The action grandchildren

A newly released collection of diaries, letters and personal papers of Rose Kennedy, who died 12 years ago at age 104, shows a more complex figure than the Kennedy family matriarch presented in public, according to an extensive profile by the Boston Globe.

"An educated, ambitious woman, she struggled to maintain a sense of individuality in a culture that frowned upon independent women, in a family that considered everything a team sport, in which the women were expected to suppress their ambitions for the team," the newspaper writes.

The new profile was compiled from more than 185,000 newly released items about Kennedy, including 15,000 photographs and 67 taped interviews. Maria Shriver, her granddaughter and the future California First Lady, shows up briefly:

"Once while minding her grandson Joe, she scolded him for making noise while she was on the phone. But she didn't know where the closets in Bobby's and Ethel's new home were, and when the young Joe led her to the closet so she could get a coat hanger, she took pity on the earnest little boy and spared him the rod.

"Two other grandchildren, Bobby and Maria Shriver, were more proactive after she warned them about the price of misbehaving. 'They threw all the coat hangers down the laundry chute so that there would not be any of them around for me to use,' she wrote."

(Photos: AP;  Jae C. Hong/AP)