Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter by Kate Clifford Larson Page A

O Keefe. He told the Chauffer how to go. It was a Costume party. but we diddn’t know it. I wore my red evening dress, red shoes, 2 red bows on my hair, black evening coat. Mary wore her red evening dress, red evening coat. And we both had our nails polished . . .
[John] O Keefe did a backward Somersault at the dance . . . Saturday, Babe Kaughlin, a friend of Mary went down on the Beach and cooked sausages and put it in a sandwich, cooked steak and bacon, and brought gingerbread to eat. We made a fire, and got wood for it. Paper too. And we came home . . . I played Christine in ping pong, and Mary and babe also. We also played three handered bridge. At night Mary and I played Monopoly with Christine. Sunday, Aunt Agnas envite Joe and I to lunch. I stayed overnight . . .
. . . I am going to study Napoleon, Mary O Keefe has a new red and white bathing suit, new white shorts, new blue evening dress. I tried the bathing suit on me, also thenew silk dress she bought. I tried it on me. I get 3 dollars allowance a week. I have had my hair waved and my eyebrows plucked . . .
lots of love and kisses to the best Mother and father in the world. Your loving daughter.
Rosemary
     
    Loving new clothes or a pretty haircut and watching her weight made Rosemary no different from other teenage girls. “Every time I would say, ‘Rosemary, you have the best teeth and smile in the family,’” Eunice reported, “she would smile for hours.”During an interview for
Catholic Digest
in 1976, Rose remembered that even the slightest attention or compliment directed toward Rosemary resulted in hours of happiness: “If I said to her no more than ‘Rosemary, that’s the most beautiful hair ribbon,’ she would be thrilled.”
    But there were other aspects to Rosemary’s life that did underscore her difference. In letters she wrote while still at Miss Newton’s, she several times mentioned “Dr. Lawrence” giving her “injections” and “red pills.” This was Charles Lawrence, a new doctor engaged by the Kennedys to treat Rosemary. The injections were part of an experimental regimen developed by Dr. Lawrence to treat perceived hormonal or “gland” imbalances. Lawrence, a renowned endocrinologist in Boston and chief of endocrinology at the New England Medical Center, believed that disruptions in sexual development due to dysfunctional hormonal levels produced by the pituitary gland were at the root of many developmental and emotional problems in teenagers and adults. Dysfunction of the pituitary gland was already linked to dwarfism and gigantism, arrested or slow development of sexual organs, poor sperm production, and irregular or nonexistent menstrual periods. But Lawrence, who was not a psychologist or a psychiatrist, focused exclusively on the endocrine system and the functioning of the pituitary gland in the normal and abnormal function of the human body and its effects on “nervous impulses” and intellectual development.Rosemary may have been treated for allergies as well, an ailment affecting young Jack and Kick most severely but afflicting almost all of the Kennedy children. It’s possible that the “red pills” that Rosemary took may have been some type of antihistamine. Interestingly, Luminal, dispensed in a red-pill form, was a highly touted and newly developed phenobarbital-based barbiturate used at that time to relieve anxiety, to sedate violent patients, and in some cases to alleviate epileptic convulsions. Without further information, however, the specific purpose of Rosemary’s red pills remains a mystery.
    Helen Newton had recommended Dr. Lawrence to the Kennedys within the first few weeks of Rosemary’s enrollment, in the fall of 1934. Joe was receptive; on October 15—the same day Rosemary wrote to him to thank him for coming to see her and to say, “I would do anything to make you so happy”—he wrote Frederick Good, Rose’s obstetrician and the children’s pediatrician when they lived in