Rose Kennedy’s Secret Pain
Although she was the perfectly turned out matriarch of the Kennedy clan, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy’s life was no Camelot. She lived through some of the most dramatic decades of the 20th century, and, as the public looked on, each era only seemed to bring new tragedies to her and her family—but some of her worst heartaches remained secret for years.
1. She Was Catholic Royalty
Born in 1890, Rose Fitzgerald had the best upbringing her lace-curtain Irish Catholic background could buy. Growing up in Massachusetts, her father John Francis “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald was a powerful member of the Boston Common Council and later mayor of that city. But all this privilege came with certain restrictions: Although Rose wanted to attend Wellesley College and get a degree, her father instead forced her into a convent school—something, she later admitted, “I have felt a little sad about all my life”.
It wasn’t the last time her ambitious father tried to control her, and it was far from her only insecurity.
2. The City Snubbed Her
As Catholics, even powerful ones, the Fitzgeralds were always set apart from the influential so-called “Boston Brahmins,” who were Protestant. As Rose grew up, her burgeoning beauty—which was petite, fine, and disciplined—opened many doors, with the papers publishing frequent stories about the mayor’s eldest daughter. All the same, it could never open up those doors.
The snubs must have hurt her, and this second-best feeling continued to grow.
CBS Television, Wikimedia Commons
3. The President Insulted Her
When Rose was 15, her well-connected father took her and her sister Agnes to the White House, where they met with President William McKinley. At one point, McKinley turned to Agnes and exclaimed, “You’re the prettiest girl who has entered the House”. As Rose later put it, “I knew right then that I would have to work hard to do something about myself”.
This competitive drive never seemed to slow down, and she was about to meet a man who would amplify her triumphs—and her tragedies—tenfold.
August Benziger (1867 - 1955) Details on Google Art Project, Wikimedia Commons
4. She Had A Romeo and Juliet Love Story
While vacationing in Maine as a teenager, Rose re-connected with Joseph P Kennedy, whom she had known since she was five and he was seven. Then again, there was a reason they’d only circled each other before: Joseph was the son of the domineering Honey Fitz’s political rival, Patrick Kennedy.
Rose’s father was horrified when the pair began courting, and spent years trying to discourage Rose from making it serious. But when Rose knew what she wanted, she got it.
5. She Married In Near-Secret
Joseph Kennedy was an ambitious young man, but at first had little to show for it. But in 1914, after graduating from Harvard and becoming a bank president, Kennedy proposed, and the pair married in a private chapel—Rose’s father still vehemently disapproved—belonging to a Cardinal.
In short, it was a wedding that looked ideal on the outside, but which roiled with turmoil on the inside. Their marriage was worse.
Photographer: Larry Gordon, Wikimedia Commons
6. She Had A Massive Family
The newlyweds settled down in Brookline, a suburb of Boston, and by the beginning of the 1930s Rose Kennedy had given Joseph an incredible nine children: Joseph Jr, John, Rosemary, Kathleen, Eunice, Patricia, Bobby, Jean, and Ted. As the children grew, so too did their parents’ dreams for them, especially as Joseph Sr rose through the business ranks.
But the more polished the family looked, the more tarnished their secrets became.
Dorothy Wilding, Wikimedia Commons
7. Her Husband Got Rich Off Hollywood
One of Joseph Sr’s most lucrative endeavours was to invest in Hollywood, where he made the equivalent of over $91 million from his shrewd business sense. But while Rose certainly reaped the benefits of her husband’s success—the family eventually moved to a 12-room house in Brookline—Joseph’s Hollywood years also contained one of the most scandalous affairs in Tinseltown history.
Wide World Photos, Wikimedia Commons
8. Her Husband Cheated With A Starlet
According to those who knew him, Joseph had voracious appetites for women, and he soon began a dalliance with Hollywood star Gloria Swanson that lasted over three years, with Kennedy helping bankroll many of her films during this time. To add insult to injury, when the pair finally broke it off, it was because Swanson had discovered that Kennedy had charged a “gift” he gave to her…from her own account.
Yet it was Rose’s reaction that raised eyebrows.
Edward Thayer Monroe, Wikimedia Commons
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9. She Turned A Blind Eye
Joseph was the opposite of discreet during his affair with Swanson, and those in the know couldn’t believe that Rose didn’t suspect her husband of straying. But if she did, her response was stone-faced: She never made any mention of his affair, leading Swanson herself to question, “Was she a fool, I asked myself … or a saint? Or just a better actress than I was?”
For all Rose’s stiff upper lip, however, there were dire consequences.
Karl Struss, Wikimedia Commons
10. She Was A Cold Mother
Faced with her husband’s infidelity, Rose Kennedy threw herself into child-rearing with a scientific precision. She kept cue cards on each of her nine children, keeping track of their health statistics, height, and weight. But baring herself emotionally was still off the table: John F Kennedy later confessed to an aide he never heard his mother saying “I love you”. Eventually, this took a toll.
11. She Isolated Herself
It wasn’t long before Rose’s marriage to Joseph had turned into a shell. Even on holidays, she tended to keep herself isolated from both her husband and her children. As one source put it, “When she went to play golf, she’d go by herself. She did everything by herself”. In other moments, Rose clung to religion, even using a separate cottage in Hyannis Port to pray in private.
Yet few know about the quiet disaster that happened when she did try to leave her marriage.
12. She Tried To Leave Him
When Rose Kennedy was eight months pregnant with her fourth child, daughter Kathleen, she seemed to realize at last what a drain her marriage was, and up and left Joseph to stay with her parents. Sadly, her father’s spite for the marriage only made him more scornful of his daughter, and he reminded her that, as Catholics, divorce was not an option.
Soon enough, Rose was back in the Kennedy fold…with even worse coping mechanisms.
13. She Took Tranquilizers
Eventually, Rose learned to turn a perfect blind eye to her husband’s extra-martial desires, but she couldn’t do it without a little “help”. According to research, during these years Rose began to depend heavily on prescription tranquilizers like Seconal to numb her from the stress and sadness of her freshly painted white-picket life. In the coming years, even that paint would chip.
14. She Was The Toast Of London
By the 1930s, Joseph Kennedy had amassed not just money but influence, and he became ambassador to the Court of St James in London. This period was, perhaps, the happiest Rose would ever be, and the pair spent time as guests of King George VI and the Queen Mother Elizabeth.
As Joseph remarked to his wife during this time, “Well, Rose, this is a helluva long way from East Boston, isn’t it?” But the bigger they are, the harder they fall.
Rijksmuseum, Wikimedia Commons
15. Her Husband Ruined Everything
Joseph Kennedy’s success in the political arena soon fired up his dreams to become America’s first Catholic President, and for a while it seemed he had a chance to succeed, with Rose poised to become his First Lady. Then he made a fatal miscalculation. He loudly criticized the US entering WWII, believing Germany should be appeased, long after that was a politically viable option—it also didn’t help that he was extremely unsympathetic to the Jewish population.
The stance effectively torpedoed all his hopes for the highest office, and the hits kept coming.
16. She Snubbed Her Daughter’s Wedding
In 1944, Rose Kennedy was shocked to discover that one of her own children had rebelled against her. Her daughter Kathleen married William Cavendish, Marquess of Harrington, shucking off her Catholic roots to wed an Anglican. In a case of history repeating, Rose was so against the union that she tried to postpone the wedding, and when they did marry, she didn’t attend.
It was an inauspicious beginning and had an inauspicious end: William Cavendish would perish just months later while in action during the conflict—but not before tragedy hit Rose much closer to home.
17. She Lost Her Oldest Boy
The “Kennedy Curse” is more like a legend these days, but ill fate really did follow them around, and its first victim was perhaps the most precious. In August of 1944, just before the death of Kathleen’s husband, Rose lost her eldest son Joseph Jr at the age of 29 to an air mission gone awry.
The family was heartbroken, not the least because Joseph Sr, his ambitions still chastened, considered his eldest son his next best chance at getting a piece of the presidency. But they hadn’t seen anything yet.
18. Her Daughter Perished
In 1948, WWII was over at last, but the Kennedys’ already significant list of tragedies only got longer. That year, when she was only 28, Kathleen Kennedy followed her husband and her older brother to the grave after her plane crashed over France.
Rose Kennedy had lost another child, but behind the scenes she was losing even more.
AnonymousUnknown author, Wikimedia Commons
19. Her Husband Had An Affair With His Secretary
Rose Kennedy had never stopped pretending her husband’s philandering didn’t exist—but now the situation got difficult to ignore. Just months after Kathleen’s passing, the 60-year-old Joseph Sr took his 24-year-old secretary, Janet De Rosiers, as his lover, frequently romancing her in the home he shared with Rose when she was away. And the couple got more brazen than this.
20. She Endured Humiliation
As with Gloria Swanson, De Rosiers went on record saying that she believed Rose knew about the affair, but simply kept her mouth shut. Indeed, according to the former secretary, it was impossible not for Rose to know: The young girl would often give Joseph massages in the living room in full view of his wife. Rest assured, though, there was still no happy understanding between the two.
21. Her Marriage Was Loveless
While seemingly placid on the surface, Rose’s relationship with Joseph was now hollow at its core. According to De Rosiers, Joseph called Rose “mother” and, although they got along well, there was also almost no romance left in their marriage, with the two of them barely kissing, even on the cheek. As De Rosiers put it, “I think they had given that up a long time ago … I don’t think he loved her”.
As always, the strain began to tell on Rose.
New York Times Co., Getty Images
22. She Ran A Tight Ship
Rose Kennedy likely understood the true extent of her husband’s relationship with his secretary, which lasted for a decade—but, as usual, she responded to this pain with control. During this time, she began to keep a paper pinned to her dress in order to go around the house looking for and noting down tasks to complete, like throwing out a magazine or recovering a cushion.
It was a bleak existence, but it did have its compensations.
23. She Was A Holy Countess
By this time, Rose Kennedy was thoroughly used to the finest things in life: She often went to Paris to view the spring designer collections and, after Pope Pius XII made her a papal countess, and had no issue signing herself as “Countess Rose Kennedy” when she attended monasteries. Yet her elevation had a dark streak.
24. She Was Miserly
According to Janet De Rosiers, Rose Kennedy was often overly concerned with saving money, even as she spent millions on her French fashion. If she found out a servant had been paid for an hour they didn’t work, she demanded the money back; on a trip to France, she also got angry at De Rosiers for buying too many tissues and toilet paper.
25. She Was Insecure
While there’s no doubt that Rose Kennedy was a particular society woman with particular tastes, the impression De Rosiers gives—intentional or not—is of a woman struggling with herself and her marriage. Though Rose “would pick on the help,” as De Rosiers put it, she was also seemingly obsessed with her looks, no matter how much her husband ignored them, and often went around the house with a cosmetics mask.
Still, as she always had, Rose kept driving forward.
26. She Spurred On Her Sons
After the passing of their eldest son, Rose and Joseph began transferring their political dreams onto their younger children. By the 1950s, many of the Kennedy boys were in the political swing, and Rose was behind them all the way. She was a key figure in getting her son John to win the Massachusetts 11th Congressional District seat—the same one her father once held—and in 1952, she threw “Kennedy Teas” that helped launch John into a Senate seat.
But no matter how far her boys went, Rose couldn’t stop micromanaging.
27. She Was A Meddling Mother
While JFK made his way to the Senate, Rose’s younger son Bobby was also doing well, acting as senate counsel investigating the union gangster Jimmy Hoffa. But in the middle of his investigations, Bobby was abashed when his mother sent a note saying, “I suddenly thought of your slippers. Would you please ask your secretary…to have them resoled”.
Once more, nothing was too small for Rose Kennedy’s attention—but even so, her life was about to get even grander.
Cecil W. Stoughton, Wikimedia Commons
28. She Became The Mother Of A President
In 1960, Rose Kennedy finally stepped into her destiny when John began campaigning for president. A consummate political professional, she went to meetings day in and day out in support of her son, presenting different facets of herself as she did so. As a family friend said, at a “North End garage…she'd put on a babushka and talk to the women about children. And the next stop might be West Roxbury, so in the car she'd change her shoes and maybe put on a mink jacket”.
When John actually won the ticket and officially became President Kennedy in 1961, all Rose’s hard work looked like it had paid off. And then it all fell apart.
29. Karma Came For Her Husband
Less than a year after John’s inauguration, Rose’s husband Joseph, now 73 years old, suffered a massive stroke that paralyzed him on his right side. From then on, Joseph Sr had difficulty speaking, though he did regain mobility and showed signs of mental alertness. It was an entirely new turn of events for Rose, who now had to take up caregiving duties. According to someone close to her, she didn’t cope well.
30. She Escaped Into Memories
Rose’s old chauffeur gave insight into what life was like in the Kennedy house during this time—and painted a grim picture. According to Frank Saunders, Rose and Joseph were by now mired in their own sad circumstances and unable to comfort each other in the face of the constant tragedies. Instead, Rose would often sneak away into the attic to look at photos of older, better times.
The future, however, was merciless.
31. She Lost Another Son
In 1963, mid-way through his term as President, John F Kennedy was infamously assassinated, adding another tragedy to the Kennedy Curse. When Rose Kennedy first got the news, she was determined not to believe it and, as she said, “I thought maybe it was just an accident, or a slight…slight sort of thing”. It was only when her son Bobby called her that the truth sunk in, and Rose’s old instincts took over.
Walt Cisco, Dallas Morning News, Wikimedia Commons
32. She Kept Her Feelings Locked Up
While the end of JFK is one of the most brutal and impactful moments of the 20th century, for Rose it was a much more personal grief—after all, it was a third child gone, and violently. But she couldn’t show her grief to the public. Reportedly, when she finally believed the news, she nearly broke down before regaining her composure and declaring “No one will ever feel sorry for me”.
She then set about trying to rewrite history.
33. She Made A Controversial Statement
Though John was gone, the Kennedys’ presidential dreams marched on, and in 1968, younger son Bobby Kennedy campaigned for Commander in Chief, with Rose once more behind him. Still, the years were wearing on her: In the middle of his campaign, Rose made a rare faux-paus when, in response to a question about the money she spent on the campaign trail, she responded blithely, “It’s our money and we’re free to spend it any way we please”.
The public got into an uproar, but more tragedy eclipsed these comments.
LBJ Library photo by Yoichi R. Okamoto, Wikimedia Commons
34. She Buried Another Child
On June 5, 1968, while still running for president, Bobby Kennedy was fatally shot at the age of 42, sending another Kennedy son to the grave. While at John’s funeral, Rose had reportedly turned to Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selaisse and said "It's wrong for parents to bury their children. It should be the other way around”. Here she was less than five years later, doing it for the fourth time.
Her next trial, however, wasn’t the death of one of her sons—it was one of her son’s involvement in a death.
Leffler, Warren K., Wikimedia Commons
35. Her Youngest Son Was Involved In Scandal
Almost exactly a year after Bobby’s end, Rose’s youngest—and only remaining—son Ted became embroiled in scandal. On the evening of July 18, 1969, Ted, then a US Senator, was driving with Mary Jo Kopechne on Chappaquiddick Island in Martha’s Vineyard when, while allegedly trying to get Kopechne to a ferry point, he accidentally drove off a narrow bridge and into Poucha Pond. His next actions were infamous.
Born Isopod, Wikimedia Commons
36. His Accident Is Shrouded In Mystery
Although Ted swam free of the car to shore, he was unable to rescue Kopechne as the vehicle sank. Even so, he didn’t report the accident until many hours later, going to the authorities the next morning at 10 am—long after a diver had already retrieved Koepechne’s lifeless body.
Ted was eventually charged with leaving the scene of an accident, but questions lingered about what exactly he was doing on the bridge that night, and in what state of mind. These questions had consequences.
Maureen Keating, Wikimedia Commons
37. She Lost Another Chance At The White House
With the so-called Chappaquiddick Incident, Rose Kennedy’s surviving family had gone from tragedy to disgrace, and the American public wasn’t likely to forget it. Indeed, the incident kept Ted Kennedy from running for president in both 1972 and 1976, and likely influenced his failure to earn the Democratic nomination when he did run in 1980 against Jimmy Carter.
By then, Rose had little support back home.
United States Senate, Wikimedia Commons
38. Her Husband Left Her
Joseph Sr’s health had never fully recovered after his stroke, and the ensuing tragedies and scandals did nothing to help it. Although he made one final public appearance—to film a message to the country after Bobby’s assassination—Joseph Sr passed in November 1969 at the age of 81, right in the middle of the furor over Chappaquiddick.
Rose Kennedy responded as she always had: with stony resolve. Or, at least she did on the outside.
39. She Was In “Agony”
With her “never explain, never apologize” approach to public life, Rose Kennedy very rarely spoke to the press about her reactions to the endless tragedies she and her family seemed to experience. But one friend later confessed the depths of her grief. According to them, Rose once said, “Wasn’t there a book about Michelangelo called ‘The Agony and the Ecstasy’? That’s what my life has been”.
In coping with her life, she also had one secret drive.
Fairchild Archive, Getty Images
40. She Felt She Was Chosen
Part of the reason that Rose Kennedy could weather all the turmoil of her life was because she felt she was destined for it. As she wrote in her 1974 autobiography, "There have been times when I felt I was one of the most fortunate people in the world, almost as if Providence, or Fate, or Destiny, as you like, had chosen me for special favors”. Nonetheless, even she admitted that sometimes it was only “[w]illpower, just willpower” keeping her going on. And she did go on.
Fairchild Archive, Getty Images
41. She Lived On
Even as her children perished around her, Rose Kennedy endured. When she turned 100 in 1990, she continued to devote herself to religion, rarely missing Sunday mass. But though she was hard as iron, she wasn’t immortal: In these years, she suffered a series of five strokes whose side effects demanded around-the-clock care. By 1984, she needed a wheelchair to get around, and although masses of family attended her centenary in 1990, her health was hardly robust.
But, as with her marriage, Rose clung on.
42. There Was Little Family Left
In 1995, at the age of 104, Rose Kennedy finally passed in her Hyannis Port home, signalling the official passing of an era of American politics that was already fading in the public consciousness. Though Rose left behind scores of grandchildren and great-grandchildren, in the end her only remaining children were her son, Ted, and her three daughters.
For all that, her legacy gets even more tragic.
43. Her Eldest Daughter Met Her Own Tragedy
None of her children’s sudden ends affected Rose Kennedy quite like the life of her eldest daughter Rosemary. While Rose was in labor with the girl, the nurse reportedly insisted she keep her legs closed, keeping Rosemary’s head in the birth canal for a brutal two hours and causing the baby to lose precious oxygen.
Although the consequences weren’t immediate, as Rosemary grew it became clear she wasn’t reaching her developmental goals, and at two she still had difficulty walking. The Kennedys’ response was heartbreaking.
Angus McBean, Wikimedia Commons
44. She Pretended Nothing Was Wrong
Rose and Joseph, so concerned with appearances, spent most of their time pretending everything was fine with their eldest daughter, even as they sent her to private tutors and specialized boarding schools to keep her from prying eyes. Rose never confided to anyone about any difficulties, and it is still unclear today exactly what intellectual disabilities Rosemary struggled with. One thing is clear: It didn’t get better.
45. She Kept Ignoring It
When Rosemary was presented in 1938 as a debutante to King George VI, she practiced her royal curtsy for hours—only to trip and fall when she tried to perform the maneuver at the event itself. In typical Rose fashion, the matriarch never made any mention of the gaffe, and even declared the whole event a success in hindsight.
But ignoring it would not make this problem go away.
46. Her Daughter Pushed Back
By the 1940s, Rosemary was beginning to exhibit emotional regulation issues and signs of mental illness. Increasingly frustrated with her lot, she was expelled from schools and, when her parents relegated her to a convent school, began sneaking out at night.
While Rose was content to keep pretending nothing was the matter with her daughter, Joseph Sr had enough of the risk Rosemary brought to the Kennedy reputation…and he took horrific action.
47. Her Husband Made A Terrible Choice
In 1941, unbeknownst to Rose, Joseph Kennedy gave their 23-year-old daughter a lobotomy—yes, a lobotomy—in the hopes it would make her more manageable. Instead, it ruined her life. The botched procedure reduced Rosemary’s mental capacity and bodily functions to that of a toddler, and she had to be immediately sent to an institution, where her father never visited her.
But that’s not even the darkest part.
48. She May Not Have Needed It
Before her lobotomy, Rosemary Kennedy wrote copiously in her diaries, and her recollections indicate a relatively normal life full of social events in high society. Just a year before the procedure, in fact, she wrote to her father, saying “Darling Daddy, I am so fond of you. And I love you so much”. While these messages can’t prove her mental capacity, they certainly don’t indicate violence in her behavior. Perhaps, then, Rosemary’s worst sin was simply being different than the rest of her ambitious family.
After the lobotomy, Joseph Sr kept his role in her treatment hidden. Almost no one in the family, save Rose eventually, was told the whole truth of it, and the children only found out where Rosemary was after Joseph Sr’s passing in 1968.
brandstaetter images, Getty Images
49. She Tried To Make Things Right
While Rose Kennedy had failed to protect her daughter in the early years, she did try to make up for it in the end. After her husband passed, Rose brought Rosemary more and more out of the institution and back to Hyannis Port, where the young woman had spent her childhood. Heartbroken, around this time Rose confided to a neighbor that, out of all the Kennedy woes, Rosemary’s fate was “the worst tragedy”.
Fairchild Archive, Getty Images
50. Jackie O Insulted Her
With her strong sense of self, Rose Kennedy was never going to get along with everyone. Indeed, even her most famous daughter-in-law didn’t like her: Jackie Kennedy once wrote to a correspondent—a priest, no less— that “I don’t think [John’s] mother is too bright—and she would rather say a rosary than read a book”.
51. Her Life Is The Story Of America
Rose Kennedy kept an iron grip on her illustrious family, all while battling personal demons and the incessant tragedies life kept throwing at her children. With all this suppressed turmoil, it’s no wonder she was a divisive figure in her time—and she remains both an emblem of the American Dream and a sign of everything wrong with it.
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Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16
