"What a great moment for me, my son, the world. What you have made possible for so many people defies all reason." LOWELL WEICKER, JR.
Former United States Senator

Saturday Evening Post

How the Kennedy family's own misfortune spurred the fight against a widely misunderstood affliction.

Hope for Retarded Children by Eunice Kennedy Shriver
The Saturday Evening Post, September 22, 1962

Forty-three years ago this month in Brookline, Massachusetts, my mother and father were looking forward with great anticipation and joy to the birth of their third child. My oldest brother, Joe, was four years old, bright, strong, aggressive, with dark eyes, a fine smile. Jack, quick, slender, independent - even at three he was interested in everything and adored by everyone. My father was thirty and my mother was twenty-eight. They loved children and would be happy to have all that God would send them.

Rosemary was born September thirteenth at home - a normal delivery. She was a beautiful child, resembling my mother in physical appearance. But early in life Rosemary was different. She was slower to crawl, slower to walk and speak than her two bright brothers. My mother was told she would catch up later, but she never did.

Rosemary was mentally retarded.

For a long time my family believed that all of us working together could provide my sister with a happy life in our midst. My parents, strong believers in family loyalty, rejected suggestions that Rosemary be sent away to an institution. "What can they do for her that her family can't do better?" my father would say. "We will keep her at home." And we did. For years these efforts seemed to work. My parents and the other eight children tried to include Rose in everything we did. In Hyannis Port I would take her as a crew in our boat races, and I remember that she usually could do what she was told. She was especially helpful in with the jib and she loved to be in the winning boat. Winning at anything always brought a marvelous smile to her face.

She loved music, and my mother used to play the piano and sing to her. At the dining table Rose was unable to cut her meat, so it was served to her already cut.

Later on, in her teens it was more difficult for her. In social competition she couldn't keep up. She learned to dance well enough for my brothers to take her along to parties, but it wasn't easy when Rose would say, "Why don't other boys ask me to dance?"

Yes, keeping a retarded child at home is difficult. Mother always said the greatest problem was to get other children to play with Rose and to find time to give her all the attention she needed and deserved. Like many retarded persons, Rose loved small children and wanted to be helpful with them. Often I heard her offer her assistance to Mother with a question like, "Can I take the young children rowing, Mother?"