Delaware County District Library

The missing Kennedy, Rosemary Kennedy and the secret bonds of four women, Elizabeth Koehler-Pentacoff

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 245-258)

individual biography

illustrations

no index present

non fiction

The missing Kennedy

bibliography

921998274

Elizabeth Koehler-Pentacoff

Rosemary Kennedy and the secret bonds of four women

Rosemary (Rosie) Kennedy was born in 1918, the first daughter of a wealthy Bostonian couple who later would become known as the patriarch and matriarch of America's most famous and celebrated family. Elizabeth Koehler was born in 1957, the first and only child of a struggling Wisconsin farm family. What, besides their religion, did these two very different Catholic women have in common? One person: Stella Koehler, a charismatic woman of the cloth, and Elizabeth's Wisconsin aunt. For thirty-five years Sister Paulus was Rosie Kennedy's caregiver. And a caregiver, tragically, had become necessary after Rosie underwent one of America's first lobotomies--an operation Joseph Kennedy was assured would normalize Rosie's life. After the procedure, Rosie was sent to rural Wisconsin and Saint Coletta, a Catholic-run home for the mentally disabled. For the next two decades, she never saw her siblings, her parents, or any other relative. Following Joseph Kennedy's stroke in 1961, the Kennedy family resumed face to face contact with Rosie. It was also about then that a young Elizabeth Koehler began paying visits to Rosie. In this insightful and poignant memoir, based in part on Sister Paulus' private notes and augmented by over one-hundred never-before-seen photos, Elizabeth Koehler-Pentacoff recalls the many happy and memorable times spent with the missing Kennedy