(The issue, which would curiously remain in the same place during all my visits, was dated Jan. 5, five months before the Oswalds arrival in the U.S.) We sat there uncomfortably for some 20 to 30 minutes until Lee burst in the door, dressed in his customary simple slacks, a plaid shirt with open collar and sleeves rolled up to the elbows, carrying a stack of weighty books from the Fort Worth public library. Porter was born on the 17th day of July in the year 1941 in Severodvinsk, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union. Q: On your relationship with her as well? I have to remind Rachel that this is the man who beat our mother, who didn't provide for his children. A: It's only in recent years that I've started to get into all that, mostly as part trying to get the records released. But anonymity exacted a curious price of its own, as June faced myriad graceless references to her father, mother and family. It would be great to hear more from Lee's daughters, about the folks who surrounded them as they were growing up. And I realize that I'm kind of cold about it, so how do I tell them? 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. _________________________________________. Looking at her, I was struck again by the peculiarity of the moment. 2 Her mother died a few years after Marguerite was born leaving her and five other young children in the care of their father, a streetcar conductor.3 Although . As America's obsession with her father goes on, a daughter tries to set the record straight. 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. I have to admit that when I heard that he used to play with me all the time, that was a nice feeling. A: No. The following day, an agent named Mike Howard picked my father up and . Mostly I feel bad that Lee was never able to tell his story. 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. We visited the set of "JFK" when it was going on, and somebody said, "Your father was a hero." And, the feds wanted to talk. Though he constantly toted volumes about politics and eagerly name-checked The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital, it soon became clear to me that Oswald had no real understanding of Communism beyond Marxs appeal for workers to unite. After a couple of months of lessons, my parents Russian migr circle became curious about my new friends. Thats what I hope my kids will never have to go through., Do you have any pictures of you and your father?, No. We would climb into my yellow Buick and drive by department stores or Montgomery Ward, and Id bring them back home by 10. 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. thanks for posting that interview I had not read it before. Diane Holloway, Lee Harvey Oswald, Bob Cheney (2008). My father was taken by Marina. Ive tried not to be make a big deal about things. She wasn't just a widow, however. A: It has put certain strain on it. Nine days later he left for the Soviet Union, where he tried unsuccessfully to become a citizen. Later on, Marina went to Minsk to stay with her uncle named Ilya Prusakov, a colonel in the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs. As the University of Michigan Heritage Project notes, she was only 22 years old, with two young children, when she was widowed. Lee Harvey Oswald shot by Jack Ruby - YouTube 0:00 / 0:53 Sign in to confirm your age This video may be inappropriate for some users. I remember that my mother was very beautiful, that she had been written up in Life magazine. I asked what it was like being named Oswald and growing up so close to Dallas. Sometime shortly thereafter, the Soviets changed their. Lee Harvey Oswald's childhood did not take place in any one town or city. Well, there's a travel guide she found out about that actually listed the Texas Chilli Parlor and said the daughter of Lee Harvey Oswald worked there. A: I don't have any real memories of those ages. 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. 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. At 12:30 pm on November 22, 1963, from a window on the sixth floor of the depository building, Oswald, using his mail-order rifle, allegedly fired three shots that killed President Kennedy and wounded Texas Gov. He himself was fatally shot two days later by Jack Ruby (1911-67) in the Dallas County Jail. Lee Harvey Oswald was alleged to have murdered the 35th president of the United States of America, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. After getting married to her second husband Kenneth Jess Porter, Marina gave birth to a son known as Mark Porter. 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. Nonetheless, during several interviews over the past she reports being content. Marina, who was calling from Robert Oswalds house in Fort Worth, said immediately: I did not write that letter. By Steve Salerno. "I am now convinced that he was an FBI informant and believe that he did not kill President Kennedy," she said. So this little boy she was going with, his parents were going to come get her and they were going to go to the dance. 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. 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. A postcard to Paul Gregory from the Oswalds, November 1962. The couple got married during Lees temporary defection to the Soviet Union and migrated with him to the United States. Since I hadn't gotten a response, I toyed with the idea that I might have to go public. He was too difficult and unreliable. Q: Did you ever take the so-called assassination tour? The people Ive worked with the longest know. He served in the Marines, where his nickname was "Osvaldovich." Oswald took an early interest in socialism after picking up a. Additionally, she gave birth to her second daughter and named her Audrey Marina Rachel Oswald. Q: And if someone were to show scientifically that Lee Oswald was or wasn't involved, that wouldn't make a difference to you? . Their son, Mark Porter, listened to my stories about his mothers arrival in Fort Worth in 1962 but declined to be interviewed. He recalled my father fondly (Pete Gregory was a good guy, he said) but politely refused to recount his experience yet again. Well, that's what Rachel wants to believe. (Lee was one of several suitors back in Minsk.) When we pulled up to the house on Davenport Street, we were greeted warmly by Robert Oswald, a tall and well-spoken man, who had served in the Marines and was working his way up to management at Acme Brick Company. Oswald took a bus and a taxi to his rooming house, departed, and about a mile away was stopped by Patrolman J.D. Yet according to one recent A.P. It was just too big of a deal. He was always provided for, but he was also, in a way, homeless--without a stable backdrop of buildings or even. A: I've never publicly said one way or the other for sure. She apparently didn't know much, but her testimony was enough to convince the commission that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. 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. If it is true that poetry is the silence between the words, then there is something genuinely poetic about the life Rachel Oswald is quietly leading between the headlines. I'm convinced that your mother and Priscilla had a sexual relationship." My father is Kenneth Porter, the man I grew up with, the man who was there for my mother and Rachel and me. LEE HARVEY'S OLDEST. 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. This is material I never would have known about insofar as my mother's side of the family, because my mother was illegitimate, you know. He was never in the same place for long. Q: But are you comfortable with the fact that Lee Oswald played at least some role? 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. . He said things when we were together like he really wanted to have children because "that would be the blood of Lee Harvey Oswald that was flowing through the kids.". Additionally, Marina learned English and became a citizen of the United States by naturalization in the year 1989. 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. Both interviews I found in the JFK collection at the Dallas Public Library last November. She took on the name Marina Oswald Porter, and the family moved to Richardson, Texas. Moreover, Marina is convinced that her mobile phones are tapped by the Secret Service and the Secret Service wants to assassinate her. Lee Harvey Oswald, (born October 18, 1939, New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.died November 24, 1963, Dallas, Texas), accused assassin of U.S. Pres. Until I was 23, I didnt even know there were alternative theories. If he allowed Marina to learn English, he said, his Russian would suffer, and it was very important that he retain his fluency. 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. I asked her what else she remembered about growing up. We always used my stepfather's name, Porter, growing up, even though we were never legally adopted. So eventually the group headed to Parkland Hospital, where Oswald had been taken and where a belligerent crowd was already growing outside. And Allen Dulles (the former head of the . She didn't feel like Kenneth was her dad. It was so exciting, you know, me being a young woman and everything. Q: I guess you must be encouraged that the review board was finally sworn in last year. They said it would depreciate the value of their home. One of the latest authors to wade into the conspiracy waters is Norman Mailer, whose book "Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery" will be published next month. She smiled rarely, if at all a typical victim of Soviet dentistry, she was ashamed of her teeth. But I don't remember that. My husband couldn't have cared less. A: I remember what I did during that time-out was, I plotted how I could run for class president and win! And it was there that my father told Marina, in Russian, that her husband just died. 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.
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