The Lost Kennedy Sister OR "Something really sad to read about"

So I like reading. Reading is fun. You know what's even more fun? Feeling sad.

If you don't know, JFK's eldest sister, Rosemary, was a bright star that suffered from mental retardation along the lines of Forrest Gump. She also suffered from mood swings. Her father John Sr. decided to have the doctors give her a prefrontal lobotomy so they could control her in 1941. Around this time, lobotomies were kind of the hip new thing to "fix" women and children who didn't behave, or else make the mentally ill/disabled easier to handle.

She went from being able to run, laugh, and read with some difficulty to not being able to use English, walk, or use the bathroom by herself. Her father shut her away in a private sanitarium and then, fearing that this disaster would be found out, shuttled her away in a sanitarium in Wisconsin. He never visited her, JFK and Eunice, two siblings that were considered closer to her than the others, only found out nearly a decade later and were horrified by how their beautiful older sister had been transformed into a shell of her former self. It is said that JFK realizing this prompted him to come up with legislation to help treat and better the lives of the disabled.The sweet moment of this story, however, is that during the last years of her life her family decided to confront the sins that John Sr. committed and made sure she was present for family outings and the like. Her nieces and nephews loved her despite how intimidating someone like her can be to a person unaccustomed to the mentally ill/disabled. She was "Aunt Rosemary" to them and they made sure to make up for lost time with the love they gave her. She died surrounded by family in 2005.

Story here