Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. While that five-month period might seem fleeting, it was a significant period in Oswalds life. Moreover, the widow later came to believe that her husband Lee Harvey was innocent. You are now the manager of this memorial. I started worrying about, first of all, do I have a responsibility to tell them? Ive tried not to be make a big deal about things. "Their questioning left me only one way to go: guilty. MORE THAN 30 YEARS AFTER the Kennedy assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald is a name that will not go away. As our first session came to an end, we decided that future lessons would take the form of my driving the Oswalds around town and having Marina correct my practical Russian as I pointed out landmarks. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for John F Kennedy Lee Harvey Oswald mother Margaret Oswald signed about 6x9 Picture at the best online prices at eBay! I believe he's the first writer-researcher to get interviews with sources in the Russian Government and so this is an opportunity to shed new light on the subject from an area that has never been explored in any meaningful depth. Before we even set a fee, Marina agreed to see me twice a week. Most Texans resent this with a passion, and many of them blame Rachels father. As America's obsession with her father goes on, a daughter tries to set the record straight. Q: On your relationship with her as well? At the time I didnt know Gary was involved in the movie, in fact I didnt really even know who he was. Then he sat down. However, Marinas husband Lee Harvey was later arrested in 1963 after the 35th president of the United States of America, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was murdered. Walt Cisco, Dallas Morning News/Wikimedia Commons. by certain people in the critical communiity, so no wonder they are a bit gunshy. Q: Tell me about growing up in the aftermath of the assassination. Sometimes when the cheerleading squad went to football games in different towns, people in the stands would shout stuff at me - you know, Your daddy shot Kennedy or Good thing your daddys dead and buried. But mostly things were pretty normal. Lee explained to his wife in Russian that he had invited over a pair of fellow Russian speakers as a favor. She shrugged. A week and a half after his return, he went to the 15th floor of the Continental Life Building in downtown Fort Worth. As far as his portrayal in the movie, let me tell you - Gary Oldman is an actor. The discouragements and disappointments beginning in his childhood, continuing through the school years and the years in the Marines, the death of his dream of a new life in Russia, the boring jobs back in the United States, which made it impossible to support Marina adequately and gain some recognition as a man . My father now understood that the woman on the other end of the line, Marguerite Oswald, must have taken his class to communicate with her daughter-in-law, Marina, who spoke little English. Well, that's what Rachel wants to believe. The caller said only that she had been a student in his Russian language course at our local library, and that he knew her son. I accepted her gift gratefully and noticed that Bouhe and Meller seemed to have provided a playpen, used clothes and other amenities in the Oswald home. Dixie DeaApril 28, 2004 in JFK Assassination Debate. I'm a strong woman, but I don't know if I could've kept myself together. Who was Lee Harvey Oswald? After completing her English program, she left Michigan for good. I always feel torn by whether I'm required to tell somebody about my history. In 1963, according to Marina, her husband tried to assassinate General Edwin Walker, a far-right politician, while the family was living in New Orleans; the Warren Commission would later confirm that Oswald attempted to assassinate the general. [3] They married six weeks later and had a daughter, June Lee, born the following year. We were just trying to be a normal family. John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963. You see that image everywhere; its easy to take it for granted. The other thing is, you just worry genealogically: Lee was illegitimate, and so was my mother. My biggest concern was that people at the office had my home address and phone number and I didn't want it leaked to The National Enquirer I have two small children, I'm divorced, I didn't want people to harass the kids. Tippit, who believed that Oswald resembled the suspect already being described over the police radio. So on Aug. 25, 1962, we invited the Oswalds to a small dinner party at our house. And I realize that I'm kind of cold about it, so how do I tell them? Well, we're all waiting and a car pulls up in the driveway, and Mom rushes out to greet these parents, and they happen to be a man and a woman, and they've got a camera and she says, "Oh, you're gonna take pictures! I move all the way up there, and his parents wouldn't even let us stay in his house because I was the daughter of Lee Harvey Oswald. A: Well, there was a lot of misinformation being released related to a book, "Case Closed," by Gerald Posner. When I read the script, I was really angry. Q: What are your thoughts on Norman Mailer's new book? All the while, Marguerite insisted that her son should be buried in Arlington National Cemetery, and Robert patiently set out to find a funeral home that would bury the man accused of being the presidents assassin. I got really embarrassed, but every time I looked up we would catch each others eye. Rachel felt differently. Her family eventually wound up in Minsk, at the time a part of the Soviet Union, but now part of the fully-independent Belarus. They think you always have to have a car, whereas I got away on my own two feet. Oswald's wife Marina, two daughters, brother Robert and mother Marguerite were the only mourners. It was in Minsk that, in 1959, she met an American, Lee Harvey Oswald, who had defected to the USSR at the height of the Cold War, when tensions between the U.S. and the Soviets were running high. This montage of early 1990s television specials was curated by the JFK Assassination Forum. We were terribly moved by this. My father is Kenneth Porter, the man I grew up with, the man who was there for my mother and Rachel and me. Perhaps a visit might remind them of better times. U.S. National Archives A young Marina Oswald during her years living in Minsk. For all I know it's still tapped. Seated from left to right are: Lee Harvey Oswald's wife, Marina, holding their daughter June; his . Her findings were published in the . One guy tracked me down to the Chili Parlor and for a while was coming in several nights a week. In the year 1965, the widow got married to a man named Kenneth Jess Porter. Moreover, Porter currently leads a private life and is afraid to go out in public. Every day we present the best quotes! Though pressured to change her name, she declined, saying she wanted to "face reality, not dodge it," according to a church newsletter. But a week and a half later, after I returned to my parents home for Thanksgiving, I answered our single phone at the bottom of the staircase. In her early years, grocery shopping with her mother, Marina, and sister, Rachel, took place amid stares and finger-pointing; hushed conversations ignited around them like flash fires as they walked the supermarket aisles. So she became a sort of tourist attraction. On November 22, 1963, Oswald shot and killed Kennedy from a room in the very building where he worked. By 1964,Marina Oswald Porter had put the Warren Commission behind her and was willing to take up Michigan's offer to learn English while receiving help from a local church, according to the University of Michigan Heritage Project. While Lee Harvey Oswald was sitting in a Dallas jail cell, his wife and mother and two young daughters were hiding out at the Executive Inn, a commuter hotel near the airport, where they were taken and then abandoned by a team of Life magazine staff members. Nice to see you over here. They think you always have to have a car, whereas I got away on my own two feet. I think Lee was this 24-year-old guy, this youngster, who got himself in over his head. One guy I told actually thought I was crazy. So I said, O.K, this is it. And she said, "June Oswald?" In truth, Rachel was a healthy, active teenager. Revolutions require work, revolutions require sacrifice, revolutions, and our own included, require a certain amount of rationing, a certain amount of calluses, a certain amount of sacrifice. In the final scene they have my sister and me walking hand in hand to the Kennedy Memorial singing We Shall Overcome. That never happened either. Though her testimony was enough to convince the Warren Commission that her deceased husband had acted alone, later in her life Marina expressed her doubts about her husband's guilt. Lost in the shuffle was Oswald's widow, Marina Oswald. I was really supportive. Dont get me wrong, Rachel said, blushing a little. Additionally, Marina learned English and became a citizen of the United States by naturalization in the year 1989. So I sat across the hall in a time-out room. Hey Dixie! A: I do. According to Rachel, in the months immediately after Lees murder, Marina, Rachel and her 2-year-old-sister survived chiefly on the charity of churches in the Dallas suburb of Richardson. She was an engaging young woman who had already overcome a great deal she was reared in a war-ravaged St. Petersburg (then Leningrad) littered with unmarked graves and he wanted to help her. And it was there that my father told Marina, in Russian, that her husband just died. I know that in my life, Lee wasn't a good man. After all, they each grew up in what is now St. Petersburg. He got really scared and wanted to take me to a hospital. He was always provided for, but he was also, in a way, homeless--without a stable backdrop of buildings or even. Marina and Lee Oswald had two children, Rachel and June. This, we reasoned, would be better for my language skills and help Marina learn the city. He was back in America with a beautiful wife and an adorable daughter; his life ahead promised more study and a possible university degree; a publisher would surely understand the value of his memoir, and he could use it as a platform to further the socialist causes in which he believed. So Lee Harvey Oswald the man who the Warren Commission Report concluded was JFK's pro-Communist, pro-Castro lone nut assassin had been an active-duty Marine who had volunteered to risk his life in a CIA program using fake defectors to infiltrate the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. Marguerite Claverie, the mother of Lee Harvey Oswald, was born in New Orleans in 1907,1 into a family of French and German extraction. They first met last April in Washington. Lee Oswald Harvey allegedly assassinated former U.S. President John F. Kennedy on 22 November 1963. The writers portray me as this traumatized, victimized kid - theres a scene of me having a birthday party that no one comes to - just me in my birthday hat all by myself. thanks for posting that interview I had not read it before. Can there be any American who, having failed to gain stature while he was alive, now haunts us more than Lee Harvey Oswald, asks Norman Mailer in "Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery." November 19 . In 2003 a reporter for The Independent drove to her home to talk to her, only to be told that she wasn't interested in talking. Agent Mike Howard of the Secret Service told me he had not spoken to Marina since the exhumation of Lee Harvey Oswalds body in 1981. officers (including, supposedly, members of Nixons plumbers team) have somehow been tied to Oswalds actions that day, but its difficult to understand how these conspiracy theories would have worked. I also had an interview for Rachel Oswald, but haven't located it. And I said, "Yes?" When my mother came on and this interview went so badly, I decided I really wanted to rebut. didnt want to recruit Oswald. A few of the regulars.. For the most part, folks were nice, but they were always whispering things. They spoke for a while, but when Lee rejoined us, he was sullen and quiet. Marguerite, on the other hand, was having a fit; she refused to be sent out to the sticks, as she put it. There were a lot of things leading up to that that they wanted Mom to do, and Mom in recent years has gotten more and more involved, I guess because she's getting older and trying to rectify some of the things she may have done unintentionally - like stating publicly that Lee did it. The first car was The National Enquirer. After a couple of months of lessons, my parents Russian migr circle became curious about my new friends. Both interviews I found in the JFK collection at the Dallas Public Library last November. Q: I guess you must be encouraged that the review board was finally sworn in last year. A few days later, my father decided to check up on Oswald and his wife, and because I was around their age and home for the summer, he took me along. Are they looking at me that way because of me or because Im the daughter of Lee Harvey Oswald?. Two years after the Kennedy assassination, Marina married Kenneth Porter, an electronics technician who has effectively protected her from the media. This was before wiretapping got more sophisticated. So l never connected it as a big negative or anything. On 22nd November 1963, Marina told the commission that she believed her husband was guilty of shooting President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Mom accused me one day of being ashamed of who I was. I would have liked for him to have his day in court. We always had this really bad connection, and when you'd pick up the phone you'd hear that other click. I'm convinced that your mother and Priscilla had a sexual relationship." Why are 40+ guests suddenly reading this very old thread, as well as a smaller but still significant number reading an old thread on Marina? Every once in a while my mother would say that I looked like him, that I ate like him, that my legs looked like his legs, but for the most part we just didnt talk about it.. It is difficult to imagine what life must be like for the child of a celebrity - having a recognizable last name, a childhood in the spotlight. A: Mom kept us together. I nodded that I appreciated the distinction. See for example this thread and interview: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=659, http://www.jfkresearch.com/marina/marina.htm. Two days after the momentous event Oswald was killed by Jack Ruby, before he could be tried. Her husband answered and confirmed that Marina had received the package but said that she had not read my reflections and did not wish to speak. Updates? Now Lees voice rose again. This summer, with the 50th anniversary of the J.F.K. A: I've always called him that. A: The last two years have been very stressful, because she started doing things that she hasn't let us know about, then all of a sudden I hear about it or see it on TV. However, her other body measurements including weight, eye color, and hair color are still being looked at and will be updated once they are available. ___________________________________________, Reminds me of Elvis Costello's song "Watching The Detectives.". I can't imagine the burden they've carried over the years, but I hope they have found some peace in their lives. I see Lee. A: No. Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. (At the time, I didnt realize he hadnt graduated from high school.) In June 1962, the family emigrated to the United States and settled in Dallas, Texas. In February 1962, Marina gave birth to a daughter named June. It's right across from the Capitol, and she was a waitress. By found it I meant that I was looking back through the forum pages and this was posted first in 2004 so I decided to bring it back up to peoples attention. Robert Oswald told me in September that he had not talked to Marina in quite a while. Appendix 13: Biography of Lee Harvey Oswald. During one visit to a Rexall drugstore that August, Lee became visibly angry when a pharmacist offered to hire Marina, who had worked at a hospital pharmacy in Minsk, once her language skills improved. In January 1963 Oswald bought a .38 revolver and, in March, a rifle and telescopic sight, through the mails. campus so Lee could talk to a school official. There's always been this little group that's followed us - Mom, Rachel and me-and calls us and is fascinated by anything surrounding us. We would climb into my yellow Buick and drive by department stores or Montgomery Ward, and Id bring them back home by 10.