Later Life at Saint Coletta: What the Record Shows
The available information about Rosemary Kennedy’s daily life at Saint Coletta across more than five decades is necessarily incomplete. Institutional records are not publicly available, the Sisters of Saint Francis of Assisi maintained appropriate privacy around their residents, and the family members who visited left fragmentary accounts in interviews and books rather than systematic documentation.
What can be established from multiple corroborating accounts is the following.
Rosemary lived in the Kennedy cottage on the Saint Coletta grounds rather than in the main residential building. This gave her a degree of privacy and individuality that most residents did not have. The cottage was modest but comfortable.
She was cared for across decades by a rotation of sisters assigned specifically to her, with Sister Margaret Ann and Sister Leona among the longest-serving. The Sisters of Saint Francis had a particular commitment to treating people with intellectual disabilities as full persons deserving of dignity, and their institutional culture was distinct from the custodial approach of many state hospitals of the same era.
Rosemary swam regularly. She took walks on the Saint Coletta grounds. She participated in activities that the institution offered. The photographs that exist from her Saint Coletta years show a woman who was heavier than she had been as a young woman — a common outcome after brain surgery that affects the hypothalamus and frontal regions — moving through daily life with the assistance of the people around her.
By the accounts of Koehler-Pentacoff, whose aunt cared for Rosemary directly, she was recognized and liked within the Saint Coletta community. She had preferences. She had moods. She had good days and difficult days. She was not, in the perspective of the people who knew her at Saint Coletta, a tragedy — she was a woman they knew.