For generations, the stigma surrounding mental illness has burdened millions of struggling survivors and their family members with its suffocating silence and cultural misperceptions. Not even those in the highest level of American society were immune, nor were they any less willing to publicize their dark secret.
So it should come as no surprise that when the powerful patriarch of the Kennedy family, JFK’s father, Joseph, learned of his eldest daughter Rosemary’s mental impairment, he would go to drastic extremes. After a complicated birth in 1918, Rosie, the third child of Joseph and Rose Kennedy, suffered from emotional outbursts throughout childhood to the point where her politically driven father secretly arranged for her to have a lobotomy at the age of 23, from which she never recovered. She spent the remainder of her life in a private facility in Jefferson, Wis., where author Elizabeth Koehler-Pentacoff became her unlikely friend for more than 35 years.
In The Missing Kennedy: Rosemary Kennedy and the Secret Bonds of Four Women, Koehler-Pentacoff has recreated a mesmerizing and intimate portrait of a famous family and the daughter who inspired the creation of the Special Olympics. In honor of National Mental Health Awareness Month throughout May, the author will appear at events across the state. On Tuesday, May 17 at 7 p.m. catch her at Watertown Public Library (100 S. Water St.); admission is $25 and includes hors d’oeuvres. The author then comes to the Kettle Moraine School District’s KM Global School (349 N. Oak Crest Drive, Wales) on Wednesday, May 18 at 12:30 p.m.
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Book Happening
Philip “Philo” Kassner
4-10 p.m., Saturday, May 14
2613 N. Bartlett St.
The handsome black-and-white photo on the cover of photographer Philip “Philo” Kassner’s Coffee Ennui is a dark, moody picture of a woman with a cigarette at Fuel Café—back when smoking was encouraged at the Riverwest coffee house. The woman is Kassner’s wife and the pictures that follow hop and skip across his life. Included are teenage darkroom accidents, snapshots of army life and trips to New York and—especially—photos taken in Milwaukee. Memories will be stirred among local hipsters by shots taken at Café Melange and KM Art along with portraits of colorful Milwaukeeans such as Prophet Blackmon and Stoney Rivera. Kassner will sign copies on May 14 at a house reception.
