In irreverant and counter-productive celebration of my hopelessly deficient focus, I thought I might share a few of my distractions with all of you (all my distractions at this point, by the way, are related to the research). The paper is a simple referential biography of Robert F. Kennedy, the assassinated near-president-elect, 1968, of these great United States. However, as fascinating and beloved a subject as this great man is, I keep getting tripped up by crazy things I'm learning about the rest of the family.
Did you know:
- Senator Ted Kennedy is the youngest of the nine Kennedy children? Imagine living up to that, not to mention in fear of being killed off.
- Jack, Ted, and Bobby's grandfathers on both sides (John Francis Fitzgerald and Patrick Joseph Kennedy) were, in their time, the two most powerful men in Boston politics, rising from generations of poverty in the Irish Catholic slums of that city?
- Fifth of the nine, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, founded the Special Olympics.
- Third of the nine (and the oldest daughter), Rosemary Kennedy was considered mildly retarded, and as she aged into sexual maturity, her father worried of the embarrasment she might cause to the family with her violent mood swings and if she became pregant during times she would sneak out of the convent at night? In 1941 at the age of 23, her father had her lobotomized in a secret operation that (by some reports) wasn't even known to his wife and her mother until decades later. She was quickly thereafter institutionalized and all but forgetten by her father, though her siblings remained close and all those still living were present with her at the time of her death in 2005. Hers was (and is still) the only natural death of the nine Kennedy children, some of whom are still living.
- J.F.K., the second of the nine, was groomed for the presidency by his father, who had previously been grooming his one older brother, Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Jr., for that role until he died in 1944 flying a plane of explosives over the English Channel while serving in WWII?
Welcome to my ADD. Enjoy.
