intellectual disabilities that grew increasingly worse as she grew older would ensure that her entire life would be spent away from public scrutiny.

The only details of Rosemary's early childhood come from what her mother and siblings would provide in later years but the problems in Rosemary's motor and cognitive development were clear enough, especially compared to her two older brothers, Joseph Junior and Jack. Her concerned parents tried taking her to numerous specialists for treatment but none of them could provide any answers. While Rosemary started school at the age of five in a regular kindergarten class in Brookline, Massachusetts, it became quickly apparent that she couldn't keep up with the other children in her class. As her mother would later write in her autobiography, "Her lack ofcoordination was apparent and she could not keep up with the work."

Withdrawn from regular school, Rosemary was eventually sent to the Sacred Heart Convent in Providence, Rhode Island when she was fifteen. After receiving special education involving private tutoring, she eventually learned to read and write at a basic level. Still, she was kept apart from the other children and, aside from occasional social outings, including a tea dance with her brother Jack serving as her escort, Rosemary was kept well-hidden from public. When she was seen at all, it was in carefully controlled settings that kept her "differences" out of the public eye. Though she was presented to the Queen along with her other siblings, Rosemary was otherwise raised and educated separately.

Due to the terrible stigma surrounding