Camp Shriver at Timberlawn
Flash back to July 1964.
“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” Eunice Kennedy Shriver asked Jackie Kennedy as the two women walked through the parklike grounds of the property known as Timberlawn.
It was a sunny Saturday morning and Jackie, Jean, and an assortment of Kennedy family members and friends had gathered at the sprawling estate of Eunice and Sargent Shriver for the weekend to plan a benefit intended to raise money for one of Eunice’s pet projects, Camp Shriver. The Shrivers had moved to Timberlawn back in 1961, a bucolic thirty-acre estate just outside of Bethesda, Maryland. “Ethel and Bobby had Hickory Hill, and you and Sarge have Timberlawn,” Joan Braden noted with a smile, according to her memory of the day. Jackie had to laugh. “Well, I don’t think even Ethel could handle all of this,” she said. Indeed, the project Eunice called Camp Shriver was a lot to take in.
As the small coterie of women walked along one of Timberlawn’s well-manicured pathways, they passed a tennis court where Shriver children—Maria, Timothy, and Bobby—and Jackie’s children—John and Caroline—were playfully hitting balls around with a half-dozen other youngsters. Eunice had personally talked to the Shriver and Kennedy offspring to explain to them why it was important that they interact with children less fortunate. Timothy, who was just three when the camp began, was paired with a mentally handicapped boy named Wendell. They became inseparable, playing all day long and often even getting into mischief together. Nearby, a group of two dozen apparently handicapped children and teenagers were busy doing calisthenics on one of the lawns. Some of their teachers were inmates from Lorton Reformatory in Fairfax County, Virginia, recruited by Eunice to instruct at Camp Shriver as part of a work furlough program. In the distance could be seen a large Olympic-size swimming pool where special-needs children were learning to swim under the watchful eye of Catholic school teachers from Sacred Heart school Stone Ridge in Bethesda. Eunice had somehow convinced them to also volunteer.
Continuing down the path, the small group soon came to a stable where another gaggle of children was learning to ride horses. Their teachers? Diplomats from the British embassy whom Eunice had heard were excellent equestrians and whom she charmed into volunteering. There were, in all, twenty-six volunteer counselors at Camp Shriver and thirty-four children.
Jackie looked around wondrously and asked, “How in the world do you do it? How do you get these people to volunteer? It’s just amazing.” Jean answered the question. “You know how Eunice is if she wants you to do something for her,” she said to Jackie. “She won’t take no for an answer. She will pester you until you will either go mad or do what she asks.” The women could only look at Eunice with admiration.
It all started back in the spring of 1962 when a woman from Bethesda contacted Eunice as a last resort to ask her if she knew of any summer camp her child—who was retarded—might attend. It was an interesting question, and when Eunice looked into it, she found that there was no such camp anywhere in the United States. “But how can that be possible?” she wondered.
In the 1950s, those suffering from mental retardation were very often viewed as hopeless individuals who should be locked away, hidden from sight, never to be thought of again. There was nothing that could be done for them, it was thought by many, and so it was therefore better to not have to think about them at all. Not only did society not know what to make of the mentally retarded, but parents who’d had the misfortune of giving birth to such children were also often shunned and ridiculed. Therefore, some parents did everything they could think of to keep the child’s problems a secret. Those who did their best to raise their mentally handicapped child at home found it extremely difficult. These problems would often ruin their lives, causing them to become socially ostracized and even to turn against each other as pressures and anxieties contaminated their marriage. More than that, it was almost impossible to find doctors who wanted to care for the mentally retarded. Generally, those in the medical profession only wished to treat patients they could cure, and it was thought that there was nothing that could be done for those suffering from mental retardation, so why bother?
It seems impossible to imagine today, but back in the 1950s and before, the parents of mentally retarded children often felt forced to make the heartbreaking decision to lock their sons and daughters away in horribly unsanitary mental asylums, and then tell family and friends that the child had died. In fact, most doctors very strongly suggested this drastic course of action. It was thought that the inevitable fate of the child would be to spend life in an institution anyway, so better that it should happen immediately rather than later when emotional bonds would be that much more difficult to break. If the child then eventually did pass away in the institution, the parents would then sometimes bury him or her in an unmarked grave and do their best to forget the child.
Just as Eunice was mulling over the first telephone call she received inquiring about a camp for the mentally retarded, another mother contacted her with the same question. To Eunice, it felt like a sign. “Enough,” she decided. She sat down with Sargent and, according to what he would later recall, said in typical fashion, “There’s a need here, and we have to fill it, Sarge.”
“Fine, but where?” Sargent asked. “We’ll have to lease space, I suppose. Maybe a park?”
“No,” Eunice said, “I want to do it here. We have plenty of room here, Sarge.”
“But here, in our home?” Sargent said, just a little flabbergasted.
“Well, you know what they say,” Eunice concluded. “Charity begins at home.”
Sargent had to laugh. “I know that’s what they say,” he told his wife, “but I’m not sure they meant quite this.”
Now she was on a mission—and Eunice Kennedy Shriver loved nothing more than the challenge of a good mission. She started by contacting hospitals and schools, asking them for the names of special-needs students who might benefit from a summer camp. Then she recruited counselors, at first just students from local high schools and colleges. Once she put them all together in her home, she gave birth to what she called Camp Shriver.
It all sounds a little unusual, but if one considers the way Eunice Kennedy was raised, it’s really not. “During summers in Hyannis Port when she was young, she and her siblings would all be expected by their father, Joseph, to report to the beach at 7 a.m. and stand in single file like little soldiers,” recalled Sancy Newman, a neighbor of the Kennedys in Hyannis Port. “Then, at their father’s behest, they would compete with one another in sports activities, interspersed with vigorous calisthenics. Joseph would split them up into teams and the winning team that day would have his approval, while those on the other team were often shunned as ‘losers’ for the rest of the day—not just by Joseph but by the kids on the winning team. ‘We were taught that coming in second place was not acceptable,’ Eunice once told me. ‘We competed in everything, against each other, whether we were racing, sailing, playing football—we each felt quite strongly that we had to win.’ ”
The ethos of intense competition was handed down from Joe to his sons, especially to Bobby. His daughter Kathleen recalled in an interview with McCall’s, “We had to be first in sailing and skiing races. We had to beat our opponents in tennis and get more runs than the other team in softball. And if we didn’t he’d get mad. Very, very mad! It was made clear that we weren’t to take these sports halfheartedly. And to make sure we were in condition for athletics, Father had the Green Berets set up an obstacle course on the grounds. Can you believe it? The Green Berets. We climbed ropes, jumped, ran, swung, and we toughened up all right.”
Sargent Shriver once said of his wife, “I had never heard of a woman so absolutely hell-bent on beating a man at every sport, no matter what it was. Why, she could find a way to turn recreational horseback riding into a deadly competition. I used to think, ‘What is wrong with her?’ Then, I got it: She’s a Kennedy.”
Given the strong history of competition fostered in the
Kennedy family, perhaps for Eunice to consider hosting athletic events in her backyard wasn’t that much of a stretch. She also firmly believed that physical fitness was vitally important to the well-being of the mentally retarded. For instance, she questioned why so many mentally retarded people seemed out of shape and overweight. Was it because of their mental and emotional limitations, or was it because they had no venue for exercise, no opportunity to be physically fit? Addressing these kinds of issues would, of course, present the catalyst for the creation of the Special Olympics, arguably Eunice’s most important contribution to society.
Camp Shriver opened its doors on June 7, 1962, attended mainly by children from the Gales Child Health Center in Washington, D.C. It ended in early July so that Eunice and Sarge could spend the rest of the summer at the Kennedy compound with their kids. It would continue with that schedule for years to come, the only major change being that Eunice discontinued the program that saw prisoners from Lorton Reformatory volunteering for her.
“Half the time, Timberlawn would be filled with the most brilliant minds of the country,” Maria Shriver added. “And the other half of the time it would be filled by people banging their heads into trees. There would be a hundred Peace Corps volunteers and a hundred retarded children there at the same time. I look back at it sometimes and I think to myself, ‘I can’t believe I survived that.’ ”
Sargent Shriver once recalled, “When I’d come home from the office, there’s my wife in the pool, holding this mentally retarded child in the water to see if it’s possible for that child to swim. She didn’t hire somebody for that. She’s a hands-on person. She went into that goddamn pool herself!” Maria Shriver laughs at the memory. “That was Mummy,” she said. “Hands-on all the way.”
Five years later, in July 1968, Eunice realized what would become her life’s work, the Special Olympics. The announcement would be made in conjunction with the opening ceremonies of the first Special Olympics being held in Chicago. Standing before a microphone at Soldier Field, she said, “I wish to formally announce a national Special Olympics training program for all mentally retarded children everywhere. I also announce that in 1969, the Kennedy Foundation will pledge sufficient funds to underwrite five regional Olympic tryouts. Now,” she concluded triumphantly, “let us begin the Olympics!”
This was definitely a gratifying moment for Eunice. On hand for the occasion was Anne McGlone Burke, a physical education teacher with the Chicago Parks District, who had the idea for a one-time Olympic-style athletic competition for people with special needs. Burke took her idea to Shriver, head of the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation, to fund the event. Shriver encouraged Burke to expand on the idea and the JPK Foundation provided a grant of $25,000. Starting on a small scale with some one thousand athletes from across the United States and Canada participating, it would eventually grow internationally, with more than three million athletes from more than 150 countries participating throughout the world. “Let me win” was, as Eunice pointed out, the athlete’s oath. “But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt.”
It is worth noting that with the growth of the movement, its validity and importance were achieved, thus assuring its continuation. For example, three years after the Special Olympics inaugural games in Chicago, the U.S. Olympic Committee gave the Special Olympics official approval to use the name “Olympics.” Six years later, in 1977, the first International Special Olympics Winter Games were held in February in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. In 1988, the Special Olympics were officially recognized by the International Olympic Committee. In 1997, Healthy Athletes became an official Special Olympics initiative, offering health information and screenings to Special Olympics athletes worldwide.
From a physical education teacher’s hopeful idea and a powerful woman’s remarkable vision and family resources, the small acorn was planted and is now a giant oak in the form of the International Special Olympics, with every indication that it will continue to grow to even greater heights.
What Happened to Rosemary Kennedy?
Eunice’s Kennedy Shriver’s lifelong work to advance the public’s understanding of mental retardation and erase the dreadful stigma that had once been attached to it is today the stuff of legend. The Kennedys more than just understood the pain and tragedy people faced in 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s when it came to having a mentally retarded person in the family. In fact, they’d experienced it.
Rose Marie Kennedy—commonly known by the family as Rosemary or Rosie—was the third child born to Rose and Joseph Kennedy, on September 13, 1918. As a baby, she seemed normal. As she grew older, though, she began to experience certain learning and behaviorial difficulties. However, it was thought at the time that she just had a low IQ—or at least that’s what doctors at first told Joseph and Rose.
For many years, Rosemary would happily participate in the family’s many social functions, was a good athlete—she swam and played tennis—and was full of life and beloved by her brothers and sisters as each was born and began to thrive within the family. However, from all accounts she was also a bit slow and could be moody, though apparently everyone recognized, understood, and accepted her limitations. Rose would later say that her daughter also had a tendency to mix up her letters when writing, which would perhaps suggest that she was dyslexic. (As an adult, Rosemary called Rose’s secretary, Barbara, “Arbarb,” hinting at such a condition.) Suggesting that there wasn’t a great deal of alarm about Rosemary’s condition is that when she was nineteen and Eunice sixteen, the two went to Switzerland together without a chaperone. In a family where the mandate was always that the older children take care of the younger, it seems fairly obvious that if Rose trusted Rosemary to be responsible for her younger sister, she must have felt that the young woman could handle it.
“Over the years, a great deal of mythology has been created and then disseminated as fact regarding what happened to Rosemary, and much of it is impossible to interpret because of the passing of so many years,” observed the noted author Gore Vidal. Vidal had a long and sometimes contentious relationship with the Kennedys; his mother married a man who was later Jackie’s stepfather. “Certain doctors supposedly suggested that Rosemary should be institutionalized. However, according to family legend, Joseph supposedly wouldn’t hear of it. ‘What can they do for her there that we can’t do for her here?’ he had purportedly asked. Rose wholeheartedly agreed, or so the story goes.” In fact, it does seem to be true that Rose—by her own admission—worked diligently to keep her daughter well read, educated, and able to traffic in the Kennedys’ fast-paced world. It appears, at least based on Rose’s memoir, Times to Remember, that she wanted Rosemary to fit in with the rest of her brothers and sisters, and that Rosemary did just that—for a while, anyway.
It is agreed by all parties that things took a dramatic turn when Rosemary was about twenty. Though no one seemed to understand why, the young woman’s condition began to worsen, and from some accounts she became argumentative and even violent. It was thought that she had become frustrated that she couldn’t keep up with all of her ambitious and competitive siblings as they began to evolve emotionally and physically. As a result, it was posited, she had begun to resent them—and many of her other relatives as well. When she had a physical altercation with her paternal grandfather, Rose and Joseph supposedly realized they had a problem on their hands that they were unequipped to solve. “Mother took Rosemary to any number of doctors,” Eunice Kennedy Shriver would recall many years later. “It was always the same—put her away, lock her up… the family is too competitive… she will never find a place. Of course, families had been told this for generations.” Is this true or not? Since it came from Eunice, one has to assume that it likely is true—or that at the very least it’s what Eunice was told.
“Eventually, the Kennedys apparently sent Rosemary to a Catholic boarding school, a decision that did little to rectify the situation,” recalled Sancy Newman, who knew Rosemary very well as a youngster. “Unhappy with th
e sense of confinement, Rosemary supposedly took to sneaking out at night, spending evenings away, and, it was feared, maybe being sexually active as well. What if she were raped? What if she became pregnant? As the legend that’s been handed down to the family members has it, fears for Rosemary’s safety began to mount, and along with them Joseph’s reservations. Looking back on it now all these years later, it seems clear that she had some kind of psychotic break that today would probably have been treated with drugs. Who knows? Perhaps she became bipolar. Or was suffering from depression. But retarded? No. I never thought she was retarded.”
Though there are still questions as to what really was going on with her, Rosemary Kennedy was beginning to present a big problem to the family, and as Joseph Kennedy saw it, one that might even have had the potential to interfere with the Kennedys’ social status and political ambitions. Of course, most people would view Joseph Kennedy as coldhearted in this regard, others as downright cruel. However, one thing was also true about him: He was practical, a man of action who prided himself on his ability to look at a problem with clear-eyed, unsparing vision and then take care of it expeditiously. Indeed, Kennedy did decide to take matters into his own hands where his daughter Rosemary was concerned, and the stunning decision he would make about her in 1941 would yield results nothing short of disastrous.
Lobotomy
In the late 1930s and early 1940s, a new surgical procedure called a lobotomy was being developed in the United States, ostensibly to treat serious emotional problems such as schizophrenia and severe depression. Its success in extreme cases was being trumpeted in some medical circles, though most conventional wisdom at the time viewed the surgery as being extremely risky.
We now know that the frontal lobes of the brain are involved in motor function, problem solving, spontaneity, memory, language, initiation, judgment, impulse control, and social and sexual behavior. In a sense, it could be said that the frontal lobes are also responsible for a person’s imagination, for the part of one’s personality that inspires desire and ambitions for the future. It was reasoned back in the 1930s and 1940s that a possible explanation for violence and anger in the personalities of some mentally disturbed people sprang from a sense of extreme frustration that their dreams and aspirations could never actually manifest due to their handicapped nature. Therefore, it was posited, if the frontal lobe of a person’s brain were compromised and, thus, the part of the brain that creates hope and motivation also became impaired, certain behavior problems could be eradicated as well. How? Because the patient would then have no unrealistic notions about what he or she could achieve and would blend into society in as well-adjusted a manner as possible.
After Camelot: A Personal History of the Kennedy Family--1968 to the Present Page 6