting to know her. they became inspired by her. >> you tell a really poignant and said story in the book about rosemary's first encounter it with her mother after those 20 years. want to recount it for the audience?

>> this comes from the one of the sisters in st. coleta in jefferson, wisconsin, where rosemary spent last 50 years of her life. she recoiled when she saw her mother for the first time. she knew who her mother was. she knew she hadn't seen her mother. did she blame her mother for the lobotomy? i'm not really sure. did she blame her father? i'm not really sure. that hasn't been recorded but certainly pain, anguish, were part of her lived experience. that all came flooding back to her when she saw her mother. >> that is so counter to the in popular imagination how we think of rose kennedy. the narrative has always been of this doting mother, who hovers above her children. was that your experience in your research of rose kennedy? >> well she hovered in a certain way. certainly she viewed herself as a very professional mother. and, she looked to catholic

faith to guide her in being a mother and that she would be at home and train her children to be good citizens and good catholics and good people. that was her mission. and i think she did do that they were good people, good catholics. i didn't see her as a very terribly warm person. joe, their father, was definitely much more demonstrative, emotionally, with his children than rose was. so she, you know, she was very cold and in some ways. i mean she loved her children. certainly. but she had a way about her at that was not very warm and cuddly. she was dedicated to rosemary. friends of theirs in testimony to other historians who have written about the family talked about the amount of time that rose spent with rosemary when she was a child, helping her with her school work, working

with her on the tennis court spending a lot more time with her than she did with the other children. there is that side of rose that she had this sort of job that she wanted to do and she wanted to provide the best for her children. and so she did that in the best way that she could. but she also, wanted her own life and she would spend months at a time traveling around europe and leave the children with you know, govern necessary -- governness and nurses. the letters rosemary writes home and you can see them in the library, are heartbreaking. she misses her mother and her father and her siblings. she is like, i'm trying so hard. l@if i'm good can i come home? this is one of the really sad parts of schools she was sent to, particularly one that was school for intellectually disabled. they used behavior and doing

well in school as a sort of a ticket home. so if rosemary did well and if she behaved well, she could go home for thanksgiving. if she didn't, they were she couldn't. now for a 11-year-old girl, i can't imagine that kind of requirement and you know, she was, she wrote a series of letters home, i'm trying to be good. are you sure. i want to come home for thanksgiving, and, you know, please, will you tell, mrs. devereux i can come home for thanksgiving. it is just heartbreaking, heartbreaking. >> did you have a sense in those letters, she writes to her siblings as well, and, of just, desperately lonely little girl? who wanted nothing more than to be part of this big, family? she may have been overwhelmed by them but she clearly missed them. >> she missed them. she also had a sense that she was the older sister. so on one hand she's, i am ma tire and not quite as capable

younger sister kathleen, and eunices so sort of talks to them in very child-like way. at same time she is wear she's older sister. now, i want you to write me a letter. you be a good girl and write. so there is this, you know, she has this conflicting thing going on, but it's so adorable. just so precious. it really is. >> poignant. . .

after she healed from the lobotomy. several months after her surgery she was sent to a place that was not really equipped to help a disabled person like rosemary regain her abilities. so she ended up at st. gladys, and the nuns were remarkable. they helped to regain speech, exercise every day. rose ended up paying for a pull through rosemary's trust fund to build the pool so that she could go swimming everyday. interestingly, in one of the records of one of the sisters talking about how they stopped giving rosemary medication that she had been taking for a long time command all of a sudden rosemary started talking. obviously theytalking. obviously they had been over medicating her probably from the craig's house years. but it took the sisters at saint gladys and some of the

physicians that they were working with to recognize that maybe rosemary did not need these dating medicines anymore or as much. she kind of blossomed after that. >> and her own little college on the grounds. >> right. >> she had a dog. >> a dog, bird, and so she had a full life. she loved to go shopping. the nuns would take her into town to go shopping. the nuns would drive rosemary in the car into town, and she had friends. there were a couple of women that were there that she spent time with every single day. she had friendships and a routine that she was used to and happy with. in fact, she was so happy in that context that when she started making the visits to

palm beach they were very disruptive for her, and it was a difficult time, not only resentful toward her mother, but that transition to an unfamiliar place was very hard upon her.her. it probably was not always the best rosemary you appeared. >> and those visits continued. for the end of her life. >> exactly. she would attend a special olympic events. you know, there are pictures of her in hyannis and palm beach going to church, stuff like that. >> part of this story resonates with you. you wereyou were attracted to her story because of some of your own personal experience. are you comfortable sharing this? >> i started researching this in 2,008 i was researching it because i am a woman who was fascinated by the story. my son was diagnosed with schizophrenia and all of a sudden my husband and i were thrown into this world of having to take care of a child with a serious

disability and mental illness. and whatand what parents go through and what you need and want to do for your child. i got a slightly different perspective on rosen joe. i became a little bit more harsh in my opinion of them. on the other hand, i became almost more sympathetic. it is a lot of hard work to have a child with a disability. the kennedys had a tremendous amount of money. they couldthey could have used those resources even more so to take care of rosemary, and even today if this happens to a young woman with a family like that with those resources, the average family who does not have the money, the resources are not they're and it is -- done a lot for people with intellectual

disabilities and physical disabilities, but our nation has not done enough for people with mental illness and the families they love them. >> and it is true, isn't it, that we have come so far in dealing with intellectual disabilities that the stigma is not as great as it once was. and even when misses shriver wrote the saturday evening in 19621962 which revealed to the world that rosemary had intellectual disabilities, that peace does not talk about the mental illness piece. there is no mention of it. >> and i don't think the family looks at it that way, except patrick kennedy who recently came out with his own personal story and that of the family and he does say in his book that clearly rosemary had mental illness and that the family would never talk about that, and he wants his family to talk about that. i want the whole country to start talking about it because we need to

have that conversation, get rid of the stigma, and the kennedy family is still living with the fear of the stigma, we should all the talking about this and find ways to provide more resources. >> he began this journey is a professional historian and wound up with a cause. >> exactly. thanks to rosemary you obviously, that is a legacy that she has given to many of the kennedys today, a cause, and for me she is giving me this platform as well. i had an interview the other day. rosemary was amused, amuse for her family, siblings who went on to really affect a tremendous amount of change for people with disabilities. >> hopefully she will continue to be a muse. [applause] >> should be open it up to the audience? >> thank you.

>> they would be happy to take your questions if you have some. do not be shy. yes, sir. >> i was curious what happens to the two physicians? did you ever go after them or just ignore the fact that they butchered his daughter? >> we have no idea. records are not available because they are medical records. even records that are not completely medical records have disappeared. george washington university , they are just not there. i did not have a lawsuit or anything like that, so he did not publicly or even through the court do anything. james watts and walter freeman continued working together for several more years, and then freeman went off and became the same as a lobotomized and develop the ice pick lobotomy procedure

and lobotomized thousands of people. thousands of people. >> to give us historical context, the bottom these were performed routinely, right? and the man who originated the lobotomy won a nobel prize in 1949. so we look back at four and what happens to rosemary, people thought that it was going to be a miracle cure in the 40s. >> they were couple of interesting things about it. one is that there were some successes but when you look at the researcher freeman and rots and they also had another dr., they were touting the success of the cooperation of the great majority of patients were much better off.

they were not truthful in their work. they lied. and as the bottom is became a popular i discover between 60 and 80 percent of the patients were women when women were only 40 percent of psychiatric emissions. so more women were subject to this operation than men and in those they were none, having this done to their loved ones very easily. >> want to silence women. talking. >> my name is caroline clark, ghost of kennedy library. patrick recently publicly said that his family was very disturbed about the appearance. i have heard nothing.

>> yes, sir? >> the circumstances of rosemary's birth. >> absolutely. i open the book with the circumstances of rosemary's birth. september 1918, and the spanish influenza has already made a sweep around the globe and killed millions command it was making a 2nd pass hitting boston in september of 1918, 1918, and thousands of people had died and thousands more were in the hospital. roses, obstetricians, doctors at the time are busy at a hospital and she went into labor. she had a nurse with her to help monitor and keep her calm and get her ready, but rose, her labor became fast and furious and she wanted to deliver the baby but the obstetrician was not there.

thethe nurse who had been trained on how to deliver a baby requested that rose hold the baby back because the priority, even though the nurse had been trained call was to wait for the dr. toe child. of course, rose could not hold the baby back. use cannot do that. so the mayor's held baby rosemary back in the birth canal. clearly -- and it was for apparently a couple of hours. so baby rosemary was deprived of oxygen which certainly would have contributed to her intellectual disability. >> women. >> i think you have left them breathless. you breathless. you know, that raises a question for me. you know, as historians you look back, and perhaps that is what happened, but how do we know? >> we do not know for sure, sure, but we know that

it did happen. so, you know. >> the family said no reaction the you are aware of. members of the family of the man spoken with, would have lived through those years? the only surviving sibling or any other family members? >> i spoke to the shriver's. very gracious and i had several conversations with anthony shriver who provided a couple of photographs for the book of rosemary as a disabled adult, incredibly gracious. i spoke to a couple of distant cousins, charlie burke command i reached out to the ambassador, but no response. from what i understand from the shriver's and others is that the younger generations know nothing about what happens to rosemary. and in fact anthony had said to me that they did not know what happens to rosemary and

perhaps i could find out let them know. so i certainlyi certainly was able to find out some things that happened to rosemary. patrick kennedy recently came out and said, his family never talked about any of these secrets. he grew up not knowing anything about not only rosemary, but his own father. so it is not surprising that the younger generations have no knowledge. jean, of course, she was a teenager, maybe 13, 14 years old when rosemary disappeared from the family.

it is very clear. that is rosemary's legacy. a tragedy and this incredible outcome. the way that we were able to affect change for millions of people around the country in the world. >> do they still perform that procedure and have they replaced it with something else similar? >> lobotomies are very, very rarely performed today. i believe that they use lasers today. do not quote me, but i think that they do. >> i think across the country. and so there are certain cases where it is recommended. and according to laws and medical boards, there must be a specific patient board and the medical board that

has to review the case. the hospital has to donate the time and services and equipment, donate his time, and no one gets paid. it is only used in extreme cases, and i spoke to a friend who friend who is a neurosurgeon command he has done it twice in his career, and it was for people who had been institutionalized, basically in straitjackets for the entire lives in psychiatric hospitals. and thisand this particular surgery is incredibly effective for a particular type of mental illness. and so the two patients he told me about were able to leave the psychiatric hospital, get a high school, college masters degree and live independent lives, so it does happen, but it is with great, great care, and it is not very often. >> assigned special needs because of rosemary because he knew that she and the family, that was like --

>> and eileen would probably no more than i, but i think eunice got president kennedy. i think eunice got the president to pay attention to this issue. >> absolutely. >> kate, i would like to salute your beautiful, fantastic book. besides the problem, this could be to make awareness of this book to many other problems in the united states with disability. i respect and thank you so much. >> thank you. [applause] >> well, if there is not anything else, there was a question, we are thrilled that you came, deliged