Q: If someone was to ask you today who your father is, what would you say? We send you our heartfelt sympathy, the message read. You will be able to leave a comment after signing in, political justice, conspiracy/truth, music, law, Bible prophecy, quote name='John Geraghty' date='May 13 2006, 02:49 PM' post='62308']. On November 22, 1963, Oswald shot and killed Kennedy from a room in the very building where he worked. Q: I'm sure there must have been a lot of unusual incidents as you were growing up. Even now, three decades after President Kennedys death, the name still stirs up strong emotions - particularly in Texas. Oswald's wife Marina, two daughters, brother Robert and mother Marguerite were the only mourners. 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. Its set in 1978, when I was 15 and my sister was 17. We would climb into my yellow Buick and drive by department stores or Montgomery Ward, and Id bring them back home by 10. She looks just like her father, with her mother's eyes. Somehow those boxes came down and she was reading, and I guess she felt it was time to tell us. 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. A: I've always called him that. Later, on 24 November 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald was Killed by Jack Ruby on live television in the basement area of Dallas Police headquarters. She shrugged. I was really supportive. Great!" Q: What is the status of your present-day identity? After her husband was killed, Marina married Kenneth Porter. Lost in the shuffle was Oswald's widow, Marina Oswald. I had already written a we got to President Clinton to try to make sure he would appoint this review board from the Bush legislation to review assassination records, and to release those records. I don't know if it's the interview you mean but I have a copy of one with Rachael from 1995 from a publication called 'Texas Monthly'. She copied it and put it on all my staff's desks. While staying with her uncle she also studied pharmacy. The opening of formerly secret archives in Russia indicate that the K.G.B. Before we even set a fee, Marina agreed to see me twice a week. And there have been public hearings there and in Dallas and Boston. As the summer drew to a close, before I returned to Norman for my senior year at O.U., I went to the Oswalds for my final language lesson. The bartenders were closing up, and Rachel said she needed to call it a night. As of May 2022, she was still living, according to All That's Interesting. So if I'm able to be detached or seem cold and unemotional about it, it's because I look at Lee in those terms. Marina also disclosed that her grandmother was religious, which was particularly pleasing to Bouhe because he organized Russian Orthodox services in Dallas. 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. Walt Cisco, Dallas Morning News/Wikimedia Commons. Q: I assume you've seen the footage of Lee being shot by Jack Ruby. He was also a US Marine who defected to the Soviet Union but then returned with his Soviet wife, Marina. Nevertheless, Marina was not implicated in the assassination but testified against Lee Harvey during the Warren Commission hearings. Over the years, though, Marina began to shy away from making public statements about her deceased husband. Lee, who had been on his best behavior and even wore a sports jacket to dinner, suddenly became agitated and defensive. I think Lee was this 24-year-old guy, this youngster, who got himself in over his head. At 1:30 am on November 23 he was formally arraigned for the murder of President Kennedy. Lee Harvey Oswald. In fact, Bouhe noted, he had arranged English lessons for many Russian migrs; he could do the same for her. The Secret Service first knocked on my parents' door at 3 a.m. on the morning of Nov. 23, 1963. To much of the world, Texas is Dallas, the place were JFK was shot. In October 1956 Oswald dropped out of high school and joined the U.S. Marines. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. I mean, things werent completely normal. We said hello to my parents and went into the kitchen to prepare some turkey sandwiches. It also gives us information that helps explain Marina Oswalds comments about the assassination. Q: But are you comfortable with the fact that Lee Oswald played at least some role? Marguerite Claverie, the mother of Lee Harvey Oswald, was born in New Orleans in 1907,1 into a family of French and German extraction. The couple wed within a few weeks, and eventually had a daughter. I guess it was easier for him to believe that I was insane than that Lee was my father. 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. Perhaps a visit might remind them of better times. He recalled my father fondly (Pete Gregory was a good guy, he said) but politely refused to recount his experience yet again. Oswald killed Tippit with his mail-order revolver (1:15 pm). I mean, Ive never gone to my fathers grave., Everything about my father is accurate., So, what do you think really happened? See for example this thread and interview: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=659, http://www.jfkresearch.com/marina/marina.htm. From The New York Times Magazine April 30, 1995. Then I find out he's been doing some quote-unquote assassination research. And his account of Women of the Gulag here and here. Oswald told his wife about the assassination attempt, but she never told authorities before Kennedys death. 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. 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. Now he is the author of The Oswalds: An Untold Account of Marina and Lee, out on Nov. 15 with Diversion Books. poll, only a quarter of Americans believe that one man acted alone to kill Kennedy. 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. New book by Hoover fellow recounts his experiences knowing JFK's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. We lived in poor housing or were taken in by others. 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. 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. My secretary in my last job put two and two together based on one of those articles. "Now she's a widow, too," said newspaper headlines across the country. Lee Oswald and A.J. Q: When were you actually told about your father and the assassination? In 1965, according to All That's Interesting, Marina married a carpenter named Kenneth Porter. I've wondered what my kids are going to turn out like. Q: Was any of this an issue in your marriage? agent or two, Mafia bosses and even C.I.A. John B. Connally in an open-car motorcade in Dealey Plaza. As a 21-year-old college student, I returned to my hometown of Ft. Worth for the summer of 1962. _________________________________________. When I read the script, I was really angry. Marina Oswald, with her daughter June and Lees mother, Marguerite, holding the younger daughter, Rachel, at Parkland Hospital after Oswald was shot. 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. She stays with her second husband who is called Kenneth Jess Porter. 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 never saw them again. Two days earlier, Marguerites son shot the president of the United States. In the 1970s, Mae Brussell, an authority on the Kennedy assassination, compiled every statement she could find made by Lee Harvey Oswald between the time of his arrest for the shooting of President John F. Kennedy and Officer Tippit and the time of his death. Fifty years is a long time. There were times when we didn't have milk to drink. A: I remember Rachel's seventh grade dance. I can't imagine the burden they've carried over the years, but I hope they have found some peace in their lives. Until I was 23, I didnt even know there were alternative theories. One of the latest authors to wade into the conspiracy waters is Norman Mailer, whose book . Autobiography of Lee Harvey Oswald: My Life in My Words, p.194, iUniverse, 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: Yes, I'm also very excited about that. Rather than tell him that there wasnt much of a market for a Russian translator in 1960s Texas, my father, who fled Siberia during the civil war, welcomed the chance to meet this fellow Russian speaker in person. Thanks for the video; I'd never seen it before. She kept herself together for us. He tried to after the arrest but everybody discounted it. But I don't remember that. So she became a sort of tourist attraction. Two months later, I peered into the mailbox of my student walk-up in Norman and extracted a penny postcard, which had been handwritten and posted two days earlier from 602 Elsbeth Street, Dallas. It sounds as if most people are not aware you're Lee Oswald's daughter. All of our family pictures were confiscated.. She hadn't read it. Apparently he had even gone to my fathers grave. Rachel felt differently. I was certainly relieved to hear that the Oswalds were doing well, and I assumed, from the spelling and punctuation mistakes, that Marina had written the letter and was getting the hang of English. When my mother came on and this interview went so badly, I decided I really wanted to rebut. But during those months, his assertion was rapidly losing credibility. We stayed with her for the summer. 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.