Rose Kennedy suffered numerous tragedies in her life — including the assassinations of two of her sons — yet always remained calm and steady in a crisis.
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and MuseumBorn into a political family, Rose Kennedy pushed her children toward greatness.
Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy was the daughter of a mayor, the wife of a multimillionaire, and the mother of a president.
As the matriarch of the Kennedy family, she projected a polished image. Rose spoke lovingly about the husband who cheated on her and even stood by him after he secretly ordered their daughter to receive a lobotomy. She was battered by tragedy, including the deaths of four of her nine children — two by political assassination — but Rose Kennedy rarely showed emotion. She once declared, “No one will ever feel sorry for me.”
Her life’s work was to build the Kennedy dynasty – and she succeeded. “I just made up my mind that I wasn’t going to be vanquished by anything,” Rose once stated according to the Los Angles Times. “If I collapsed, I knew it would have a very bad effect on other members of the family.”
This is her story.
The Formative Early Years of Rose Fitzgerald
Rose Fitzgerald was born in Boston on July 22, 1890. Her father John, known as “Honey Fitz,” served in Congress and then as Boston’s mayor. As a young woman, Rose frequently accompanied her father on trips, which gave her valuable insights into the life of a politician.
“I had a wonderful youth,” Rose recalled of her upbringing according to the National Park Service. “[M]y father gave me the stimulation of travel [and] zest – curiosity and interest and enthusiasm for life. My mother bestowed on me Faith and common sense.”
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and MuseumIn 1908, Rose Fitzgerald spent a year in Europe.
That said, the strictly Catholic Honey Fitz did stop his daughter from attending Wellesley College, a Protestant institution. According to the John F. Kennedy Library, Rose once remarked that not attending Wellesley was her “greatest regret,” though she grew fond of her time at Blumenthal — a convent boarding school in the Netherlands — where she attended instead.
Meanwhile, Rose also made a fateful encounter at a young age. When she was 17 years old, she crossed paths with Joseph Kennedy. Though her father disapproved of the relationship because of his daughter’s youth, Rose and Joseph quietly saw each other for seven years.
By 1914, Joseph was a successful bank president on the brink of becoming a multimillionaire — and he married Rose on Oct. 7, 1914.
Joseph and Rose Kennedy’s Growing Family
Wikimedia CommonsJoe and Rose Kennedy were married for 55 years.
In 1915, Rose Kennedy gave birth to Joseph Jr., the first of her nine children. By 1920, she was caring for four children under the age of five, including John F. Kennedy. Assisted by nannies, Rose remarked that she approached motherhood as “not only a work of love and duty but as a profession that was fully as interesting and challenging as any honorable professional in the world and one that demanded the best I could bring to it.”
Indeed, Rose raised her children to be “great” and kept careful records of each child using a filing system to track information about their physical health, shoe sizes, and medical appointments.
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and MuseumBetween 1915 and 1920, Rose Kennedy gave birth to four children, including future president John F. Kennedy.
“I had made up my mind to raise my children as perfectly as possible,” she once stated. “What greater aspiration and challenge are there for a mother than the hope of raising a great son or daughter?”
If she knew about her husband’s many affairs during this time, including with the actress Gloria Swanson, Rose Kennedy never commented on it. She focused her attention on raising the Kennedy children.
Then, in 1938, life changed for the Kennedy family when Joseph accepted the position of U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom. The family relocated to London, where Rose swiftly integrated into aristocratic life.
But though Rose Kennedy’s years in England were some of the happiest of her life, they also brought great tragedy.
The Tragedies Of The 1940s
As the U.S. ambassador, Joseph Kennedy pushed a policy of appeasement with Nazi Germany – and when World War II broke out in Europe in 1939, he encouraged the United States to stay neutral. That position would end Joseph’s political career and the Kennedy family’s time in Europe.
Dorothy Wilding/Wikimedia CommonsThe sprawling Kennedy clan settled in to live at the United States Embassy residence in London in 1938.
From there, the 1940s got even darker for the Kennedy family. In 1941, Joseph secretly arranged a lobotomy for 23-year-old Rosemary Kennedy, who had struggled with an intellectual disability from a young age. But the procedure failed, leaving Rosemary unable to walk or speak.
Three years later in 1944, Rose and Joseph’s eldest son Joe Jr. died while serving in World War II. Four years after that, their daughter Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy also died in a plane crash. Her death was especially painful for Rose, who had effectively disowned Kathleen for marrying a Protestant.
But even as the Kennedys reeled from these tragedies, something else was taking place. In 1946, Rose’s son John ran for Congress. It was the first step in a political career that would take John F. Kennedy to the White House.
The ‘Agony And Ecstasy’ Of Rosemary Kennedy
Over the next several decades, Rose Kennedy would help three of her sons — John, Robert, and Ted — to launch political careers. The mayor’s daughter was a natural at politics.
“Mother is superb in talking with a group,” Ted Kennedy once remarked. “She knows what the audience’s interests are likely to be. She has a feel for these things and also she has done her homework.”
When John F. Kennedy ran for the Senate in 1952, Rose hosted “Kennedy Teas” to win over supporters. Around 70,000 people attended the teas, and the future president won by 70,737 votes. The losing candidate, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., lamented: “It was those damn tea parties that beat me.”
WNAC-TVThe Kennedy Teas became so popular that Rose Kennedy hosted televised teas for her son’s 1952 Senate run.
Then John F. Kennedy ran for president in 1960 and won, becoming the first Catholic president of the United States and the youngest ever elected president. But though John’s inauguration in 1961 was one of the proudest moments of Rose Kennedy’s life, terrible tragedy would soon follow. In 1963, he was killed by an assassin in Dallas.
“It’s wrong for parents to bury their children,” Rose Kennedy stated at John’s funeral. “It should be the other way around.”
But more tragedies were coming. Robert, who had followed in his brother’s footsteps and ran for president in 1968, was also killed by an assassin. And Ted, who also aspired to the presidency, saw his presidential dreams crumble after a terrible car crash in Chappaquiddick, New York, in 1968, which killed a young woman named Mary Jo Kopechne.
And amid the grief, Rose Kennedy could not rely on her husband’s support. Joseph Kennedy had suffered a debilitating stroke in 1961 which had left him unable to speak, and he died in 1969.
“Willpower, just willpower and doing what’s necessary is what keeps me going,” Rose declared.
Nationaal ArchiefIn her later years, Rose Kennedy said her life had been defined by agony and ecstasy.
She outlived her husband by almost 30 years. After celebrating her 104th birthday, Rose Kennedy died in 1995.
By then, she had lived a life of soaring highs and terrible lows. After raising nine children, she had lived to see four of them die young. She had lost her husband to a stroke, and her daughter to a lobotomy. But Rose never broke down, never complained. She found purpose in her Catholic faith and focused on moved forward, even in dark times.
“Wasn’t there a book about Michelangelo called ‘The Agony and the Ecstasy’?” Rose Kennedy once asked a friend. “That’s what my life has been.”
After reading about the remarkable life of Rose Kennedy, the Kennedy family matriarch and mother of JFK, go inside the rumors of the Kennedy curse. Or, discover the sad story of John F. Kennedy Jr.’s fatal plane crash.
