Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter Read Online Free Page B

child of Sacred Heart can receive.”In May, Rose wrote home to her parents that she had received her Child of Mary medal, one of only three issued that spring among 150 young women enrolled at the school, securing her place as a Sacred Heart role model and spiritual protector.The achievement required of Rose a remarkable self-discipline and commitment to her faith as a calling and a duty.
    Once their studies were completed for the spring term of 1909, Rose and Agnes decided they had been away from home long enough. Though Fitzgerald’s intention was to leave the girls at Blumenthal for two years, they missed America, their family—and, for Rose, Joe. Fortunately for the girls, Honey Fitz had decided to run a third time for mayor, and having his daughters home was probably better for his campaign than leaving them in Europe. His prospects were good, now that the taint of political corruption had passed and he had been cleared of wrongdoing. Rose would take her place, again, next to her father on the campaign trail. This time Fitzgerald would be successful, and with a change in the city charter that extended the mayor’s tenure from two years to four, Honey Fitz looked forward to a long and productive run.
    In the meantime, with Joe enrolled at Harvard and Rose—eager to continue her education but to be closer to home—now at the Sacred Heart School at Manhattanville in New York, theywere not an ocean apart. During Joe’s Harvard years, Rose later recalled, she fell “more and more in love.”But her father was more determined in his steadfast refusal to allow Rose to spend time with Joe. His schemes to keep them apart—a trip to Palm Beach so that Rose could not attend Harvard’s junior prom in 1911, arranging dates for her with other eligible young men, another summer tour of Europe—upset Rose and did little to dampen her passion for Joe. Once Joe graduated from Harvard, in the spring of 1912, Honey Fitz and Josie finally relented, becoming resigned to Rose’s wishes and Joe’s intentions. And so Fitzgerald gave his blessing to the young couple.Though Joe never met with the mayor’s complete approval, his determined pursuit of Rose and his eventual hard-earned business success secured Honey Fitz’s respect over time.
    Gone were the secret and furtive meetings. The young couple could at last enjoy each other’s company in public. The course of their courtship was now closely watched in the society columns of Boston’s newspapers. Upon graduation from Harvard, Joe embarked on a career in finance. After a stint as a state bank examiner, he secured enough financing through family and business connections to save the Columbia Trust, a local East Boston bank that Joe’s father, Patrick Kennedy, had helped found decades before and that was now under threat of takeover by larger Boston banking interests. After acquiring a majority-stock position in Columbia Trust, Joe named himself bank president, appointed sympathetic board members, and hired competent friends. Bank assets nearly tripled. His real estate investments flourished.
    By 1914, this financial success had brought the economic and social status Joe needed, finally allowing him to marry Rose after an eight-year courtship. On a Wednesday morning in October, Joe and Rose were wed by Cardinal O’Connell in a private ceremony in front of family and close friends. Cardinal O’Connell’s intervention and the resulting postgraduate years at Catholic schools had recast Rose, molding her into a more conservative and devout Catholic, a self-identity that would forever circumscribe her future with her husband and their children.
    After a honeymoon traveling across the United States, the couple settled into their modest new home on Beals Street in Brookline.Joe and Rose’s first child, a son named Joseph Patrick Kennedy II, arrived in July 1915. John “Jack” Kennedy was born in May 1917, adding to the busy household that now included a nurse, governess, and