“one wild and precious life”: Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day,” in New and Selected Poems Volume One (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004), 94.
2. MUCH IS EXPECTED
Joseph P. Kennedy was: David Nasaw does an excellent job of telling the story in his biography The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy (New York: Penguin, 2012), 204–37.
“The money changers have fled”: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, first inaugural address, March 4, 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, Grace Tully Papers, subseries 4, box 5, folder 11, available at www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/_resources/images/tully/5_11.pdf#search=First%20Inaugural%20Address (accessed January 21, 2014).
“Should anyone be afraid”: Eunice Kennedy Shriver, “Hope for Retarded Children,” The Saturday Evening Post, September 22, 1962.
“anyone who has survived”: Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1970), 84.
3. PITY OR PURGE
Pity or Purge: I am deeply indebted to the historians David L. Braddock and Susan L. Parish, authors of “An Institutional History of Disability,” in Disability at the Dawn of the 21st Century and the State of the States, ed. Braddock (Washington, DC: American Association on Mental Retardation, 2002), as well as the theologian Amos Yong, author of Theology and Down Syndrome: Reimagining Disability in Late Modernity (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2007), for their sensitive accounts of the sad history of “pity or purge” prior to the twentieth century.
In sections of the Torah: Rabbi Julia Watts Belser, correspondence with the author, 2014.
The Qur’an, which Muslims believe to be: I am indebted to Professor Sara Scalenghe for her very helpful insights into disability in the Muslim tradition.
“There is no harm if the blind”: This and all quotes from the Qur’an are from Ahmed Ali (trans.), Al-Qur’an: A Contemporary Translation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).
“one should run away from the leper”: Muhammad al-Bukhari, The Translation of the Meanings of Sahih al-Bukhari, vol. VII, trans. M. M. Khan (New Delhi: Kitab Bhavan, 1984), 408–409.
The Hindu tradition has: Vibha Rupariela, “Marriage and Family Life,” in Caring for Hindu Patients, ed. Diviash Thakrar, Rasamandala Das, and Aziz Sheikh (Oxford: Radcliffe Medical Press, 2008), 73.
Such capacities were sometimes seen: Yong argues that nevertheless, “even if some people with intellectual disabilities are unable to cultivate yoga or mindfulness practice, the nondisabled who are able to do so will see the world in a more enlightened way and thereby relate to disabled people apart from the stigma and stereotypes that characterize conventional views of these phenomena” (Yong, Theology and Down Syndrome, 148).
There is of course more complexity: Belser, correspondence with the author.
There are many accounts: Sir James George Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1922), available online in its entirety at www.bartleby.com/196 (accessed July 7, 2014).
Greeks practiced infanticide: Braddock and Parish, “An Institutional History of Disability,” 7–8. They add, however, that “infants with hearing impairments, vision impairments, and mental retardation were not categorized as ‘deformed,’ and were not put to death, except perhaps for those most profoundly limited intellectually who could have been ‘diagnosed’ early on … M. L. Edwards’s (1996, 1997) reviews of the scant documentary records from ancient Greece indicates that deformity was not perceived as absolutely negative by the Greeks, but that this perspective was developed by historians during the nineteenth century, who applied contemporary contempt for people with disabilities to their assessment of the ancient world” (15).
“This is the kind of medical provision”: Plato, Republic 409e–410a, trans. Sir Henry Desmond Pritchard Lee (New York: Penguin, 1987), 114.
“Let there be a law”: Aristotle, Politics 1335b21, trans. Benjamin Jowett and H.W.C. Davis (New York: Cosimo, 2008), 296–98.
Thus, people with intellectual disabilities: Yong, Theology and Down Syndrome, 37; Braddock and Parish, “An Institutional History of Disability,” 15; John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975).
“In 1752, with leadership from”: Braddock and Parish, “An Institutional History of Disability,” 16.
Although the hospital’s founding: Ibid., 17.
The first American mental asylum: Ibid., 21.
A handful of other almshouses: Ibid.
“in cages, closets, cellars”: Dorothea Dix, Memorial to the Legislature of Massachusetts (Boston: Munroe & Francis, 1843), 2, 5 (emphasis original), cited in Braddock and Parish, “An Institutional History of Disability,” 22. A 1904 facsimile of this text can be viewed at www.archive.org/details/memorialtolegisl00dixd (accessed May 27, 2014).
Her pleas would result: Braddock and Parish, “An Institutional History of Disability,” 22.
By 1870 or so: Ibid., 26. See also Peter L. Tyor and Leland V. Bell, Caring for the Retarded in America: A History (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984), 74.
conditions in the institutions deteriorated: These conditions persisted for decades. “Patients were beaten, choked, and spat on by attendants. They were put in dark, damp, padded cells and often restrained in straitjackets at night for weeks at a time. Life magazine’s article ‘Bedlam 1946’ vividly described the deplorable conditions that existed in most of the 180 state mental institutions. The conditions were said to have degenerated ‘into little more than concentration camps on the Belsen pattern.’ A photograph taken at Philadelphia’s Byberry Hospital showed nude male patients on concrete floors: they were given ‘no clothes to wear and live in filth.’” Elliot S. Valenstein, Great and Desperate Cures: The Rise and Decline of Psychosurgery and Other Radical Treatments for Mental Illness (New York: Basic Books, 1986), 174–75.
In addition, almost as soon: Braddock and Parish, “An Institutional History of Disability,” 23.
What then happened around the turn: On the subject of eugenics in the early twentieth century, see Daniel J. Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); J. David Smith and Michael L. Wehmeyer, Good Blood, Bad Blood: Science, Nature, and the Myth of the Kallikaks (Washington, DC: American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, 2012); and, for a horrifying example of what passed for public discourse in 1913, The Menace of the Feeble-Minded in Massachusetts: The Need of a Program (Boston: Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, 1913), available at www.archive.org/details/menaceoffeeblemi00mass (accessed May 27, 2014).
The eugenicists recast: Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 86.
“the chief determiner”: Goddard’s famous remark, made during a lecture at Princeton, has been widely quoted, for instance in Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, rev. ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996), 190; Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 84; Smith and Wehmeyer, Good Blood, Bad Blood, 130; and Leila Zenderland, Measuring Minds: Henry Herbert Goddard and the Origins of American Intelligence Testing (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 297.
In America (though not in Britain): Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 96–112.
“By legislative reform”: William Cecil Dampier Whetham and Catherine Durning Whetham, The Family and the Nation (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1909), 212, available at www.archive.org/details/cu31924013729409 (accessed May 27, 2014). See also Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 93.
“The idiotic child”: “Was the Doctor Right? Some Independent Opinions,” The Independent 85 (January 3, 1916).
“The day of the parasite”: Ibid.
“Never again will such a story”: Sharon Snyder, “Infinities of Forms: Disability Figures in Artistic Traditions,” in Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities, ed. Sharon Snyder, Brenda Jo Brueggeman, and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson (New York: Modern Language Association, 2002),
181.
The plaintiff in the case: Paul A. Lombardo, Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 106. See also Stephen Murdoch, IQ: A Smart History of a Failed Idea (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2007), 99–115.
This foster family: Lombardo, Three Generations, 103–104.
“It is better for all the world”: Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927).
Later research showed: Lombardo, Three Generations, 103, 140.
“The very vocabulary”: Irving Kenneth Zola, Missing Pieces: A Chronicle of Living with a Disability (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982), 206.
Not surprisingly, the treatment: Braddock and Parish, “An Institutional History of Disability,” 30.
Remarkably, at the Nuremberg trials: Edwin Black, “Eugenics and the Nazis: The California Connection,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 9, 2003, adapted from Black, War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race (New York: Basic Books, 2004).
The philosopher Arne Vetlesen: Arne Johan Vetlesen, Evil and Human Agency: Understanding Collective Evildoing (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
Only by facing the “dis”-abilities: The distinction between pain and suffering is in much religious and spiritual literature. It was taught to me by the contemplative writer and guide Martin Laird, Order of Saint Augustine.
4. ROSEMARY
“mentally retarded persons”: Edward Shorter, The Kennedy Family and the Story of Mental Retardation (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000), 15.
“She was slow in everything”: Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, Times to Remember (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974), 151–52.
“They all told me”: Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, “Diary Notes,” Box 10, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum; and Times to Remember, 152.
Finally, in 1929, when she was: David Nasaw, The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy (New York: Penguin, 2012), 152.
The school’s founder, Helena Devereux: “Reaching the Mind, Touching the Spirit: The Helena T. Devereux Biography,” Devereux Foundation website, www.devereux.org/site/DocServer/HTDBio.pdf?docID=281 (accessed April 22, 2014), 6. See also Nasaw, The Patriarch, 152.
“Dear Mother, I miss you”: Letter from Rosemary Kennedy to Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, November 17, 1930, Joseph P. Kennedy Papers, Series 1.1—Family—Family Correspondence, 1930, Box 1, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
“I miss you very much”: Letter from Rosemary Kennedy to Eunice Kennedy, April 13, 1931, Joseph P. Kennedy Papers, Series 1.1—Family—Family Correspondence, 1931, Box 1, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
“She has developed enough”: Report from Devereux School, June 23, 1930, Joseph P. Kennedy Papers, Series 1.2.5—Family: Subject File: Rosemary Kennedy—Withdrawn: Education, 1930–1940, Deed Closed Box 3, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
“Due to the fact that her reactions are”: Report from Devereux School, June 23, 1930, Joseph P. Kennedy Papers, Series 1.2.5—Family: Subject File: Rosemary Kennedy—Withdrawn: Education, 1930–1940, Deed Closed Box 3, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
“Joe and I, knowing we wanted”: Kennedy, Times to Remember, 153.
She even went so far as to begin: Ibid., 155–56.
“She resented having someone always go”: Ibid., 155.
“I am hopeful that a systematic treatment”: Letter from Dr. Frederick Good to Joseph P. Kennedy, October 24, 1934, quoted in Nasaw, The Patriarch, 223.
“that she may not know”: Letter from Amanda Rohde to Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, October 18, 1936, Joseph P. Kennedy Papers, Series 1.2.5—Family: Subject File: Rosemary Kennedy—Withdrawn: Education, 1930–1940, Deed Closed Box 3, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
“After I have been able to change”: Ibid.
Rosemary required constant supervision: Nasaw, The Patriarch, 265.
“Dear Mother and Dad”: Letter from Rosemary Kennedy to her parents, June 11, 1936, Joseph P. Kennedy Papers, Series 1.1—Family—Family Correspondence, May–December 1936, Box 1, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
“Dear Bobby, The Lafayette was”: Postcard from Rosemary Kennedy to Bobby Kennedy, July 6, 1936, ibid.
“Dear Pat, Jean, and Bobby”: Letter from Rosemary Kennedy to her siblings, July 19, 1936, ibid.
“The boys over here are”: Letter from Rosemary Kennedy to Kathleen Kennedy, July 15, 1936, ibid.
She was allowed to make her debut: Will Swift, The Kennedys Amidst the Gathering Storm: A Thousand Days in London, 1938–1940 (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), 49–54, 112–13.
“many other occupations of a domestic kind”: Letter from Mother Isabel to Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, December 20, 1939, Joseph P. Kennedy Papers, Series 1.2.5—Family: Subject File: Rosemary Kennedy—Withdrawn: Education, 1930–1940, Deed Closed Box 3, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum (emphasis original).
“It really makes me very happy”: Letter from Joseph P. Kennedy to Miss Dorothy M. Gibbs, April 23, 1940, Personal Papers of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, box 10, folder 22 (private collection in possession of Shriver family).
With war encroaching: Poignant excerpts from her letters around this time are published in Swift, The Kennedys Amidst the Gathering Storm, 227; and Nasaw, The Patriarch, 424–25. She wrote to her father on April 4, 1940: “Mother says I am such a comfort to you. Never. to leave you. Well Daddy. I feel honour because you chose me to stay … I am so fond of you. And. Love you very much” (Swift, 227).
The flight itself was harrowing: Swift, The Kennedys Amidst the Gathering Storm, 250.
Even her younger sister Kathleen: Laurence Leamer, The Kennedy Women: The Saga of an American Family (New York: Villard Books, 1994), 289.
She got a job as a summer camp counselor: “Dear Daddy, I had decided to go to Camp Fernwood to be a junior counselor. (For July. And perhaps August. They thought that I had experinced [sic] in Arts, and Crafts in Europe. So. I am teaching it now.” Letter from Rosemary Kennedy to Joseph P. Kennedy, July 4, 1940, Personal Papers of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, box 10, folder 22. See also Nasaw, The Patriarch, 457.
“I am sorry I did not talk”: Letter from Rosemary Kennedy to Joseph P. Kennedy, June 4, 1940, Personal Papers of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, box 10, folder 22.
“I appreciate more than I can say”: Letter from Joseph P. Kennedy to Mother Térèse, June 18, 1940, Personal Papers of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, box 10, folder 22.
The nuns at St. Gertrude’s did: Nasaw, The Patriarch, 532–35.
The school normally took students: Ibid., 526.
She repeatedly ran away: See Ibid., 533–34; and Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys: An American Saga (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), 640. Nasaw (and many others) cite cousin Ann Gargan’s remark to Goodwin: “Many nights, the school would call to say she was missing, only to find her out walking around the streets at 2 a.m.” (Goodwin, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, 640).
“She was upset easily”: Kennedy, Times to Remember, 286.
Even during its heyday: Nasaw, The Patriarch, 535; Valenstein, Great and Desperate Cures, 142–43, 181.
“Manifestly there were other factors”: Kennedy, Times to Remember, 286.
Patients were kept mostly conscious: Valenstein, Great and Desperate Cures, 149–51.
When a patient’s responses: Ibid., 151.
“Rosemary’s was the first of the tragedies”: Kennedy, Times to Remember, 287.
“Rosemary,” she wrote, could be: Letter from Sister Margaret Ann to Eunice Kennedy Shriver, January 6, 1988, Personal Papers of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, box 11, folder 130.
“at one point even Rosemary said”: Letter of Sister Margaret Ann to Eunice Kennedy Shriver, July 1, 1989, Personal Papers of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, box 11, folder 130.
“Rosie is finding walking more difficul
t”: Letter from Sister Margaret Ann to Eunice Kennedy Shriver and family, January 9, 1997 (emphasis original), Personal Papers of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, box 11, folder 130.
“What’s going on here anyhow?”: Letter from Sister Margaret Ann to Eunice Kennedy Shriver, June 3, 1999, Personal Papers of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, box 11, folder 130.
5. THE GREATEST EFFORT
“In 1948, my father”: Eunice Kennedy Shriver, recorded interview by John Stewart, May 7, 1968, page 1, John F. Kennedy Library Oral History Program.
If the foundation was going to help: David Nasaw, The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy (New York: Penguin, 2012), 697.
So she and my father visited: Eunice Kennedy Shriver, recorded interview, 1; see also Nasaw, The Patriarch, 697–98.
the cost would be estimated at: Ronald Conley, The Economics of Mental Retardation (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), 97.
“there were literally [only] a handful”: Eunice Kennedy Shriver, recorded interview, 1. See also David L. Braddock, “Washington Rises: Public Financial Support for Intellectual Disability in the United States, 1955–2004,” Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Research Reviews 13 (2007), 172: “The federal presence in intellectual disability was previously so modest that a grant of $1.25 million from the Kennedy Foundation in 1952 to establish a private school in Illinois exceeded the entire federal services budget for intellectual disability at that time.”
Before 1960, “the federal presence”: Braddock, “Washington Rises,” 172.
“The solution of Rosemary’s problem”: Letter from Joseph P. Kennedy to Sister Anastasia, May 29, 1958, Joseph P. Kennedy Papers, Series 1.2.5 Family: Subject File: Rosemary Kennedy, Withdrawn Correspondence 1931–1958, Deed Closed Box 3, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
A mathematician and chemist: Boggs Center website, http://rwjms.umdnj.edu/boggscenter/about/about_elizabeth.html.
“I have to say that this was an incident”: Elizabeth M. Boggs, recorded interview by John F. Stewart, July 17, 1968, pages 5–6, John F. Kennedy Library Oral History Program.
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