policy events in washington d.c. and around the country. cspan is brought to you by your cable or satellite provider. >> book tv is on twitter and facebook. we want to hear from you. tweet us at twitter.com/book tv. or poster, on our facebook page. >> all right. good afternoon everyone. thank you so much for coming out to politics and prose. had my name is jenny. on behalf of the staff and owners, welcome to our store. we are excited to welcome eileen to talk about her new book, just a couple housekeeping notes, if we could all take a second to silence our phones, that would be great, also, we get to the

question-and-answer portion of the event, if you wouldn't mind using this microphone in the aisle so we can pick up your voice, that would be appreciated. now for eileen's book. eileen mcnamara spent about 30 years at the boston globe. while there she was one of the first to write about the abuses in the catholic church. to choice a awards from her long list of accolades are the in her latest book, she argues that eunice kennedy is the kennedy who left the greatest legacy. after the tragic mistreatment of her impaired sister rosemary, by the medical community, eunice used her wealth, strengthen education to advocate for people with cognitive differences and their families. the washington post, mcnamara has written a fair-minded work.

the children. [inaudible] [applause] >> thank you so much. thanks for having me politics and prose. i remember this place because it opened its doors the first year i was in washington when the boston globe asked me too visit politics and prose. we were trying to find out exactly what was in the tax reform package that i was supposed to cover but i don't think i ever did figure that out that this was a wonderful place.

it was also the year that ronald ragan presented the medal of freedom. but i don't actually remember that. and. must've been my colleague in the white house who covered that ceremony. when i thought about eunice entity shriver in 1984. i'm guessing i would've thought she is president kennedy sister, she was the wife of sergeant shriver, she is maria shriver's mother. i wrote this in part to restore her to her own place in history which is remarkable for so many things beyond the founding of the special olympics. who is she? >> calling this was a stretch for me.

everyone in her life, people who knew her for decades called her mrs. shriver. her daughters in law called her mrs. shriver. i was sure that if we named it eunice, there would be a thunderbolt, it would hit me crossing connecticut avenue. that eunice it was an eunice she was part who was she. she was the often overlooked middle child of joe and rose fitzgerald kennedy. she was not old enough to be part of a golden trio, jack, joe junior, they were the glamorous kennedys. rosemary was tucked in the middle, forgotten in her own way. she wound up at the kids table most of the time, supervising rosemary cutting her meat for.

she founded a a disadvantage to be overlooked in that way. she became the best sailor, the best tennis i player, the most aggressive of the touch football players. simply to get his eyes on her and off of the boys. in 1959 she wrote a letter to her father, probably saying i know you are so busy daddy, spending all your time worrying about the boys careers. what about me? so, she knew the answer to that question in the kennedy family, power was the reserve of the men. the men played, the women prayed. it was not in the cards for her to get his attention in

this political kind of way she hoped too. what joe kennedy wouldn't give, she took. she hijacked the charitable foundation. for all of its existence, the names of the president of the josep joseph p kennedy association, named for her older brother was killed in world war ii, the president was either john fitzgerald kennedy or robert m kennedy. the foundation was her baby. the condition called mental retardation that the experts wanted in their advice to peopl people, what was the advice to mothers and fathers when she was growing up? what was the advice right through the 50s,

institutionalize your child for the sake of your other children in your marriage. that didn't wash with eunice. they had kept rosemary at home as long as they could when mental illness intruded on the intellectual disability she suffered. joe was grasping at straws. whether he was misguided or ill intentioned is for others to decide but i think he grabbed on to the possibility of this new cycle neurological surgery would cure his daughter. instead the prefrontal lobotomy left or immobilized. you can walk or talk. then came the real sin, the real guilt that eunice spent her life trying to resolve, i think, not just for her but

her whole family. joe kennedy shot his daughter away in a psychiatric institution in upstate new york. it was ill-equipped to deal with her. they had no rehabilitative services for. it wasn't until she 1949 she was sent somewhere else where rehabilitation began and she got her speech back. she was able to walk again. through the end of her life she could only say a few words of one of those words was eunice. we don't know exactly when eunice learned that her sister had been the bottom i, i think she learned in 1949. i found a letter that says your daughter's personal physician has passed away and

we need your recommendation for a new doctor for rosemary. rose wrote back and said i prefer the letter to mrs. shriver because my daughter was involved in the original selection of a doctor for rosemary. and when it came time to transfer her to wisconsin, joe turned to one child who had been closest to rosemary all her life. she took her on as crew in sailing races and spent hours on the tennis races trying to help rosemary develop coordination. it was only natural that he would bring her of all the children into this decision. it fuels something that propelled her to her life relentlessly, powerfully. when i heard about that presidential medal, how nice, what a nice woman she was to do all that charity work. she was a lot of things.

nice was not one of them. her work was a lot. one thing it wasn't was charity. she was not about charity. she was not a lady bountiful giving her money and her gifts to the less fortunate. she didn't see her constituency as less fortunate. she saw them as equal. we remember her for special olympics, of course, but that wasn't the accomplishment. she got us to look at the whole population in a different way. she is the anti- joe kennedy for whom only first-place finishes count. coming in second wasn't enough. what's the model of special

olympics. let me win but if i cannot win, let me be brave. her father's great gift was public relation. were watching a six part series on cnn about the kennedy family. why are we so fascinated. joe kennedy took this family and he molded them and he sold us them and we bought them. in the six part series of hours and hours of information that we already know there is exactly one sentence devoted to eunice kennedy shriver and it's an enormous injustice. the subtitle of the book in my contention that she left at least the most significant legacy of her brothers is a little bold, i admit. they said none of us would be here of jack kennedy hadn't

resolved the cuban missile crisis. mr. thomas i can see that point. what you think about what she did. she made a see this whole population in an absolutely new way. she said every child is entitled to a home. every child is entitled to play and compete. i won't fall apart if they lose something of the joy of they wi win. that was a revolutionary idea in the 60s. equally revolutionary was opening her estate in maryland to a camp for these children. how did that about? because a woman marilyn called her up and said the kennedy family is doing so much on this issue, wiser no place for me too send my daughter to summer camp and mrs. shriver

said where you live. she said i live in maryland. she looked out the back window and she said i lived in maryland and i have 200 acres so she opened a camp, she had no idea what she's doing. she was making it up and recruited volunteers in a camp counselors from the local catholic schools to build equipment she needed. she recruited the prisoners, i don't that what happened today exactly, so he had people who are in very serious crimes were working alongside the little catholic schoolgirls out in the backyard and eunice thought it was all grand because just like these children deserve the chance, sort of those inmates. if you made a mistake in your

life, she was a many who believed in second chances. we didn't have the laws in place that we have now but as far as we know, nobody got murdered. everything went along swimmingly. if you look at pictures from that era of camp shriver where the buses would roll up and salute the flag and said the pledge of allegiance and there's little children and her mother had to answer their playmates were really disabled children were wearing helmets and banging their heads on trees and children in wheelchairs playing catch, swimming with children who had never been in a swimming pool before because she believed anybody could do anything.

those children were black, brown, white, all hues of the rainbow in 1962. what i learned in researching this book is how often she got there first she got there before her brothers on almost every issue that we associate them with. she is working in washington in 1945, two years before jack arrived in washington as a lackluster freshman congressman. she was his roommate in georgetown where they had wonderful political salons and dinner parties and she was working for the justice department, quarterbacking a task for us on juvenile the link with the which became her great passion. it wasn't until 1961 that bobby kennedy discovered

juvenile the link was he when he was attorney general and he created task force. who do you think told him to create that task force? she said we need to look at the juvenile delinquency issue. embarrassed feel biography of the boys that i read eunice is portrayed as a pain in the. they got that part right. what they didn't get right was this notion that president kennedy listen to his sister because she was such an annoyance. what if he was listening to her because, on issues that matter to eunice kennedy shriver, she knew what worked and she knew what didn't work and she didn't want to waste any time. she wanted him to focus on stuff that mattered. he has no record of caring about this issue at all in the united states congress.

lackluster career in the house , a little better in the senate but on the senate he was on the committee that would've heard the very first piece of federal legislation that was designed to give federal dollars to trained teachers and special education. jack kennedy walked out of the hearing before the testimony began. much to the annoyance of the special ed community that knew what the rest of the country did not that this issue had touched the kennedy family as well. what all the advocates didn't know is that they would have an advocate in the kennedy family much more committed than any politician would ever be. before he took field as president of the united states, she had already secured a promise that he would create a presidential commission to look at this issue. he would draft legislation to fix it.

to close those institutions in which these kids were housed, to put money into special education, to make sure they have the right to receive in a public school classroom, which, by the way, they didn't have until 1975. they wouldn't have had that without the change in public perception that eunice brought through special olympics. >> the commission lasted for two years. it spent the first year figuring out what the problems were in trying to design solutions to fix them. one of the problems was there is nothing in the national institute of health that is committed to studying child development. we don't understand where these problems come from. we need to study prenatal conditions, we need to study infancy, we need an institute for child health and human development.

the national institute of health wasn't interested. it was sort of a threat to general medicine which felt like health is health whether you're a child or an adult. of course now we know that's not true at all and eunice believed with no medical training that it was not true, that the needs of children and the needs in the womb an early after birth were very distinct and need a distinct group of scientists to study them. jack remained unconvinced so she took him failing in a nantucket town where i guess all major decisions in the kennedy a ministration get big. so out they are on the water and she says to jack, what i'm asking for is something you have to think about in personal ways. you and jackie have had two enormous losses. jackie had lost a child to miscarriage. she had had a stillbirth.

patrick had not yet been born. those two losses should convince you that we don't know enough about why women miscarry. we don't know enough about stillbirth when he said why thought you were just preoccupied with mental retardation. she said it's all of the peace and we now have what is called the eunice kennedy shriver institute for child health and human development. it was created during the kennedy administration because she saw what so many people in medicine could not see. ironically, when patrick was born he died shortly after birth. he died of hyaline membrane disease which is a lung disease that no children die of today because at the institute of child health and human development research into the development of lungs

in the world had progressed in such a way that it's in non- starter as a serious threat to children. we all that to eunice. we think of her as the special olympics, but it's much much archer than that. advocacy touched all our lives without us knowing it. any of us who have carried a child on that to her. she was a massive contradiction, my idea that she was a lovely lady who had this great charitable heart, this is half true, she was certainly compassionate and empathetic to these children, it's she was largely an absent mother, while writing pieces for the ladies home journal about how motherhood was the most sacred profession in that these women's liberation feminists were devaluing motherhood, she was probably

writing that in the car on the way to work. lots of women who have very active and busy lives can see the contradictions and she certainly couldn't see it in herself. she was a fighter and she fought all her life, not just for this population but for pregnant teenagers, for troubled kids, she was on the front line of everything. we look at the kennedy legacy and we see 47 years in the united states senate from ted. what we don't see is how many of those pieces of legislation that bear his name had their roots in a conversation at the dinner table with eunice kennedy shriver including the 1975 law that required school districts to give a seat in the classroom to a disabled child. including the american with disability act. that law, which fundamentally changed the relationship with

people with intellectual and physical disabilities to the world around them owes a lot to eunice entity shriver. it is now a violation of their civil rights to deny them a place in the workplace, a home, an apartment building. they can wield their wheelchairs across the street now. the same rights extend to those with intellectual disabilities. i would like to say that in 1984 ceremony in which she was honored, other people might think of it as a retirement age with the presidential medal of freedom was the end of her career. she might've learned to relax, but that was not the end of her career. she went on for two more decades to fight this fight. in the fall of 2008, six

months before. she threw a program for best buddies which is a corollary to the special olympics where able-bodied people are matched up with children with intellectual disabilities. prosocial activities and friendships, it's an idea that anthony shriver, her youngest child conceived in his dorm room at georgetown and she made it come to life by funding it through the kennedy foundation. the last big gala to celebrate that achievement by anthony raised three and half million dollars for that effort. she was old and tired in 2008. she slipped away from the party, she went upstairs in the elevator that she had installed for rosemary because it was eunice after joe

kennedy suffered a debilitating stroke that silenced his very powerful voice who brought rosemary back into the center that family. she swam again, she came to visit in maryland with the shriver's, she was at dinner at ted's on eunice's arm. she brought her back to the heart of the family, and she stayed there until she died in 2005 with all of her siblings at her side. eunice goes upstairs to her bedroom, she crawled into bed, propped herself up and in typical fashion has pencils coming out of her fifth hair and has a scattering of legal pads on her bed. she summons lola wagner to her bedside. she is the former senator from connecticut who is the mother of a child with disabilities.

lola goes to her side thinking this is going to be a friendly chat. he knows she's in ailing health and was diagnosed with a brain tumor that would take his life the following summer. he said, i walked into the room and there she is, as fierce as she's ever been saying what are we going to do about these amendments to the americans with disabilities act. i'm worried. what if tom harkin retires. what are we gonna do with outworn hatch. he said i was tempted to sit on the edge of her bed but he was frightened because she was so loud so they hashed out politics to the very end of her life. she was fighting the fight. one thing eunice learned, and i think passed on to the five children who continue that

work was that passing legislation in this town is never the end. it's beginning. you have to fight for every real preparation, you have to be on the frontlines, all the time because the battle is never over. it's never over. people forget. so you can never forget, and she didn't. that's my little spiel, i always find that these events that you are much smarter and have better questions so i'll turn it over to you. [applause] >> questions please. >> oh, you're shy. go ahead. >> i'm not shy because i'm irish.

>> you not going to get an argument for me. >> i know. i want to thank you. that is one of the best talks i've heard and i enjoyed every minute of it. >> thank you. i also want to thank you for bringing alive forum to such an important process. your words echo the words. [inaudible] it caught my eye and it's a quote from dr. seuss. why fit in when you can stand out. clearly eunice stood out and fitting and was not important

to her, not only that, she sustained the effort to fit in and make it look like all the family were fine. that's what holds all of us back. so thank you for inspiring us with such an inspiring story of such an inspiring woman, and in doing that, you encourage in all of us to go out and forget about fitting in and doing what we need to do even if it requires standing out. >> great, you give a better speech than i do. [applause] i think you hit on something that's really true about eunice. she was a real character in addition to everything else. she wore more men's trousers and men shoes, she stood 510 and weighed about 109 pounds. her mother would send her these very notes, i saw you on

television in your pants were too tight in the seat. i need to teach you how to wear pearls on the blouse and eunice didn't care about any of that. she really, the superficial didn't matter to her. maria told me she used to ask her mother to please park down the street when she picked her up from school he cuts her mother would not be looking very nice. : : : :

she didn't win but she knew when to walk away and circle and come back and realized i think before the sergeant realized it could end badly. the press secretary told me wherever they went, she would say as long as we are here, let's visit whatever the local and touche institution i is in your marvelous photographs throughout the fall of 1972 doing push-ups with special olympians, playing basketball and i know she said we lost that so let's do this.

i found a wonderful telegram in her papers and tim shriver's remark was i'm not entirely sure if because if i had to guess they were just very on tv. [laughter] not a single one. but there was a telegram that they had sent begging him not to drop out and they said this is an opportunity. let's talk about depression. this would be a great gift to the country so she was brave and defied convention. the instinct was there.

>> how would you say they influenced each other over the course of the life? >> she was very tough on him and he knows how to talk to the common man always quoting theologians which he did do quite a bit. they pushed each other and told each other he was the maternal part of the family and he was a warm, tender him a human being. the kids that every night at dinner she would raise his class of fine wine and say we are

going to toast the most beautiful, the most wonderful woman in the world and i would invariably say mommy did not reply. she even more than her love for him she expect him enormously because they came out of the same tradition of social justice and that was the fight they were in it together but truth be told she never would have married sargent shriver if she hadn't married anyone. for decades, some of you may know the president of notre da dame.

ask them to have a little chat who was then living and working in a home run by the nuns and she had it in her mind she was going to join the convent because it was the one place wherwhere she saw that powerful women got to run the show and that had enormous appeal. she said i have to tell you when we were in school together everybody thought younis had a vocation to the. it couldn't be because joe kennedy's plans for his son as they would be the first

president of the united states. and you're not going to elect the first catholic president of the united states on the arm of the woman in a black veil. can you see that? it is a vision indeed but was never going to happen. he was immediately smitten because she was very bright. the. they hoped it would take spontaneously. so they dated for seven years at

which point joe got impatient. they called her down from chicago to notre dame and said you have a vocation to [inaudible] and he told the story a hundred times but he would never say it on the record so if you read the biography so that year before after three priests told me independently able tell you what happened. i called and asked the question, long pause.

it can't hurt anybody to tell the truth. he said i woul i would have if w what a wonderful man he was. it worked beautifully. a senator who shall remain nameless when i interviewed him for the buck but one final dinner with the sargent shriver i would do that in a heartbeat. [laughter]

i have a 36-year-old dot daughter who moved from because she wanted her parents to have assistants with her 31-year-old sister with down syndrome. when the weather is like this she takes her to swim practice the special of the and the whole family goes to swimming meet so it's great to have a resource like this i can read about person that made this possible and it makes me realize my dot daughter was put in my life to make me a better person.

>> the first special olympics was 50 years ago this summer and the first year only about 100 parents showed up to see the parents participated. now it attracts hundreds of thousands of around the globe. what she did that is magical to me if she encouraged parents to be proud of their children, so that's great [inaudible]

this is a little shorter. [laughter] i would like to ask the question another way to find in the conventions in 1982 in the convention they signed an ad signed by other people that you carry it became an ever more inclusive society and the u.s. welcomed and protected its workers, created the slaves, and short of the civil rights and made public space accessible of the service to its ideals of justice and in 1973 the supreme

court in its decisions reversed the pattern of expanding inclusion. they decrypt every human being for the first nine months of his or her life of the most fundamental human rights of all, delighthe light and the right t. you don't hear much about us in the newspapers but there are a lot of progressive elizabeth warren democrats who agree with eunice shriver of legal abortion is not progressive. besidebesides "the new york tim" added as a matter of public record, did you find private letters or other evidence that eunice shriver's antiabortion letters? >> eunice shriver was nothing if not consistent in her life. she opposed abortion just as she opposed capital punishment. there is a theory in a church in

which she was grounded in the theory that all of life is part of one garment you can't blame the part olend apart of it awayr part. the. the original position was in opposition to abortion. after 73 in the decision, the democratic party changed places. one of the great things about looking at a woman like eunice kennedy shriver as she looked through some of the most extraordinary times and auburn history. and we forget opposition to abortion was originally a liberal decision. it was a liberal progressive position. the black panther party

denounced as genocide. in their view it was a way for the structure to take down the population of african americans in the country. the it would be whether she was a stronger democrat or catholic. she accepted an award and she wasn't shy about it. it was her conviction after considerable thought that it wasn't going to be overturned so i deal a lot with her position. i don't happen to share it, but i respect enormously where it came from.

she was in physical pain every day of her life. she had all kinds of diabolical issues going on in her body much like her brother jack kennedy. but she also suffered for those that found themselves in the position they were seeking an abortion. every woman i interviewed the former senator would never want to have dinner with her again is that she didn't judge. so she was able to hold her own belief very closely and be public about them. when did the spark for us to go off in your mind that you needed to write this book and how long ago was that?

>> too long ago. it's been a long ride. if thinking about the possibility of this book i looked up as obituaries and i recount these it was enormous and hers was on the front page and gave credit but didn't explore the legacy that she left. but i have to note in the photographs that ran through all of the women were either misidentified or they were omitted in higher late. they identified rosemary as

kathleen and the correction that ran the following day set everything to me about her struggle to be seen in the world and it's a struggle they still experience now as i said she got one sentence on the cnn six part series and i thought invisible or interchangeable that is your loss if you were one of kennedy's daughters. >> i will also say thank you for this incredible book on an incredible woman. i have a lot to say so i put a bunch of notes. one of the last times i saw eunice was her catholicism and devotion to catholicism.

one of her favorite theologians the vatican would allow the papers to be published and she championed him forever. i remember when shriver asked what are we going to do with maria she just felt this bodybuilder had to bring her into service so i was running the experiment and they said come on down what can we do and i said we can call the director and asked if he will have maria for the summer in synagogue. i said that's a great idea but the funny thing is eunice was sleeping on the sofa in his room

she had on his coat over her and jumped up and said great idea. even though she's only 18 i think this is fabulous. [laughter] said they sent her to survive ofsenegalwhich was amazing. i brought my dot daughter to the last special olympics and it was re-created in her backyard and here she was in her 80s and she said let's do that again. so this started the special olympics that was at least three years this is the first time i can bring her from connecticut to the special olympics and there is eunice shriver out there like 85-years-old swimming

with the olympians, talking to everyone just the energy was beyond comprehension and here ie created it again until the year she died. so impressed, she got her masters in special education from saint joseph college in hartford connecticut and one of the reasons is eunice and a speakethespeaker at her graduatd she was so impressed that for the rest of her life she worked with special olympics. right now i am working with peace corps volunteers for the sargent shriver mess in your

last two decades of his life working for special olympics under the tutelage of his wife. but anyway, thank you this was brilliant. i will buy even more copies. thank you so much. it seems like this was one of the early people to suffer from the glass ceiling that was emanating from inside of her family if joe had given the same quality and quantity of support

that they had given. i would like for you to comment on that. >> it wasn't just the kennedy family. it was the world itself that was mired in sexism in that era. it was hard for any woman in the 20th century america to be seen and to have opportunities to. would she have loved to be the one that joe chose to run in the districthedistrict of massachuss she would have. would she have made a better congressman and jack did speak to [laughter] >> people say she would have made a better senator and a night heard president. i don't think she could have gotten elected. she didn't have a political

street. street. she was in politics and said what she thought it didn't care what you thought and i don't think you could have changed that in her. they say that of bobby that he was ruthless and tough and infuriated people and somebody else to smootfields to smooth oe feathers he ruffled at the thata canadian man could do that. i don't think any women today can do that. she would not have teamed herself down to run for office. she had more respect for people like that in public office than anything she had accomplished. people would ask her, maria asked her in her dying weeks you must be proud of all you've done and accomplished.

[inaudible] that nature that would have made her a bad candidate in the age of optics and all that made her a fierce advocate. if she had been as aggressive as she was. she sat on his desk and inched her way closer and closer to his face and would say this is what we are going to do and this is what we are going to write. she never asked. she demanded and she got what

she wanted most of the time because she was intimidating and used her name to a great advantage. she used the kennedy name to a great effect for people who have no voice she didn't have to do that she could have had a lovely leisurely life but she wasn't capable of rest or relaxation. they talked to so many things that they never taught us to just sit down. [laughter] anyone else? when did you learn to imitate her? [laughter] you are really good. i listen to a lot of audiotapes. >> did you hea hear her voice a little bit when you were doing g research? >> actually i always felt like

she was over my shoulder. they kept the office as it was in the special olympics and it even has the same stuff i asked if i could go in and they said are you sure. as i walked around the room a book fell off the bookshelf and i -- they left me at with a doorknob trying to get myself out of there she wouldn't have liked me i don't know how to sail or play catch football. i don't weigh 105-pound.

i was everything she would have looked ucould havelooked up int. [laughter] she used to say to her kids if they were sitting down with the television on she would turn it ofoff and stay up up say out lor expression was on with your self. what does that mean? but they knew what it meant. it meant go to work, contribute to. so there you have it. >> i didn't stick around to find out i just wanted to get out of there. [inaudible] she wouldn't be resisting she would be in the oval office saying i don't do what you are

doing over here and over here but the american with disabilities act needs to be reauthorized and she didn't care who was in the oval office or who the president was. when clinton orchestrated welfare reform she didn't say anything reformist about it because it would have taken that away from children with intellectual disabilities. the other time it was a woman with a different job now and after she gave her an earful, she went to the oval office and gave bill clinton and earful and guess what happened the money got restored and people were taken care of.

but she knew you only have so much time and energy in the world and she focused her saw her people and protected them for 50 years. [applause] thank you for coming. [applause]

please return to your seat. if you are looking for a seat, there are a few available towards the front. it is my pleasure to welcome those of you that are new to this room to the 25th anniversary meeting of the cognitive neuroscience society and to introduce the keynote speaker. for those