Jump to content
The Education Forum

I Was Married by the Minister Who Buried Lee Harvey Oswald


Recommended Posts

Strange but true.  My wife and I were married  by the same minister who conducted Lee Harvey Oswald's funeral.

The Reverend Louis Saunders was a very close, personal friend of my father-in-law. (My father-in-law had worked as the Director of Public Relations at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth for many years back in the day.)

I did not really know Rev. Saunders, (my wife knew the family well) but he seemed like a very kind, good man.  He was a "liberal" Protestant, affiliated with the Disciples of Christ, and with the World Council of Churches-- an organization that was often anathematized during the Cold War.

Saunders had, apparently, offered to conduct Lee Harvey Oswald's funeral after other ministers in the Dallas-Fort Worth area had refused.

Unfortunately, when Louis Saunders was still alive, I never asked him any questions about Oswald's funeral.  In those days, I was clueless.  I had not studied any of the JFK assassination literature, and simply assumed that JFK was murdered by the "Lone Nut" in the "library" with the "rifle."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

Just found this and loved it. LHO needed a respectful person officiating at his funeral and glad that he had it. My impression at the time was that no one would go near the Oswald family and that the burial was in the dark.( TCU - I think - once offered an Honorary degree to JFK and then rescinded the offer; I even think it was set for November 63.) Any personal connection - however removed "by degrees of separation" intensifies when the subject is embedded in your mind, no? Novelist Walker Percy often wrote of moments when one "connects" with a scene depicted on film  which was also personally visited; or when one has  a picture taken in front of a childhood home - the implication being that one places oneself in time by recognizing a period of time affected between seeing something and being there, or living one place and then returning after living in another. It's an existential moment of sorts--you are newly defined by noting the connection; you can't but help review the passage taken.

Edited by Robert Harper
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...