Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy

However, her father thought she was too young and instead enrolled her at Sacred Heart Convent in Boston and the New England Conservatory of Music, where she honed her skills as a pianist. From 1908 to 1909 Rose was a student at Blumenthal Academy, a German convent finishing school in Valls, the Netherlands, where she learned to speak and read German and French fluently. She received her higher education at Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart in Purchase, New York, and graduated in 1910 (Ciccarelli; Cameron 47).
             When Rose returned to Boston, she started taking language classes at Boston University, joined the cultural associations Alliance Francaise and Deutsche Gesselschaft, taught catechism classes, and was active in settlement social work. As Boston Public Library Investigation Committee's youngest member, she suggested reading material for children. When the Brahmin-composed Junior League rebuked her, she started the Ace of Clubs, a women's club that gave its members a chance to speak about international affairs in an open discussion environment (Ciccarelli).
             In acknowledgment of her exemplary Catholic life and her contribution to charities, Pope Pius XII named her papal countess in 1952 (Ciccarelli; Cameron 87).
             Rose Fitzgerald became a Kennedy in October of 1914 when she married the love of her life, Joseph Patrick Kennedy, the brilliant son of another Boston-Irish politician. Joe started earning his millions as president of the Columbia Trust Company in Boston, then from highly profitable investment in real estate, liquor, film production, and finally the stock market. While he was working on building up the family fortune, Rose was busy raising their nine children. In "Times to Remember" (1974), Rose's autobiography, she wrote, "I looked on child rearing not only as a work of love and duty but as a profession that was fully as interesting and challenging as any honorable profession in the world and one that demanded the best that I could bring to it.