assassination looming, I sent Marina a personal letter and a written recollection of our time together and followed up this fall with a phone call. This article was most recently revised and updated by, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lee-Harvey-Oswald, Spartacus Educational - Biography of Lee Harvey Oswald, Academia - Timeline of the Life of Lee Harvey Oswald, National Archives - Biography of Lee Harvey Oswald, Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. We beg you not to think ill of us.. (Rachel went on to graduate from nursing school and find a job in the field.) www.imdb.com. Additionally, she gave birth to her second daughter and named her Audrey Marina Rachel Oswald. Marina would understand what kind of man he really was. He tried to after the arrest but everybody discounted it. At the bottom of the Oswalds conflict, I thought, was Lees refusal to let Marina learn English. However, not long after their marriage, Oswald became disillusioned with life in the USSR, and the family returned to the U.S., living in Dallas, and New Orleans. If she was led to LHO in Russia and then to his family after Dallas, what does that tell us? Additionally, Marina learned English and became a citizen of the United States by naturalization in the year 1989. 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. Q: I assume you've seen the footage of Lee being shot by Jack Ruby. A: Part of it was the big anniversary, the 30th. We are very close - except when these kinds of things come up. As for what his exact role in the assassination was - well, he'll have to be judged for that before God. She needed a translator fast. She shrugged. "We have to get the Government to move before it's too late.". He got really scared and wanted to take me to a hospital. Lee Harvey Oswald was an American Marine who defected to the Soviet Union because he supported communism. If they could prove somehow that he was innocent, he'd still not be a hero, he'd be a martyr. She his always felt really bogged down by it. 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. A: It would have been, like, first grade. The Secret Service first knocked on my parents' door at 3 a.m. on the morning of Nov. 23, 1963. Q: What is the status of your present-day identity? Here are eight things about Oswald you might not have known: 1. I asked her what else she remembered about growing up. 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. But over the course of those months, it became harder for him to convince her of his exceptionalism. Marina, already thin, appeared extremely gaunt; she was having difficulty breast-feeding Rachel, her younger daughter, who was not yet 5 weeks old. 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. According to the University of Michigan Heritage Center, the plight of thewidow, with two preschoolers to feed, tugged at the heartstrings, and soon enough she'd received donations of food, clothing, and cash totaling $70,000 the equivalent of over $600,000 in 2022 dollars as well as an offer to come to Michigan to learn English and live with a family there. A good person. But now his luck was changing. 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. She was pretty strong. There were times when we didn't have milk to drink. Wish there were more, by the family of Lee. [3] They married six weeks later and had a daughter, June Lee, born the following year. In 1965, according to All That's Interesting, Marina married a carpenter named Kenneth Porter. 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. I asked Rachel how many people in the bar knew who she was. 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. Q: Over the years, you've kept a pretty low profile. While married to Lee Harvey Oswald, she gave birth to her firstborn daughter called June Lee on 15th February 1962.Additionally, she gave birth to her second daughter and named her Audrey Marina Rachel Oswald.Audrey was born after her family moved from Russia to the United States. He himself was fatally shot two days later by Jack Ruby (1911-67) in the Dallas County Jail. On April 10 in Dallas he allegedly shot at but missed an ultrarightist, Edwin A. Walker, a former army general. I think Lee was this 24-year-old guy, this youngster, who got himself in over his head. "Their questioning left me only one way to go: guilty. He kept a journal, which he labeled Historic Diary. When he, Marina and little June touched down at Love Field, on June 14, 1962, he greeted his brother Robert by asking where the reporters were. Are you able to maintain the same detachment when you see that? Stevie Ray Vaughan was turned up loud on the radio. And that is my definition of democracy, the right to be in a minority and not be suppressed, We do not support the man. She stays with her second husband who is called Kenneth Jess Porter. He tracked me down. (In the past, I saw baby June sleep on a blanket atop a suitcase.) I don't blame him for not being here for me. Ive only read a couple of books about it. Audrey Marina Rachel Oswald was 33 days old when President Kennedy was killed, 35 days old when Jack Ruby killed her father. A: Not until recently. We stayed with her for the summer. A: Mom kept us together. Later, on 24 November 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald was Killed by Jack Ruby on live television in the basement area of Dallas Police headquarters. Oswald's wife Marina, two daughters, brother Robert and mother Marguerite were the only mourners. In addition, she is a Russian-American. We were of interest to people. LEE HARVEY'S OLDEST. 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. 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. Further still, being attached to a world-shattering crime, however obliquely, is not the life everyone wants to live, and certainly not a widow with two young mouths to feed. 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. We understand your sorrow and share it. A: Something had come up where Mom had old boxes of letters out. Nevertheless, Marina was not implicated in the assassination but testified against Lee Harvey during the Warren Commission hearings. The next day, Monday morning, the Secret Service tried to keep the television set off, but Marina once again drinking coffee and chain-smoking, with tears streaming down her face insisted on watching the state funeral of John F. Kennedy. 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. 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.. 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. After getting married to her second husband Kenneth Jess Porter, Marina gave birth to a son known as Mark Porter. 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. Mostly I feel bad that Lee was never able to tell his story. He avoided deportation by attempting suicide and was sent to Minsk, where he met Marina. They both believe that the facts need to be revealed, all files opened and let the chips fall where they may. An analysis by Mark McClishPosted January 3, 2013. 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 . I read this intvu again and if there are two people I'd love to talk to, it's Rachel and June. 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. The pair hit it off immediately, marrying only six weeks later. I can't imagine the burden they've carried over the years, but I hope they have found some peace in their lives. Its set in 1978, when I was 15 and my sister was 17. What if I dont tell him at all? She said, "I can never forget or forgive what he did, to me and to my children, to the president and his family, to the whole world," according to The Washington Post. In October 1956 Oswald dropped out of high school and joined the U.S. Marines. He dressed for the occasion, as I remember it, in dark slacks and a white shirt, but when we arrived, he motioned for Marina and me to wait at a distance while he had a whispered consultation with the woman at a desk. (June has requested that her married name, which she still uses in business, not be printed), Despite privacy concerns, she's pushing for the release of all records pertaining to the assassination. June is quieter about her own marriage, which ended in 1992. After completing her English program, she left Michigan for good. At the same time, she seemed to be tiring of her husbands radical ideas. Kate O'Brien (Christa Miller) - Friends with Drew, Lewis, and Oswald since they were kids. Lee Harvey Oswald (October 18, 1939 - November 24, 1963) would become infamous for his involvement in the fatal shooting of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. Within this morass of facts, however, there is a central actor: Lee Harvey Oswald. agent or two, Mafia bosses and even C.I.A. ", I said I appreciate it, but I really don't get involved in that. As a 21-year-old college student, I returned to my hometown of Ft. Worth for the summer of 1962. Marina Oswald had become the most wanted witness in America. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. This, we reasoned, would be better for my language skills and help Marina learn the city. A: The first time l saw it l was very upset, but it gets to the point where it almost becomes unreal, this movie you're watching that has very little to do with you as a person. As we drove, I began telling them about how I met Oswald, the evenings driving around Fort Worth, the Dallas Russians and how a college kid got caught up with an accused assassin. One guy I told actually thought I was crazy. MORE THAN 30 YEARS AFTER the Kennedy assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald is a name that will not go away. She's now in her early 70s. 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. She was this delicate Russian beauty, widowed by a man who shot the president. "She never knew when we'd run into someone, and she didn't want us to look like poor white trash"' June says simply. The other thing is, you just worry genealogically: Lee was illegitimate, and so was my mother. The next memory I actually have is in second grade. I always feel torn by whether I'm required to tell somebody about my history. 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. Quickly, police swarmed Ruth Paine's home. I wrote her a response telling her as much, politely suggesting a few points about punctuation. Probably the only other people in America who have to routinely see film images of their father being killed are the children of President Kennedy. She blew a long stream of smoke toward the ceiling, Kinda strange, huh?. Lee was intelligent, but he was no genius. Robert Oswald told me in September that he had not talked to Marina in quite a while. See, this is the difference. The Russian-American widow stands at a net worth that is approximately $1 Million $5 Million. The Oswald living room was extraordinarily bare; there was a shabby sofa and chair and a worn coffee table where a copy of Time magazine featuring John F. Kennedy as its Man of the Year was prominently displayed. And it was there that my father told Marina, in Russian, that her husband just died. For seven years Rachel was a waitress at the Chili Parlor while she put herself through nursing school. But there are still people who refuse to believe that I could be normal. Somehow those boxes came down and she was reading, and I guess she felt it was time to tell us. We do not support the individual. Apparently he had even gone to my fathers grave. Two days earlier, Marguerites son shot the president of the United States. campus so Lee could talk to a school official. So l never connected it as a big negative or anything.