Rosemary Isabel Forbes (October 27, 1913 – November 14, 2002) was an American nurse and social activist.

Early life

Rosemary Isabel Forbes was born in Paris, France, to American parents. She was one of eleven children of James Grant Forbes II of the Forbes family and Margaret Tyndal Winthrop of the Dudley–Winthrop family. Margaret was a granddaughter of politician Robert Charles Winthrop.

Work

She studied to be a nurse, and served in the Red Cross in Paris during World War II where she treated wounded soldiers at Montparnasse. According to her son John, Rosemary and her sister escaped from Paris on bicycles the day before the Nazis took the city. The sisters foraged their way across France while being shot at by German fighters, eventually making their way to Portugal before returning to the United States. Rosemary also was a Girl Scout leader at the troop and council level in Groton, Massachusetts, for 50 years.

Personal life

On February 8, 1941, she married Richard John Kerry in Montgomery, Alabama. Kerry was a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School. Richard and Rosemary met when Kerry took a sculpture class at the resort of Saint-Briac, where the Forbes family built the family estate. Together, they were the parents of four children: Kerry died on November 14, 2002, at Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts. Upon her death, her son John inherited "trusts with $300,000 to $1.5 million in assets."