There's a lot of genetic things you can't even control that are inborn in your kids. At 1:30 am on November 23 he was formally arraigned for the murder of President Kennedy. After Marina returned to Six Flags, humiliated by the rushed service, my father consoled her by translating a telegram from a group of college students. Somehow those boxes came down and she was reading, and I guess she felt it was time to tell us. Moreover, Marina is convinced that her mobile phones are tapped by the Secret Service and the Secret Service wants to assassinate her. Rachels mother, Marina, then barely in her 20s, had arrived from Minsk, Russia, only a year earlier and spoke very little English. Q: What are your thoughts on Norman Mailer's new book? I felt they manipulated her and made her look foolish. Would Oswald, as Norman Mailer wrote, pushed to such an extreme, have the soul of a killer? As I pored back over those months, I realized that I was watching that soul take shape. But imagine the life of a child fathered by a villain, a child cursed with the name like Booth or Oswald. He said that he had been in jail for hours doing this scene - that had been in handcuffs since dawn, that hed been beaten up and spit at - and that he had come to really empathize with what had happened to my father, and that now, looking at his wife and daughter, it really broke his heart to know what we had all gone through. One would think they would be more anxious to try to, clear his name. Rachel loved listening to that. This helped explain why our school bus was sometimes followed by news teams, why our mailbox got shot at, why kids at school would ask, Did your daddy shoot the president? At home we rarely discussed Lee. Nonetheless, during several interviews over the past she reports being content. And apparently there were police recordings of someone saying Jack Ruby was planning to kill Lee, and sure enough, the next day Jack Ruby makes his way through all the police and kills Lee live on national TV. I arrived at Roberts house as the guests were leaving and then drove Lee, Marina and June back to our house. He brought along maps of St. Petersburg at various stages of its history, and they spread them out on the floor and huddled together, pointing at various landmarks. In that instant, my father, Pete Gregory, linked the voice to a nurse who sat in the back of his class and had once identified herself as Oswald. Until this phone call, he hadnt realized that she was the mother of Lee Harvey Oswald, a Marine who had defected to the Soviet Union only to return two and a half years later with a Russian wife and a 4-month-old daughter. Kate O'Brien (Christa Miller) - Friends with Drew, Lewis, and Oswald since they were kids. I didn't really want to be the center of gossip in this whole building. The conversation segued to the Time cover; Marina ventured that the president appeared to be a nice man and that the first lady, at least from the pictures she had seen, appeared quite glamorous. According to the story, Rachel was a miserable, lonely child - her dogs had been poisoned, she had never been asked out on a date, she had no friends, her family couldnt even afford to buy albums for her record player. I went on a car trip up to the house I had lived in with Lee, Lee's boarding house, another house Mom had lived in with Lee that's still standing, the path of the motorcade, where the bullets hit. The assassination has also been a constant in the life of June Oswald Porter, the 33-year-old daughter of Lee Harvey Oswald. Marina waved goodbye from the steps. Her family eventually wound up in Minsk, at the time a part of the Soviet Union, but now part of the fully-independent Belarus. This, we reasoned, would be better for my language skills and help Marina learn the city. Now he is the author of The Oswalds: An Untold Account of Marina and Lee, out on Nov. 15 with Diversion Books. Every day we present the best quotes! Do I need to be more compassionate' about it? Dont get me wrong, Rachel said, blushing a little. This was before wiretapping got more sophisticated. We were of interest to people. Gregory, a woman said as my father picked up, I need your help. Who are you? And they got my mother on television in a live interview - she still doesn't have a good grasp of the language - and they were asking her specific questions about this book. The Texas Chili Parlor is a neighborhood bar without a neighborhood. The Soviet Union was a miserable place to live, she continued, so why had he left a country that was so wonderful and hospitable? It was during these months after moving back to the U.S. that Marina, now known as Marina Oswald, learned of her husband's violent proclivities. My family tried to put those tragic events behind us, but over the ensuing decades, as I became an academic and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, I felt compelled to combine my memories and the historical record to present my own sense of Oswald. She worked at an Army Navy Surplus Store in uptown. Like she did a movie and it involved me and Rachel, and she didn't tell us first. And I'm gonna be in Dallas, and I want to sing it to you. But reporters were already camped out in front of Paines yard, so the group was diverted to the home of the citys police chief, C. J. Wirasnik. She didn't feel like Kenneth was her dad. By November 24th, two days later, Oswald would be shot and killed by Jack Ruby while in prisoner transport. A: Mom kept us together. To soften the blow, he invited Oswald to lunch at the Hotel Texas, a block from his office, with its bustling dining room filled with deal-making oilmen, bankers and lawyers gnawing on Melba toast, a specialty. thanks for posting that interview I had not read it before. On April 10, 1963, Oswald used a rifle with a telescopic sight to fire a bullet into the Dallas home of Maj. Gen. Edwin Walker, the conservative war hero, narrowly missing his head. Oswald assumed his experience as an American living in the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War would be tremendously valuable, and he was already drafting a memoir. In one of the most shocking crimes in the 20th century, and in perhaps all of U.S. history, an assassin shot and killed the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy. Q: Did you ever take the so-called assassination tour? It was just kind of eerie. _________________________________________. The Secret Service first knocked on my parents door at 3 a.m. on the morning of Nov. 23, 1963. They think you always have to have a car, whereas I got away on my own two feet. 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. I think Lee was this 24-year-old guy, this youngster, who got himself in over his head. A good person. First, however, the Warren Commission wanted to talk to her, and the feds, on learning that she was a Soviet, made it clear that she'd be on the first plane back to Minsk if she didn't tell them everything she knew, according to All That's Interesting. I've wondered what my kids are going to turn out like. And she said, "June Oswald?" He beat my mother. I entered his life at just the moment that he was trying to prove, particularly to his skeptical wife, that he was truly exceptional. She continued watching the broadcast until the agents had to rush her out so she could attend her own husbands funeral at the Rose Hill Cemetery. Watch on. By Texas. Oswald told his wife about the assassination attempt, but she never told authorities before Kennedys death. Lee, who controlled the budget, would then haggle over prices, particularly with meat. A: I've always called him that. Is David Lifton still working on a book about Lee? Kate is a bit of a tomboy and a . I guess it was easier for him to believe that I was insane than that Lee was my father. Mr. She should send James Files a letter. Pete Gregory, the authors father, seated center left, translating as Secret Service agents questioned Marina Oswald days after the Kennedy assassination. For example, this TV movie about my family. While married to Lee Harvey Oswald, she gave birth to her firstborn daughter called June Leeon 15th February 1962. And again, in 1996,she claimed that she was part of the system that had railroaded her deceased husband, whom she claimed was a patsy, according to The Independent. We lived in poor housing or were taken in by others. 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. Very interesting. Marina Oswald and her mother-in-law, Marguerite Claverie Oswald, are seen through a window at the Dallas police station where her husband, Lee Harvey Oswald was being held in the. Soon after I arrived with the Oswalds, Marina and Bouhe repaired to the living room. We visited the set of "JFK" when it was going on, and somebody said, "Your father was a hero." We were terribly moved by this. You know, its interesting if you think about it, Rachel said, lighting a cigarette. Marina answered most of the questions, speaking quietly and occasionally showing photographs. George Bouhe, a dapper bachelor who took it upon himself to be a one-man social-service department for new Russian-speaking immigrants, was particularly eager to meet Marina. As a 21-year-old college student, I returned to my hometown of Ft. Worth for the summer of 1962. But I don't remember that. I do blame him for having beat my mother, and not being a good father or a good provider. We've also written about his account of Lenin's brain here. For the most part, folks were nice, but they were always whispering things. By Steve Salerno. Q: But are you comfortable with the fact that Lee Oswald played at least some role? Q: Over the years, you've kept a pretty low profile. When I reached him by phone at his home, he had the wary tone of a man who has spent half a century answering for someone else. Q: How did you feel about being singled out? "Their questioning left me only one way to go: guilty. Give directly to The Spokesman-Review's Northwest Passages community forums series -- which helps to offset the costs of several reporter and editor positions at the newspaper -- by using the easy options below. She stays with her second husband who is called Kenneth Jess Porter. "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com. A competent sharpshooter but an indifferent marine, he began expressing pro-Soviet and politically radical views and, on a hardship plea, secured release from the corps on September 11, 1959. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. We didn't use the Oswald name, and it didn't come, up a lot around the house except when reporters would call It was always a big deal in November, when it was very stressful in the house. 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. Diane Holloway, Lee Harvey Oswald (2000). At the time, I thought that Lee, who did not have a drivers license, seemed to recognize that I was doing his young family a favor. A single armed detective patrolled the grounds as Marina chain-smoked and drank coffee and was asked questions about Lees rifle, a photo of him holding the assassination weapon and his various associates. Do you think your father pulled the trigger?, Rachel was quiet for a moment. Lee Oswald Harvey allegedly assassinated former U.S. President John F. Kennedy on 22 November 1963. didnt want to recruit Oswald. Lee Harvey Oswald, his wife Marina Nikolayevna Prusakova, and . At the time, Oswald was traveling here and there in his attempts to advance his political goals, although whether that led to estrangement or if the couple just lived in separate domiciles for the sake of convenience, isn't clear. Lee was intelligent, but he was no genius. This story appears in the March issue of Texas Monthly. As a sign of her gratitude, she gave me a memento from her days in the Communist youth league a pin of Lenins image, chin jutted out in a defiant but thoughtful pose. I nodded that I appreciated the distinction. She got all caught up, because she wants so badly to have this identification with her father. "I am now convinced that he was an FBI informant and believe that he did not kill President Kennedy," she said. Most Americans believe that Oswald shot Kennedy. But there are still people who refuse to believe that I could be normal. He served in the Marines, where his nickname was "Osvaldovich." Oswald took an early interest in socialism after picking up a. Lee Harvey Oswald's childhood did not take place in any one town or city. But you have to understand that, aside from what role he had in the assassination, there's the issue of what role he had in our family. Thanks for the video; I'd never seen it before. It's not a matter of being ashamed, it's a matter of wanting to be judged as June Oswald and not "the daughter of Lee Harvey Oswald.". That never happened. "Please get her away from Michigan. We are very close - except when these kinds of things come up. I wrote her a response telling her as much, politely suggesting a few points about punctuation. We said hello to my parents and went into the kitchen to prepare some turkey sandwiches. However, a decade later, she told Ladies Home Journal that she believed the Warren Commission pressured her at the time a widow with two children and facing deportation to the Soviet Union to implicate her husband. [quote name='John Geraghty' date='May 13 2006, 02:49 PM' post='62308'], Dixie, thanx for the interview. The doctors advised Marina against viewing Oswalds body, which was yellow and pale, his face bruised, but Marina insisted; she wanted to see the wound that killed him. Spencer Hawk (Gupi) Bio, Age, Songs, Parents, Net worth. [3] They married six weeks later and had a daughter, June Lee, born the following year. Just out of the blue. Marguerite, on the other hand, was having a fit; she refused to be sent out to the sticks, as she put it. In January 1963 Oswald bought a .38 revolver and, in March, a rifle and telescopic sight, through the mails. Listen as Dan Rather reports on the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby on November 24, 1963, assassination of John F. Kennedy: The capture and death of Oswald, Encounter Walter Cronkite through his CBS News special commentary on the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald and on the Warren Commission. Both girls grew up with the shame of being the children of a despised assassin. Dear Paul! it read, We have moved to Dallas where we have found a nice apartment and I have found work in a very nice place, we would like you too [sic] come and see us as soon as you get a chance, before eventually signing off in Russian. A: I remember what I did during that time-out was, I plotted how I could run for class president and win! Obviously, if I'd wanted to share that I would have told everyone a long time ago. Its set in 1978, when I was 15 and my sister was 17. By all accounts, she was a devoted mom to her two daughters by Oswald - June (now 51) and Rachel (now 50), who told The ENQUIRER: "Yes," when asked if she believes her father was innocent. Q: Did you see the "Seinfeld" episode in which they're at the ballpark, and they get spat upon, and-. As they ordered their lunch, my father tried to engage Oswald about his wife and life in contemporary Russia, but the young man volunteered little about how a former Marine and Fort Worth resident could end up in Minsk other than to say enigmatically that he had gone to the Soviet Union on my own. Upon parting, Oswald offered the address and telephone number of his brother Robert, with whom he and his wife were staying, just in case anything came up. I just remember crying a lot because Mom was crying. I never saw them again. 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. A: I remember Rachel's seventh grade dance. During one of Lees lectures about Castros Cuba, Marina, who had lived her whole life under Communism, interrupted to say that the Soviet Union was foolishly spending its precious resources to prop up Cuba. We beg you not to think ill of us.. And you know, it's not Lee's fault he got killed by Jack Ruby. See for example this thread and interview: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=659, http://www.jfkresearch.com/marina/marina.htm. 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. On these shopping trips, I soon realized, Marina couldnt help noticing that other mothers were buying more, dressing better and even driving their own cars. Whom do you really think of as dad? It features interviews with Rachel Oswald Porter and June Oswald Porter, the daughters of Marina and Lee Harvey Oswald, who were raised by their mother and their adoptive father, Kenneth Jess Porter. A: Part of it was the big anniversary, the 30th. I made Lee guilty," she said at the time. At 1:22 p.m., police arrested Lee Harvey Oswald. Nevertheless, Marina was not implicated in the assassination but testified against Lee Harvey during the Warren Commission hearings. (Lee was one of several suitors back in Minsk.) Book Haven readers will remember his earlier account of the events of 1963 in The New York Times Sunday Magazine here. Because Marina Oswald realized that she and her children could become the focus of attention at any time, she made sure June and Rachel were always neatly dressed - no matter how small the chore, and despite the fact that the family was often financially strapped. She shrugged. She kept herself together for us. Lee responded defensively that, yes, he did not think that the party faithful believed in Communism anymore but that this did not make America a great place. The question brought her up from her Bloody Mary. I asked Rachel how many people in the bar knew who she was. As far as his portrayal in the movie, let me tell you - Gary Oldman is an actor. Lee, who had been on his best behavior and even wore a sports jacket to dinner, suddenly became agitated and defensive. She was born in Dallas Parkland Memorial Hospital, the same hospital where both Kennedy and her father were transported after being shot. The wall build around Oswald's family women was intense after Dallas. But when he walked into the restaurant, he had come straight from rehearsal and seemed really tired - they were doing the scene where Lee was held in jail - and he was wearing the same white T-shirt and blue overshirt that Lee had been wearing, his hair was cut like Lees, and the way he walked - he looked exactly like him. Nothing did, of course, but there were so few migrs in the area that the Dallas Russians, as my family called a group of their friends, felt protective of their own. Earlier that morning, my father, a successful petroleum engineer, received a call from a young man who wanted certification of fluency in Russian. Thinking, Two, Feet. I think he was checking me out because I look very much like my father, and think he was trying to feel for my dad by looking at me. Lee Oswald and A.J. Marina, who was calling from Robert Oswalds house in Fort Worth, said immediately: I did not write that letter. Fifty years is a long time. 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. And so my father, Pete, led the discussion by asking her questions about their voyage to the U.S., life in Minsk and what it was like to be a young person in the Soviet Union. I mean, Ive never gone to my fathers grave., Everything about my father is accurate., So, what do you think really happened? I'm a strong woman, but I don't know if I could've kept myself together. If she was led to LHO in Russia and then to his family after Dallas, what does that tell us? The Highly Unusual Funeral of Lee Harvey Oswald. Just get out. Q: If someone was to ask you today who your father is, what would you say? I listened uncomfortably, sensing his hostility at me for suggesting that he, a self-styled intellectual keeping a Historic Diary, could not write or punctuate any better than someone just learning English. She smiled rarely, if at all a typical victim of Soviet dentistry, she was ashamed of her teeth. Robert Oswald left for the hospital, but Howard and my father agreed not to mention the news to Marina or Marguerite yet. Thirteen months later, in June 1962, he was able to return to the United States with his wife and three-month-old daughter, June Lee. We were studying the Presidents. Anyone can read what you share. Investigators took Marina and her children to Dallas, essentially severing the friendship with. As Priscilla Johnson McMillan writes in her book, Marina and Lee, the presidents route under Oswalds workplace might have convinced him that fate had provided a unique opportunity. It's a little bit like opening a family album you didn't know existed before. We are ashamed that such a thing could happen in our country. Ive never even been to the Kennedy Memorial. Fifty years later, I would love to ask Marina Oswald Porter why that Time magazine never moved, what happened when Lee received my letter in Dallas and why she has continued to make her home so near the place where tragedy struck. 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. This image shows Oswald family members during the graveside funeral service for Lee Harvey Oswald at the Rose Hill Memorial Park in Fort Worth, Texas on Monday, November 25, 1963. She also said that she seemed to be a good mother. There was a bill passed at the end of the Bush Administration that required all Government agencies to review their files for any information related to the assassination and to release it - unless they felt there were matters of national security or a couple of other issues. 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. Lee Harvey Oswald (1939-1963) was the assassin of John F. Kennedy, unless even if you believe the claims of the conspiracy theorists. A postcard to Paul Gregory from the Oswalds, November 1962. As virtually the only American living in Minsk, he became something of a celebrity in that provincial capital. A: It would have been, like, first grade. Q: What is the status of your present-day identity? Q: I assume you've seen the footage of Lee being shot by Jack Ruby. ", I said I appreciate it, but I really don't get involved in that. This summer, with the 50th anniversary of the J.F.K. Hidell, Lee Harvey Oswald's pseudonym, are both listed on the form. Who was Lee Harvey Oswald? Now, the word father does mean Lee to me, But dad is Dad. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. On the car ride to the safe house, Marina pleaded with the agents to stop at the house of her friend, Ruth Paine, in Irving, Tex., to pick up extra childrens supplies. 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 . Since I hadn't gotten a response, I toyed with the idea that I might have to go public. Lee Harvey Oswald, (born October 18, 1939, New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.died November 24, 1963, Dallas, Texas), accused assassin of U.S. Pres. It was just too big of a deal. You try to be nice because you don't want to make somebody upset who's going to seek you out if they're kooky enough to do that stuff anyway. 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.