The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [109]
Kirk was not finished with favors. In October, Jack was appointed an ensign under the chief of Naval Operations of Intelligence in Washington. Joe Jr., who had just been sworn in as an aviation cadet in the U.S. Naval Reserve, had decidedly mixed feelings about his kid brother donning the navy blue.
After all, Joe Jr. had paid his dues in weeks of rigorous training before he could affix the gold anchors that he was now privileged to wear. Jack had done nothing but pass a fake physical, and now, without a day of military training, he was an ensign, outranking his big brother. But as he told a friend, he was also worried about Jack’s troubled back and felt that his father should have exerted his influence to keep his younger brother out of uniform, not to get him in.
When Jack arrived in Washington in September, he was not the first Kennedy living in the city. His favorite sister, Kathleen, was working as a secretary at the Washington Times Herald, while Rosemary was living at a convent. Rosemary was so voluptuous, sweetly spoken, and demure that during the summers at Hyannis Port, Jack and Joe Jr. had to ward off young men. All their lives they had been good brothers watching out for their sister, protecting her. Rosemary had the mental age of a fifth- or sixth-grader. She could not keep up with the quick banter around the family dinner table, but to most people she looked like just another young Kennedy.
From the time she was a little girl and they realized she was “slow,” Joe and Rose had brought up their firstborn daughter as much like their other children as possible. She had special teachers at the convent schools where they sent her, but they tried to keep her life integrated with those of the rest of their children. In London, she had made her debut and been presented to the king and queen; after spending days learning the elaborate curtsy that other young women picked up in a few hours, she had awkwardly tripped before the monarchs.
Teddy knew nothing of the difficulties his big sister was facing. He only knew that good Rosemary was his gentle friend. She was not rushing out on dates or off with her friends like his other big sisters. She was there, ready to talk to him and play. To him, she was a dream of what an older sister should be. “I just had the feeling of a sweet older sister … who was enormously cheerful, affectionate, loving perhaps even more so than some of the older ones,” Teddy reflected. “She always seemed to have more time, and was always more available.”
Rosemary could have handled a menial job, but in 1941 there was no place for her to go. In recent months, she had begun to suffer from terrible mood swings. She had uncontrollable outbursts, her arms flailing and her voice rising to a pitch of anger. In the convent school in Washington the nuns were having a difficult time managing her. She sneaked out at night and returned in the early morning hours, her clothes bedraggled. The nuns feared that she was picking up men and might become pregnant or diseased.
Joe felt that he had to do something. “Mr. Kennedy was so afraid of her getting in trouble or of being kidnapped,” recalls Luella Hennessey, the family nurse. “It would be better for her not to be exposed to the general public in case she ran away. It would be better to almost ‘close the case.’ Then there wouldn’t be any more trouble.”
The newspapers and magazines were full of stories about a dramatic new surgical technique, the prefrontal leucotomy. The operation, known in the United States as a “lobotomy,” cut away the prefrontal