Saturday, January 8, 2005

Rosemary Kennedy, Senator's Sister, 86, Dies

ASHINGTON, Jan. 7 (AP) - Rosemary Kennedy, a sister of Senator Edward M. Kennedy who was born mentally retarded and lived most of her life in an institution after undergoing a lobotomy, died Friday, her family said. She was 86.

Ms. Kennedy, the inspiration for the Special Olympics spearheaded by the Kennedy family, had been a patient since 1949 at St. Coletta School for Exceptional Children in Jefferson, Wis. She was the third child and first daughter of Joseph and Rose Kennedy, born a year after her brother John.

In 1941, Joseph Kennedy was worried that Rosemary's mild mental retardation would lead her into situations that could damage the family's reputation, and he arranged for her to have a lobotomy. She was 23.

"Rosemary was a woman, and there was a dread fear of pregnancy, disease and disgrace," Laurence Leamer wrote in his book "The Kennedy Women: The Saga of an American Family" (Villard Books, 1994).

Mr. Leamer wrote that Rosemary, whose retardation possibly stemmed from brain damage at birth, had taken to sneaking out of the convent where she was staying at the time.

Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Rosemary's younger sister, recalled that doctors had told her father that a lobotomy, a medical procedure in which the frontal lobes of a patient's brain are scraped away, would help Rosemary.

But the operation reduced Rosemary to an infantlike state, mumbling words and sitting for hours, staring at walls, Mr. Leamer wrote.