Articles/interviews : June Oswald-Porter (1983 and 1995), Rachel Oswald-Porter (1995), Robert Oswald (1997)

[Jean Ceulemans]

I was just wondering if there were some post-1995 interviews published?  Not filmed ones, just written interviews for newspapers, magazines, etc?

For those interested - and newbies like me - here's the 1983 article by June and the 1995 interviews, plus the 1997 Robert interview. 

They are published here and there all over the internet (some incomplete I have noticed), I just copied them as-are, these should be complete.

Please let me know if there are any others.

The thing for me is to see how things evolved from the stricly human point of view, how it affected the family (and torn them apart at times)

I know a lot of what has been written below can be up for a lot of discussion, but that is not my intention.

 

JUNE OSWALD PORTER - PEOPLE MAGAZINE, article by June, NOVEMBER 28, 1983

There were three fateful murders during that weekend in Dallas 20 years ago. The first was that of President Kennedy. The second took the life of Dallas policeman J.D. Tippit, who was killed while attempting to arrest Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald, charged with that crime, was himself shot by nightclub owner Jack Ruby while being transferred to the county jail. The deaths left seven fatherless children—two were John Kennedy’s, three were Patrolman Tippit’s and two were Oswald’s.

Earlier this year PEOPLE talked with one of those survivors. She is June Oswald Porter, 21. After two decades, she said, she wanted to set the record straight about “what my family is really like and how we’ve been able to survive the last 20 years. "A forthright, determined woman who still speaks in a soft Texas accent, June now lives in the Northeast, where she is finishing her college education. Here, for the first time, she tells, in her own words, about "What it was like to grow up with one of the most stigmatized names in American history."

When people find out that I am Lee Harvey Oswald’s daughter, their first reaction is usually to express sympathy for how hard it must have been for me to grow up. Many assume that I have been shunned by society and by friends. In truth, there have been some difficult moments, but nothing like what one publication recently described as a "horrible, terror-filled life” for my younger sister Rachel and me. What people don’t understand is that, as well as having a wonderful, determined mother, I have also had a loving stepfather and have grown up in communities that knew and accepted me and my family.

I’m 21 now, just about the same age my mother was when the Kennedy assassination thrust her into what must have been the most impossible of circumstances: a penniless Russian widow with two infant daughters, unable to speak English and virtually alone in a strange land. That my mom survived and even triumphed in spite of these circumstances is something I marvel at. She is the strongest person I have ever known, and I’m grateful that she instilled some of her strength in me. Whatever strength of character I possess comes from my mother’s example, not from any attempt on my part to make up for my father.

I grew up accepting my heritage in a detached way. My life did not stop or change when I was first told who my father was, and I only vaguely remember the moment. I was 6 years old and about to start first grade when my mother sat between Rachel and me on the living room couch in our house in Richardson, Texas and held my 2-year-old half-brother, Mark, in her lap. While I can’t remember what she said, I do recall that it was very tender, and we were all crying, even Mark, who was much too young to understand. I didn’t understand myself just what it meant to be Lee Harvey Oswald’s daughter.

Mom rarely talked to us about her life with Lee, though there were occasional moments when she reflected on it in our presence. Once while we were driving down a highway near our house we passed a shack that had been abandoned for years in the Texas heat. She looked at the building and said quietly, “I remember the day when it was my dream to have something like that just to call my own.” Another time when I was young, she brought down from the attic a box of letters that people had written to her shortly after the assassination. The letters were touching, many expressing condolences for our loss or sympathy for Mom’s situation. She told us that many had contained money from people who knew how poor we were. Mother told us how good the American people were to us when they had no reason to be.

Though there are still many mysteries concerning my father, one fact is that in the 21 months we had together, he loved me very much. People who saw us together have commented to the press about how much he loved me and how he played with me constantly. Over the years, when I have thought of him, it has been to miss him as any daughter would miss a lost parent. But I have not grown up fatherless. When I was 3, Mom married Kenneth Porter, now a carpenter, whom she met in Richardson in 1965. He is the man who was always there and represents all the things a father should be. Though my legal name remains June Oswald, I have always used the name Porter out of love and respect for my stepfather.

Because I had so many people around who cared, and a mother and stepfather who both loved me, I was never driven to read what people wrote about my father or be overly inquisitive about him. When Mom talks about him she uses his name, Lee. Later, when I would talk of him, that’s the name I used. “Dad” always meant my stepfather. It was surprising to me when someone questioned the idea of my referring to “Lee.” I had never thought about it before, but he was Lee to everyone else, and he is Lee to me, too.

The people of the Texas towns in which I grew up, Richardson and Rockwall, were also important in helping me feel free of any stigma. It was not until I left home for college that I fully realized the problems of being an Oswald. Even though Rockwall (pop. 5,000) was much smaller than Richardson and everyone knew everything about everybody, there still would have been no need to hide our identity. To my best recollection, in all those years only one rather frustrated physical education teacher ever confronted me with resentment about my family.

I had tried out for the school drill team in the seventh grade and didn’t make it. The next year I joined the newly created girl’s basketball team and really loved it. I became quite verbose about my dislike for the drill team, and my comments got back to the Phys. ed. teacher who was in charge of it. She called me into her office and asked me what I had been saying, and when I told her, the conversation quickly degenerated into a match where we were both trying to hurt each other. She said that I could not deal with being Lee’s daughter. Our meeting turned into an awful scene, and I left in tears. But that was an isolated incident. My classmates not only accepted who I was, but in one case, during a basketball game when some fans of an opposing team were pointing me out as “Oswald’s kid,” the Rockwall students spoke up for me.

The only other time during my early schooling that I can recall being singled out as Lee Oswald’s daughter occurred when my second grade class was studying the American Presidents. I was asked to go across the hall to another room when the time came to study President Kennedy.

My desire to be a writer has been another factor in keeping my focus on the future and not immersed in past events. My only ambition has been to write. In the beginning I idolized the reporters and writers who were often hovering around us. Later, as I read their stories, I had to come to grips with the reality of what they were doing. They always seemed to be looking for something, and if it wasn’t there, they would simply make things up.

A particularly flagrant example of this occurred one day when a reporter from the Dallas Morning News came to our house in Rockwall looking for a story. We knew she was a reporter the instant she parked her car at the end of the road and walked up our long driveway to the front door—all our friends came through the side entrance of the house. Mom met her at the door and explained very nicely that she wasn’t giving any interviews. The reporter became quite insistent and started complaining about having come all the way from Dallas [21 miles]. But Mom stood firm, and the woman left in about five minutes. To our surprise next Sunday morning, the paper carried a big feature story about us written by this woman. It described our huge ranch with a “lake” in front (our huge ranch is 17 acres with a one-story brick house, and the “lake” is a pond in the front yard that is dried up most of the time). Although the reporter had never stepped a foot inside the house, the article went on to describe the interior sections of the house as if she had been inside for hours.

Sometimes our “reporter problems” were of our own making. Because we felt safe and sheltered in Rockwall, we weren’t always as cautious as we should have been. On the night of my sister’s first date and her first big dance, my mother, Rachel and I were waiting for her date’s parents to arrive to take her to the dance when a car drove up, and a man got out with a camera. Mom thought the daddy was going to take pictures, and she was exuberant. The man came up smiling, and Mom said, “Hi, I’m Marina. You brought a camera, how sweet.” The surprised stranger said, “You don’t mind if I take pictures?” Mom replied, “Of course not"—just as another car came up the driveway with Rachel’s date and his parents. As soon as Mom realized what was going on, she hurried Rachel into the parents’ car and then explained to the reporter that she had made a mistake, and there would not be any interview or pictures.

In addition to playing on the girls’ basketball team for four years when I was in high school, I was editor of the school paper, was a cheerleader and entered numerous speaking contests. It was also during these high school years that I became a Christian. Even though I grew up in the Bible Belt, I went to church very little and had notions of God traveling around in a flying saucer. There were many Christians at Rockwall High, and the faith that they shared was a big part of their lives, not just at school, but also at social and sporting events. By the time I was a junior, it was well known that I was firmly grounded in my strange beliefs, and no one ever bothered to witness to me anymore. But one day in math class I was seated directly behind Kerry Poole, the captain of the football team. I knew that Kerry intended to be a preacher some day, and I had heard him talk to other students about Christ. I had always admired him despite our differences. On this particular day, before class started, Kerry was talking to another guy across the aisle about becoming a Christian, and I began listening instead of ignoring the conversation. I remember the shocked expression on Kerry’s face when I interrupted to ask about something he had said. For some reason I opened my ears that day, and that night at home I accepted Christ into my heart. Ever since then my faith has helped me cope with the trying times, including one of the saddest days of my life—the day I learned that no minister would readily bury my father.

The first time I had ever been away from my family for any extended period was my freshman year at the University of Texas in Austin. Mom had been uneasy about my leaving home because she was afraid of who might find out I was an Oswald and try to harm me. We sought out a private apartment complex near the campus that employed a strong security staff, and arranged with the registrar for me to use the name Porter. We did everything possible to protect me from the outsiders, but we forgot about the problem of the insiders.

My first taste of the hatred people could have for the name Oswald came from my roommate. After we had lived together for a few weeks and she had gotten to know me, I decided to tell her who I was. While at first she said it was "neat,” in less than a week she demanded that I move, claiming that her father would not allow her life to be put in danger by rooming with me. I was shocked to be rejected solely because of my name and refused to leave. She declared war, finding excuses to argue, and playing practical jokes. Mom was even more upset by this than I was, and she decided to retaliate with a little joke of her own. My roommate was studying a lot more than books, even though her daddy thought she was the perfect and proper student. Mom called her one day and told her that the FBI had been tapping the apartment phone and had tapes of all her conversations with her boyfriends. Mom said she intended to forward these to the girl’s father. That shook her up for a while, and she never did know that Mom was bluffing. But the harassment continued. One night I was sleeping alone in our room when I was awakened by the weight of a 200-pound drunken frat rat lying on my back. He started questioning me about who I was and why I would not leave. Though I could hear my roommate talking with some other girls in the next room, none of them came to my aid, despite my cries. He finally left, and the next morning I moved to another apartment. This time I made sure that my roommates knew in advance who I was and that they didn’t mind living with me.

Though I have always tried to keep from being branded by the assassination of President Kennedy, it has not been possible to avoid the frequent references to the incident or to Lee. These seem to occur while I’m on a date or in some other situation that can be embarrassing. Once in high school I remember sitting at home with a date watching Saturday Night Live when the camera zoomed in on a member of the audience and the words “friendly with Lee Harvey Oswald” were flashed on the screen. My boyfriend stiffened for a minute, and then we both just laughed about it. While on a date to a Woody Allen movie, Woody’s character accused his ex-wife of making him sound “worse than Lee Harvey Oswald.” I guess the country has gotten used to writers and filmmakers evoking the name of Oswald whenever they want to insinuate evil. I never will.

I find it easier to deal with these situations when I’m with someone who knows my identity than when the subject comes up and I am the only one present who knows. Between my freshman and sophomore years at UT, I spent the summer as a student missionary for Texas Baptists, working in different towns conducting Bible schools, doing religious surveys and related church work. To my dismay, several times during those months I was subjected to unpleasant conversations about my father when my identity was not known. Once I had to sit through a whole discussion led by a pastor’s wife of how Lee Harvey Oswald wouldn’t have been so bad if he had had a better childhood.

Last fall at the University of Texas, I took an editing course in journalism, which included a lecture on how the assassination and the death of my father could have been better handled by the press. When the teacher started talking about the day that Jack Ruby shot Lee, I found myself shaking. When the class period ended, I couldn’t get out of my chair. I just sat there. After the other students had left, my teacher leaned across the table to ask me, “June, are you all right?” and I told her who I was. She simply said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.” I was grateful that she wasn’t overly apologetic, and then she told me that every year the lab class does an exercise in wire editing in which they reenact coverage of Kennedy’s assassination. At least I was prepared for it several weeks later, but I remained uptight during the exercise because I kept wondering when something about my father might start coming over the wire.

It is not only the Oswald name I have had to deal with, but other Oswalds as well. After my father’s death, his mother and brother, Marguerite and Robert Oswald, helped my mother bury Lee, but in the months following, something that I don’t fully understand happened to create an estrangement between Mom, Marguerite and Robert. Whatever the problem was, the fear and distrust they apparently had for each other resulted in my never meeting my grandmother or uncle, even though they both lived within an afternoon’s drive of our home. Because of much that has been written about Marguerite, Mom and I were convinced that she was quite crazy and that she had no desire to have anything to do with us. The truth, which I did not learn until after her death nearly three years ago, is that she had wanted very much to see us. I even learned that she had come to my high school once in hopes of seeing me and was turned away by a protective principal. It will always be one of my most haunting regrets that I never insisted on meeting her.

Her death also taught me some of the unpleasant facts about my father’s brother. When Mom called with the news of Marguerite’s death, I made arrangements to fly home for the funeral. But Uncle Robert called my mother and told her that if we showed up, he would have us thrown out. After a night of soul searching, we decided that the spectacle and the publicity that would result would only produce an unpleasant and disrespectful scene. So we stayed away. Unfortunately for us, Marguerite left no will, and my uncle Robert became executor of her estate. A friend of Marguerite’s told us that she had wanted my sister and me to have her library, probably the most complete collection of material concerning my father. In spite of our strong objections, Robert donated the library to Texas Christian University in Forth Worth, thus depriving my sister and me one last time from having contact with my grandmother’s life. Though we have fought to obtain possession of the library, the matter needs to be pursued through the courts. The library remains in crates at TCU. No one, not even my sister and I, is allowed to see it.

Not everything that happened to me because of my name has been unpleasant. One rainy night in Austin, I opened the door of our student co-op to find a slightly inebriated Yankee from the college paper who was asking to see June Oswald. Most of my friends in the house knew me only as June Porter, so I quickly ushered him in and began peppering him with questions about what he wanted. We ended up talking late into the night. At some point that evening, he decided that writing the story about me was not worth the risk of revealing my identity and exposing me to potential harm. Not only did Robbie not write his story, he became something of a protector, actively discouraging others from trying to write about me also.

Robbie has become my closest friend and has given me the courage to explore some of my past. One clear night we drove from Rockwall to Fort Worth and climbed the fence of Rose Hill Memorial cemetery looking for my father’s grave. I carried a bunch of flowers, and though we searched in vain for more than an hour, the flowers were placed on a stranger’s grave. I have still never seen the place where my father is buried.

Developing personal relationships with other people has been difficult, partly because of my suspicion that anyone who expresses interest might be using me to get to my family. I fear that over the years I have turned away many people who might have been close to June because I was afraid what they really wanted was to become close to Oswald.

When I was growing up, I was very much aware of the many people who spent years of their lives collecting or acquiring data about my father and the assassination. Some of these “assassination buffs” would call my mother, and others I have heard of through news stories and books. I have never understood the reason for their persistence. Some, no doubt, are motivated by sadness and a sense of injustice, while others seem driven just because it is something to do, a game, an obsession. I don’t think it should consume anyone’s whole life. I resent the fact that so many people expect me to have a theory about the assassination. All I know is what everybody else knows. The daughter in me believes one thing—what daughter wouldn’t want to believe that her father is innocent?—but the person outside the daughter is as unsure of the facts as the next person.

Throughout my life people have thought I have a secret, Oswald-related motive for everything I do. They think I write to someday avenge, that I am outgoing to somehow make up for my father, and that I became a Christian out of feelings of guilt. One well-intentioned teacher even forgave me, after discovering who I was, for being disrespectful of authority figures—he attributed it to “the way I had to grow up.” It has been hard to be accepted as June, who is motivated by her Christian faith and the inner strength she learned from her mother.

I always knew that my strong desire for privacy would one day have to yield. I can no longer accept the way my mother, my sister and I have been portrayed. Too much that is wrong and unfair has been written about us, and that’s why the girl who wanted to be left alone surrendered to the daughter who knew she had to stand up.

JUNE OSWALD PORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE, interview with June, APRIL 30, 1995

MORE THAN 30 YEARS AFTER the Kennedy assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald is a name that will not go away. 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. The assassination has also been a constant in the life of June Oswald Porter, the 33-year-old daughter of Lee Harvey Oswald. 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. 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 never knew when we'd run into someone, and she didn't want us to look like poor white trash," June says simply.

Upon entering public school, June took the surname of her stepfather, Kenneth Porter, who married Marina in 1965. But anonymity exacted a curious price of its own, as June faced myriad graceless references to her father, mother and family. Even an intended compliment could hold hidden barbs -- as when a male co-worker remarked on June's resemblance to "a young Marina Oswald," then immediately apologized, saying he "didn't mean to insult her" by invoking the infamous name.

Nonetheless, during several interviews over the past year, she reports being content. And she recalls her childhood as a "pretty happy" time, thanks in large part to her stepfather. June is quieter about her own marriage, which ended in 1992. She remains protective of her privacy, distancing herself and her sons, ages 6 and 3, from the oddball clique of assassination cultists who have dogged the Oswald women -- Marina, now 53, June, and Rachel, 31 -- ever since the events of Nov. 22, 1963. (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. "We have to get the Government to move before it's too late."

Q: What are your thoughts on Norman Mailer's new book?

A: I don't have a comment on it as far as its conclusions because I haven't read them, but I did start the book. Mailer is such a great writer; I was just so enthralled. The first chapter opens with my family, and he goes way back to my great-grandmother in Russia. 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. It's a little bit like opening a family album you didn't know existed before.

I can tell you that I am very excited about the book in concept. 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.

Q: To what extent have you followed the various conspiracy theories?

A: It's only in recent years that I've started to get involved in all that, mostly as part of trying to get the records released.

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. The law said that if they felt that way, then those documents needed to be turned over to the Assassination Records Review Board and those folks would review the records and either concur, release them in blacked-out state or release them entirely.

Q: Over the years, you've kept a pretty low profile. Why have you started to speak out?

A: Well, there was a lot of misinformation being released related to a book, "Case Closed," by Gerald Posner. 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. She hadn't read it. I felt they manipulated her and made her look foolish.

I had already written a letter 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 was really supportive. Since I hadn't gotten a response, I toyed with the idea that I might have to go public. When my mother came on and this interview went so badly, I decided I really wanted to rebut.

Q: I guess you must be encouraged that the review board was finally sworn in last year

.A: Yes, I'm also very excited about that. They first met last April in Washington. And there have been public hearings there and in Dallas and Boston.

Q: What is the status of your present-day identity? It sounds as if most people are not aware you're Lee Oswald's daughter.

A: Yes and no. Now, Mom does articles that she doesn't bother to tell me she's doing, and sometimes my name comes up. We always used my stepfather's name, Porter, growing up, even though we were never legally adopted. My secretary in my last job put two and two together based on one of those articles. She copied it and put it on all my staff's desks.

I didn't really want to be the center of gossip in this whole building. So I called my staff in, a group of 10 or so, and I said: "Yes, that is me in the article. Obviously, if I'd wanted to share that I would have told everyone a long time ago. I don't think it's relevant to anything we do here and I appreciate you keeping it to yourself."

My biggest concern was that people at the office had my home address and phone number and I didn't want it leaked to The National Enquirer. I have two small children, I'm divorced, I didn't want people to harass the kids.

Q: Give me an example of what you'd consider harassment

.A: When I was pregnant with my first, some lady got my phone number and called in the middle of the night. And she said, "June Oswald?" That catches you off guard when you just wake up. And I said, "Yes?" And she said: "I'm so-and-so, and I just want you to know that I've written a song about you -- and your child. And I'm gonna be in Dallas, and I want to sing it to you."

I said I appreciate it, but I really don't get involved in that. 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.

There's always been this little group that's followed us -- Mom, Rachel and me -- and calls us and is fascinated by anything surrounding us. My first serious boyfriend -- that's what he was fascinated about. He tracked me down. 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."

So he moved to Boston and wanted me to join him. I move all the way up there, and his parents wouldn't even let us stay in his house because I was the daughter of Lee Harvey Oswald. They said it would depreciate the value of their home.

Then I find out he's been doing some quote-unquote assassination research. So I ended up supporting him. Anyway, the only person I knew up there was Priscilla Johnson McMillan, who wrote my mother's book. We stayed with her for the summer.

My boyfriend would sneak down to Priscilla's basement and read all her old files. He sold an article for an astronomical amount back then -- I think it was $25,000. The way I finally woke up was, one night he said, "I'm gonna sell an article to Penthouse or Playboy" -- I forget which -- "and it's about your mother. I'm convinced that your mother and Priscilla had a sexual relationship." So I said, O.K., this is it. Just get out.

Q: Tell me about growing up in the aftermath of the assassination. I know you were just a toddler, but do you have any recollections of turbulence in the household?

A: I don't have any real memories of those ages. I know some people can remember vividly like it was yesterday, but I don't do that -- even about yesterday.

I do remember that our phones were tapped. We always had this really bad connection, and when you'd pick up the phone you'd hear that other click. This was before wiretapping got more sophisticated. For all I know it's still tapped.

Mom was always overprotective of us. 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. Mom would smoke all the time. Reporters came over and she would tell us, "Shhhh, go in the other room."

Q: When were you actually told about your father and the assassination?

A: Something had come up where Mom had old boxes of letters out. People sent us money following the assassination, because Mom was young with two small children and didn't speak the language.

Somehow those boxes came down and she was reading, and I guess she felt it was time to tell us. She sat us down, with my stepbrother, and started to explain who our father was -- that it wasn't Kenneth -- and who Lee was and what he had done. I just remember crying a lot because Mom was crying.

Q: How old were you then?

A: It would have been, like, first grade. And then, they tell a story about how after that I stood up in front of the whole class and said, "My father shot the President." Just out of the blue. But I don't remember that.

The next memory I actually have is in second grade. We were studying the Presidents. The Presidents were all around the walls in the rooms. And we got to President Kennedy and I was told to go across the hall during that one. So I sat across the hall in a time-out room.

Q: How did you feel about being singled out?

A: I remember what I did during that time-out was, I plotted how I could run for class president and win! So I never connected it as a big negative or anything.

Rachel felt differently. She has always felt really bogged down by it. She didn't feel like Kenneth was her dad. She wanted to know Lee; she wants Lee to be a saint. Well, I was satisfied with my dad, so I've never felt this big need to connect with Lee or do the daughter-father thing.

Q: One can't help but notice that you address him as "Lee."

A: I've always called him that. My father is Kenneth Porter, the man I grew up with, the man who was there for my mother and Rachel and me.

Q: And if someone were to show scientifically that Lee Oswald was or wasn't involved, that wouldn't make a difference to you?

A: It would make a difference in the sense of justice being served. If the truth can be found that shows Lee had nothing to do with the assassination, I would feel better in that there have been a lot of things said and done regarding my family that all proceeded from an erroneous perception of what he did or didn't do.

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. I know that in my life, Lee wasn't a good man. He wasn't much of a husband, he wasn't much of a father. He beat my mother. There were times when we didn't have milk to drink. We lived in poor housing, or were taken in by others. 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.

Q: I assume you've seen the footage of Lee being shot by Jack Ruby. Are you able to maintain the same detachment when you see that?

A: The first time I saw it I 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.

Mostly I feel bad that Lee was never able to tell his story. He tried to after the arrest but everybody discounted it. I would have liked for him to have his day in court

.Q: Where do you stand today as far as your perception of what really happened out there in Dealey Plaza?

A: I've never publicly said one way or the other for sure. There are a lot of assassination buffs who have analyzed all the technical data and the other available material and even they don't agree about what happened.

Q: But are you comfortable with the fact that Lee Oswald played at least some role?

A: I think there definitely is circumstantial evidence that could imply he had something to do with it because of the characters he was hanging out with in New Orleans. But you know, just because you're hanging out with a weird group -- they could have set him up, and he could have had no idea what was going on that day

.Q: Did you ever take the so-called assassination tour?

A: Not until recently. 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.

Q: How did you feel about that?

A: It was -- unusual. I didn't break down and cry or anything. It was just kind of eerie.

Q: I'm sure there must have been a lot of unusual incidents as you were growing up

.A: I remember Rachel's seventh-grade dance. 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.

Well, we're all waiting, and a car pulls up in the driveway, and Mom rushes out to greet these parents, and they happen to be a man and a woman, and they've got a camera, and she says: "Oh, you're gonna take pictures! Great!" And she's just welcoming them with open arms. And they say: "Oh, we can take pictures? Oh great!"

Another car pulls up -- and that's the parents and the little boy. The first car was The National Enquirer. But it was so funny because Mom talked to them for -- I mean, nobody noticed that the date wasn't there!

During college, Rachel supported herself at the Texas Chili Parlor in Austin. It's right across from the Capitol, and she was a waitress. Well, there's a travel guide she found out about that actually listed the Texas Chili Parlor and said the daughter of Lee Harvey Oswald worked there. So she became sort of a tourist attraction.

Q: Your childhood doesn't sound like it was easy.

A: Mom kept us together. She was pretty strong. I don't know if I could've done it and kept my sanity: two small children, don't speak the language, dirt poor, everybody in the country pointing their finger at you -- hating you in some cases. I'm a strong woman, but I don't know if I could've kept myself together. But she did. She kept herself together for us.

Q: Was any of this an issue in your marriage?

A: No. My husband couldn't have cared less. But I still have problems in that area, because I date a lot. I always feel torn by whether I'm required to tell somebody about my history. I usually end up telling people that I'm seeing very often. And I'll tell you why: It could come up at any minute.

Q: Did you see the "Seinfeld" episode in which they're at the ball park, and they get spat upon, and –

A: The "second spitter," right. It was hilarious.

Q: If someone was to ask you today who your father is, what would you say? Whom do you really think of as dad?

A: Kenneth. Now, the word father does mean Lee to me. But dad is Dad.

And you know, it's not Lee's fault he got killed by Jack Ruby. I don't blame him for not being here for me. I do blame him for having beat my mother, and not being a good father -- or a good provider. Because some people have called me and said, "I knew your father and he really loved you." I have to admit that when I heard that he used to play with me all the time, that was a nice feeling. I try to hold that in the back of my head.

Q: Do you worry about telling your children as they grow up?

A: I do. I started worrying about, first of all, do I have a responsibility to tell them? What do I tell them? And I realize that I'm kind of cold about it, so how do I tell them? Do I need to be more compassionate about it? I want to make sure they understand why I'm so matter-of-fact about it. But see, I'm matter-of-fact about a lot in my life.

The other thing is, you just worry genealogically. Lee was illegitimate, and so was my mother. I've wondered what my kids are going to turn out like. Are they going to take after some ancestor we don't even know? There's a lot of genetic things you can't even control that are inborn in your kids

.Q: How are things between you and your mom these days?

A: The last two years have been very stressful, because she started doing things that she hasn't let us know about, then all of a sudden I hear about it or see it on TV. Like she did a movie and it involved me and Rachel, and she didn't tell us first. I think her physical health and mental health have been damaged in recent years over all of the pressures put on her.

Q: After all this time?

A: Part of it was the big anniversary, the 30th. 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. I've never seen her act like that, like she needed to become more of a crusader, and it's taking its toll.

Q: On your relationship with her as well?

A: It has put certain strains on it. Mom accused me one day of being ashamed of who I was. I don't think that's true. 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."

Q: Do you and Rachel argue much about this?

A: Yes. Just in recent years; but yes. We are very close -- except when these kinds of things come up.

See, this is the difference. We visited the set of "J.F.K." when it was going on, and somebody said, "Your father was a hero." Well, that's what Rachel wants to believe. Rachel loved listening to that. She got all caught up, because she wants so badly to have this identification with her father.

That didn't set well with me. If they could prove somehow that he was innocent, he'd still not be a hero, he'd be a martyr. I have to remind Rachel that this is the man who beat our mother, who didn't provide for his children. I tell her, "Rachel, for all we know, we could have been living in the streets." Because that's mostly what I think of when I think of Lee.

As for what his exact role in the assassination was -- well, he'll have to be judged for that before God.

RACHEL OSWALD PORTER, TEXAS MONTHLY,  interview with Rachel by Keith Kathchik, MARCH 1995

The Texas Chili Parlor is a neighborhood bar without a neighborhood. Stuck in the no-man’s-land between the state capitol and the University of Texas campus, the Chili Parlor is so steeped in Austin tradition that its decision several years ago to begin offering chili with beans got coverage on the local TV news. The bar’s decor consists chiefly of scuffed wooden tables and junkyard scraps nailed to the walls—rusted license plates, cow skulls, yellowed newspaper clippings, and a hand-scrawled sign above the cash register noting that “Tipping is not a city in China.” Old Life magazine photographs used to hang on the walls, including one of Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald. “I don’t think anybody I worked with ever thought twice about it,” Rachel Oswald (age 29) said. “You see that image everywhere; it’s easy to take it for granted. But it was still depressing, seeing my father shot every time I came to work.”

For seven years Rachel was a waitress at the Chili Parlor while she put herself through nursing school. One night at the end of her shift, she and I shared a bowl of queso, chips, and $2 Bloody Marys. I asked Rachel how many people in the bar knew who she was.

“Who I am?” she asked. “Or who my father was?”

I nodded that I appreciated the distinction.

“The people I’ve worked with the longest know. A few of the regulars.”

The late-night air had become a distinctive Texas medley of cigarette smoke and day-old chili fumes. Stevie Ray Vaughan was turned up loud on the radio. In a bar filled with pretty women, Rachel was striking enough to turn heads. She wore a purple dress from a vintage clothing store, platform shoes, and a black string choker. Even at 29, she had a tomboyish quality, and when she laughed, she seemed to be all elbows and collarbones. In conversation, Rachel could be both reserved and outgoing, and though she speaks with a slow drawl, her dark eyes, high cheeks, and thick, heavy eyebrows make it clear she is of Slavic descent. She looks a bit like Helena Bonham Carter, who, coincidentally, played her mother, Marina, in a 1993 TV movie about the Oswald family.

It is difficult to imagine what life must be like for the child of a celebrity—having a recognizable last name, a childhood in the spotlight. But imagine the life of a child fathered by a villain, a child cursed with a name like Booth or Oswald. Especially Oswald. Even now, three decades after President Kennedy’s death, the name still stirs up strong emotions—particularly in Texas. To much of the world, Texas is Dallas, the place where JFK was shot. Most Texans resent this with a passion, and many of them blame Rachel’s father.

“You know, it’s interesting if you think about it,” Rachel said, lighting a cigarette. “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?”

Audrey Marina Rachel Oswald was 33 days old when President Kennedy was killed, 35 days old when Jack Ruby killed her father. She was born in Dallas’ Parkland Memorial Hospital, the same hospital where both Kennedy and her father were transported after being shot.

Rachel’s mother, Marina, then barely in her twenties, had arrived from Minsk, Russia, only a year earlier and spoke very little English. According to Rachel, in the months immediately after Lee’s murder, Marina, Rachel, and her two-year-old sister survived chiefly on the charity of churches in the Dallas suburb of Richardson.

I asked what it was like being named Oswald and growing up so close to Dallas.

Rachel thought for a moment. “I didn’t know my family was any different until I was about seven. One day, my mother sat my sister and me down on our big green couch and told us that the man who had raised us as our father—our stepfather, Kenneth—was not, you know, our real father, and that our real father’s name was Lee Oswald and that he had, well, that he had been accused of killing the president of the United States.” Rachel smiled. “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. We were just trying to be a normal family. 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 didn’t talk about it.”

I asked her what else she remembered about growing up.

“I remember that my mother was very beautiful, that she had been written up in Life magazine. When we moved to Rockwall, which was much smaller than Richardson—people there lived on farming and football—everyone in town knew my mother. She was this delicate Russian beauty, widowed by a man who shot the president. We were of interest to people. For the most part, folks were nice, but they were always whispering things. I remember that helicopters flew over my mother’s wedding to my stepfather, that it was sort of a big deal in the news.”

In 1982 a national tabloid newspaper ran an unauthorized cover story on Rachel and her sister claiming, OSWALD KIDS DON’T HAVE DOGS OR DATES. The word “Oswald” was stamped in red ink over photographs of the two girls. 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 couldn’t even afford to buy albums for her record player. In truth, Rachel was a healthy, active teenager. She studied gymnastics and ballet, made good grades, was a varsity cheerleader, and was even voted most popular student by her classmates.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Rachel said, blushing a little. “I was shy—and I chose not to date much—but enough of the article was false that we filed a lawsuit and they settled out of court. I mean, things weren’t completely normal. 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 daddy’s dead and buried.’ But mostly things were pretty normal. The kids didn’t care much one way or the other. It was usually the parents who did weird stuff.”

As Van Morrison’s “Moondance” started up on the radio, Rachel danced her shoulders a little and then lit another cigarette. “Dating was a little tricky,” she said. “There was always the question of whether I should tell the guy about Lee. If so, do I tell him on the first date or the third? What if I don’t tell him at all? Believe it or not, a couple of guys at UT refused to ask me out again after I told them about my dad. One guy I told actually thought I was crazy. He got really scared and wanted to take me to a hospital. I guess it was easier for him to believe that I was insane than that Lee was my father. I’ve had assassination buffs send me roses and love letters. One guy tracked me down to the Chili Parlor and for a while was coming in several nights a week. I’ve listened to customers talk about Lee and the shooting, especially after JFK came out, without them knowing who I was. I actually once had a customer refuse to tip me. He said, ‘I know who your father is,’ and then he just got up and shook his head and left. What it boils down to is that every time I meet someone—every person at a party, every customer I wait on, every classmate, every teacher, every would-be friend—I ask myself: Do they know who I am? Are they looking at me that way because of me or because I’m the daughter of Lee Harvey Oswald?”

Over a final round of drinks we started talking about the movie JFK. I asked her what she thought of Gary Oldman’s portrayal of her father.

The question brought her up from her Bloody Mary. “The first time I met Gary,” she said, “I was visiting my mother in Dallas. She told me that there was going to be a movie made about the assassination and asked if I wanted to have lunch that afternoon with Oliver Stone and Kevin Costner—my mother didn’t even know who they were—and I was thinking to myself, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m going to have lunch with Oliver Stone and Kevin Costner!’ So we meet them at a Chinese restaurant. It was so exciting, you know, me being a young woman and everything. At the time I didn’t know Gary was involved in the movie, in fact I didn’t really even know who he was. 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 Lee’s, and the way he walked—he looked exactly like him. Then he sat down. I got really embarrassed, but every time I looked up we would catch each other’s eye. I think he was checking me out because I look very much like my father, and I think he was trying to get a feel for my dad by looking at me. And then at one point, while he’s asking my mother questions about Lee, he starts to cry. He said that he had been in jail for hours doing this scene—that he had been in handcuffs since dawn, that he’d 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. We were terribly moved by this. As far as his portrayal in the movie, let me tell you—Gary Oldman is an actor. I remember my sister and I going to his hotel room and seeing twelve books about my father on the nightstand. Apparently he had even gone to my father’s grave. I mean, I’ve never gone to my father’s grave.”

“Is the movie accurate then?”

“Everything about my father is accurate.”

“So, what do you think really happened? Do you think your father pulled the trigger?”

Rachel was quiet for a moment. “I think Lee was this twenty-four-year-old guy, this youngster, who got himself in over his head. Lee was intelligent, but he was no genius. I don’t know who else was involved, but clearly it was too big of a deal for one twenty-four-year-old kid to do by himself. For example, right before the shooting someone asked my mother to take a picture of Lee holding a rifle, and then right after the shooting, the picture is confiscated, and everyone says, ‘Look, there’s the gun, there’s the guy who did it, case closed.’ 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 mean, think about it. There are just too many loose ends for it all to be dumped on my father. It was just too big of a deal. Until I was twenty-three, I didn’t even know there were alternative theories. I’ve only read a couple of books about it. I’m sorry for my father’s pain, but basically I just want it to be over, one way or another, especially by the time I have kids.

“It’s hard having things written about you that aren’t true. For example, this TV movie about my family. When I read the script, I was really angry. It’s set in 1978, when I was fifteen and my sister was seventeen. The writers portray me as this traumatized, victimized kid—there’s a scene of me having a birthday party that no one comes to—just me in my birthday hat all by myself. That never happened. 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. I’ve never even been to the Kennedy Memorial. The writers never talked to me or my sister about our lives. I guess they decided we must be a certain way and then wrote it. That kind of stuff makes you feel violated. I’ve tried not to make a big deal about things. I’ve never tried to profit from any of this—I’ve waited tables for the last six years, making maybe forty or fifty bucks a night, to pay my way through college and nursing school. I have a bachelor’s degree in natural sciences. I drive a beat-up car. I’m just a regular person. But there are still people who refuse to believe that I could be normal. That’s what I hope my kids will never have to go through.”

“Do you have any pictures of you and your father?”

“No. All of our family pictures were confiscated.”

The bartenders were closing up, and Rachel said she needed to call it a night. There was more I wanted to ask, but it was clear from her face that she was wondering if she hadn’t shared too much already. Looking at her, I was struck again by the peculiarity of the moment. I was sitting next to the daughter of a presidential assassin, an attractive and healthy woman who apparently wanted nothing more from life than to be a good nurse. (Rachel went on to graduate from nursing school and find a job in the field.) If it is true that poetry is the silence between words, then there is something genuinely poetic about the life Rachel Oswald is quietly leading between the headlines.

 

ROBERT OSWALD,  A brother's burden, ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE, by MICHAEL LEAHY, November 16, 1997

Through 34 years of stress, Robert Oswald has stood steadfastly by his family name in the shadow of that infamous day in Dallas. 

WICHITA FALLS, Texas -- At night, when it falls dark and quiet in the house and a tired Robert Oswald finds himself alone, the dream still sometimes finds him. 

He sees himself alongside his younger brother, Lee, in a grim room with only a desk and a note pad. He hears himself ordering the smaller man to sit down and write an explanation for 
why he killed John F. Kennedy. Amazingly, Lee obeys. He sits at the desk, writing, writing, writing furiously, while big brother paces. 

Finally, the enigma finishes. He stands and, as Robert tells it, "He's about to hand me this paper when he says, 'Just a minute.' He looks at his writing on the paper, then tears it all up and throws it away. And he looks at me and says, 'I don't know why.' And I think it will always be that he doesn't know why. I think that's the truth of it." 

A third of a century after the 35th U.S. president's assassination in Dallas, some things do not change. When a puzzled grandchild asks Robert Oswald whether he has any brothers or 
sisters, the house falls funereally hushed, holding its breath with the occupants. When the leaves begin falling, he and his wife, Vada, monitor ever more closely their visiting 
grandchildren's television viewing, just as they did their own children's. They keep ears open for any program with a reference to Oswald, or Lee, or Lee Harvey. 

Autumn is the season for new TV documentaries and books about Robert's dead brother, the time for revamped conspiracy theories and for strangers' bizarre phone calls. He braces himself for the exploiters and crackpots who will want a piece of him. November is hard. 

As with his own children during that first November in 1963, 63-year-old Robert Oswald does not talk to his grandchildren about either the assassination or their great-uncle Lee. To do so, he reasons, would only cause them confusion and worry. He believes his brother killed President Kennedy, alone and irrationally. Just the same, it hurts terribly to say so. 

"You can either light a situation or defuse it, and we chose a long time ago to [defuse] it," he says. "Why put all of that on kids?" 

If a man is not the reputed presidential assassin, but the surviving brother who must live with the name, how do he and his family do it when the name is Oswald? 

In the aftermath of Nov. 22, 1963, Robert Oswald could have avoided the question, along with many worries, merely by changing his name at age 29. It was something that a variety of people, including a Secret Service agent, urged him to do -- because the name Oswald swiftly had become like that of John Wilkes Booth a century earlier in the rage it triggered. 

But while Oswalds unrelated to the family were reportedly becoming Smiths and Joneses all over Texas and elsewhere in America, Robert Oswald never considered the possibility of a 
name change. 

His name was his father's and grandfather's, after all. The Oswald family tree dated back to colonial times. He'd learned as a child that he was a fifth or sixth cousin of Gen. Robert E. Lee, which explained why he had been named Robert Edward Lee Oswald Jr., and his little brother Lee Harvey Oswald. To change his name would have amounted to a betrayal of his heritage, he believed. 

He snaps his fingers loudly. "I mean I didn't think about changing it for that long, OK?" he says, the "OK" for emphasis. 

This is the former Marine's way when he's intense, his deep blue eyes flashing behind glasses, and then, like a furnace burner going from ON to OFF, the eyes dim and cool. His 
fingers rake his sparse gray hair, his tensed shoulders settle back into his chair. He grins companionably. By nature, he is affable, soft-spoken, gentle, a chronic laugher, utterly without pretense. 

When a stranger calls the house, skeptically asking whether the casual-sounding man on the other end of the phone with the twang part-Texan and part-Cajun could possibly be Robert Oswald, the Robert Oswald, the brother of Lee Oswald, the object of the chase chuckles by reflex. He says in the cheery, peppy voice of the brick salesman he was, "Hi. You got him. That's me." 

STEELED FOR HARD TIMES 

Two weeks after the assassination, he made himself return to his job as a sales coordinator for a brick company in Denton, 30 miles outside of Dallas. He would neither run nor deny he was an Oswald. Neither he nor his family was guilty of anything, he kept telling those closest to him. A childhood spent in and out of orphanages had prepared him for hard times and steeled his belief in, among other things, his ability to get along with people and survive the worst of circumstances. 

Away from the brick lot, however, uncertainty gripped him. During the weekend after John F. Kennedy's murder, President Lyndon B. Johnson had ordered the Secret Service to provide the Oswald family around-the-clock protection at their home in Denton. A couple of weeks later, believing the Oswalds to be safe, the Service bid them goodbye. The family was alone. 

One night, after visiting friends in Fort Worth, Oswald was driving his wife and two children back home to Denton when he saw the flashing lights of a police car in his rear-view mirror. He stepped out of his vehicle to be confronted by a towering state trooper, who informed him he had a defective headlight. License and registration, please. The trooper inspected his license, then glanced down at him. "Robert, are you Lee's brother?" 

"Yes, sir." 

He felt unmasked. So here it was. Welcome to the future. Hello to his new life as leper, maybe. The big trooper kept looking him over. "We're like two peas in a pot," Lee once had told 
Robert in his mangled syntax, part of a letter from the Soviet Union in which Lee recounted how he'd described their physical resemblance to his curious new Russian wife, Marina. 

The observation was at least half true. While Robert was slightly taller at 5 feet 10 inches, and had a far more robust build than his slight brother, their faces had a similarly long shape. 
Their blue eyes took on a hooded, almost sleepy quality when sad or pensive. Looking at one of them as a young man would always remind a stranger of the other. The trooper scrutinized him. Robert braced himself. The cop said, "Robert, I want you to know something. My wife and I have prayed for your family." 

In retelling the story 34 years later, Bob Oswald's voice quavers. His jaw line trembles violently. He is a tough Marine veteran of Korea, a man unaccustomed to displays of emotion 
around strangers. His blue eyes bat and keep batting now, and he looks up at the ceiling a little helplessly, as if stunned by this reaction from himself, perhaps mortified. He excuses himself to walk out of his den and stand ramrod-straight in the kitchen, drinking a glass of tap water, flicking at his eyes, looking off with the mile-long stare he sometimes gets. 

Just as abruptly as he left it, he returns to the den and sits back down. 

"Copacetic," he says crisply. This means, let's go. This means he is OK and can resume talking. This means, among other things, that life since 1963 has been a regular exercise in 
keeping things copacetic. 

"None of us really knew what was going to happen back then," he says. "I'd already thought of alternate landing places for us [to live]. ... But, not long after the [assassination], we had so many kind letters from strangers and friends. ... You learn so much about the decency of people. We had phone calls from friends and neighbors and strangers asking us if we needed anything, people saying they were thinking of us. For the first time ever in my life, I felt strength from other people. It was almost overwhelming." 

WICHITA FALLS REFUGE 

In the summer of 1964, Acme Brick Co. transferred him to Wichita Falls in dusty north Texas -- not to get an Oswald out of the Denton-Dallas area, believes Bob Oswald -- but simply 
because Wichita Falls needed a sales coordinator. Regardless of the motive, the move placed the family in an area that has largely respected their privacy for more than three decades and let them live as ordinary people unburdened by stigma. 

"They'd come to the Little League games back in the early days, and they were very reserved," recalls longtime friend Helen Seyler. "They just quietly tried to be a part of the 
community. I think people respected them for that. ... The nice thing is, they let you live your life in these parts. People know plenty from personal experience about families having black sheep sometimes. They know you can't hold that against someone." 

Still, if kindness predominated, snubs and cruelty lurked close. "I guess it happens to us because this thing never goes away completely," observes Robert Oswald's 40-year-old 
daughter, Cathy. 

To this day, Cathy remains leery, bracing herself at parties for the awkward moment or odd comment that might come her way when people learn she's an Oswald. Among the members of her family, she bears the most visible scars. She still can recall the moment 26 years ago at Rider High School when her ninth-grade history teacher, a brash young instructor who doubled as an athletic coach, unexpectedly asked her a question: "Oswald, are you related to Lee Harvey Oswald?" 

Her classmates wheeled. Stunned, she could not make her lips move. Instinct accounted for what happened next. She picked up her books and started walking hurriedly for the door. 

The teacher turned belligerent: "Oswald, I asked you a question." 

Just before she reached the door, the teacher said it: "Cathy Oswald, I better get you out of my class before you assassinate me." 

"It knocked the air right out of me," she remembers. 

She sobbed in the bathroom. She became accustomed to crying out of sight from crowds. During her freshman year at the local college, as a nominee for queen of a big football game, she stood with her sash on a stage alongside other contestants, awaiting a banal pageant question about hobbies or goals like all the other girls were getting. The master of ceremonies asked instead, "How does it feel to be Lee Harvey Oswald's niece?" 

Silence. 

"I guess she's not going to respond," the host quipped. 

She put down her sash, grabbed her car keys and raced home. "It was the only time I saw my father that hurt and angry," she remembers, but it wasn't her only hurtful moment in the autumn of 1 975. A blind date told her, at the end of an otherwise pleasant evening, that while she was sweet and pretty, "I can't handle it that you're an Oswald." 

A year earlier, two taunting boys had told her younger brother, Robert, then a seventh-grader, that his uncle had killed a president. He rushed home, crying uncontrollably. 

"He thought they were talking about another uncle, one of my brothers," Vada Oswald recalls. "He didn't really know anything about an Uncle Lee. Oh, he knew he had some kind of relative named Lee, but that's all. We'd never sat him down and talked to him about Lee. We just thought the less said, the better — that the more we could keep him from it, the more it'd be lost." 

LIMITS TO FORGETTING 

There are limits to forgetting and losing anything, especially the past. But the middling city of Wichita Falls -- population: 97,000 -- seems as good a spot as any to make the attempt. It looks like a good place to get lost. It lies in an otherwise sparsely populated, generally barren section of north Texas close to the Oklahoma border. The area, called Texoma by its inhabitants, is a kind of cultural and geographic no-man's land. 

It is exactly 126 miles from Bob Oswald's brown-brick house here on his quiet middle-class cul-de-sac to his younger brother's grave in their old boyhood metropolis of Fort Worth. It's 126 miles south along a big fat nothin', as some of the locals will tell you -- past the water-leaching mesquite trees and the sallow Texas cattle ranches flat and far as the eye can see, past the plains where a cold wind in November has nothing to block it except shivering man. 

In about two hours, you leave the sameness and descend into a tattered, honky-tonk section of Fort Worth, which is when you're close. In the last mile and a half, you go past the tattoo bar, past the body-piercing parlor and the pawnshop, past the taverns, past the Peppermill Lounge and the Cowtown Inn. Then you turn into the cemetery's parking lot, walk up a hill dotted by swaying oaks and sun-burnt patches of grass, and you're there. 

"OSWALD," the flat red gravestone reads. At 12 inches by 24 inches, it is the smallest type of marker in the 12 large gardens of Rose Hill Cemetery, difficult to locate, intended to be 
inconspicuous. Robert Oswald visits the spot unannounced and never with anyone except his wife. "I don't have to be there to be there, if you know what I mean," he says softly. 

His two children, now adults, would gain nothing but pain, he thinks, by seeing the small piece of granite. That would hurt him all the more, because Robert carries enough pain for all of his family. Over the years, he has seldom discussed his torment even with his wife, unwilling to burden her. Instead, he'll sit up alone and think and dream his dream of Lee. 

"He handles things by himself," says his close friend, Eddie Seyler, a retired budget officer at a local Air Force base. Not long after the Oswald family's 1964 arrival in Wichita Falls, the two men met when Seyler went to buy bricks. Helen Seyler later taught Robert Jr.'s kindergarten class. 

The Oswald and Seyler families became close, and the two men began playing golf together in the mid-'60s. They'd ride in the same golf cart, swapping news and jokes. With time, Eddie dared to broach the assassination, asking Robert what he thought of some new theory being advanced by skeptics of the Warren Commission's conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone. 

"Eddie, it's nonsense, I think," Robert would say. 

Seyler would press a little deeper. 

"Eddie, I believe he was the only one involved." 

The years flew by and the theories kept coming. The prosecutor in New Orleans, Jim Garrison, declared he had the real killers of John F. Kennedy in his sights, and a cottage 
industry of conspiracy books followed. Lee's body was exhumed after someone convinced his widow, Marina, that it was possible the body buried beneath the Oswald tombstone was not Lee's but a spy's. A group of university pathologists studied the corpse and concluded, "Nonsense." 

At various points, Eddie Seyler wondered how his close friend was holding up. "You doing OK with this?" Seyler asked him once as they rolled along a golf course. 

"Yeah, I'm handling it," Seyler recalls Oswald saying. 

"You know, Bob, if you ever want to visit about it— " 

"I'm all right, Eddie. But thanks." 

It was what Robert Oswald always said, more or less. Cathy Oswald remembers childhood moments when she had the urge to ask her parents, "Why don't you say something about it? Why don't you ask me something once about what I think about it?... But I have a lot of admiration for them. They wanted to protect us. ... My father had to be carrying a terrible 
burden. I'm amazed by how he stood up to it." 

EYES OF A STOIC 

The object of this admiration sighs in his den, eyes fixed on the ceiling. What not even those closest to him might fully understand is the limit of Robert Oswald's stoicism. 

"When there's adversity, I'll keep on doing what I have to do — and then fall apart later, alone," he says. "They're scars. ... But I've endured it basically alone. ... It's the ultimate show of 
love, I think, that my children don't bring the subject up with me. ... It's for their good. It's for all the family's good. I just don't want my family or friends bothered. You want things copacetic for them." 

To enter the impeccably neat and well-furnished Robert Oswald house and stroll through its main rooms is to feel the eerie obliteration of Lee. There are no photos of him among the many happy family shots on the den mantel, nothing that might spark questions or draw stares, nothing to suggest the younger brother ever existed. 

Only when a visitor moves toward the other end of the large house does he glimpse the hidden side of Robert Oswald's life, the one reflected in a studio photograph of his late father, 
flanked by snapshots of Robert and Lee. 

That tableau on a bedroom wall serves as a tribute to a father and a pledge not to forget a kid brother. It means quietly loving the brother in his infamy just as in his frustrated anonymity -- from the days when Robert and Lee slept alongside each other in a New Orleans orphanage, to the last moment when Robert stood above his brother's open casket in a Fort Worth cemetery, mumbled a prayer and kissed his cheek. 

Now as then, he keeps Lee close. Sometimes he will walk across his den to a small bookcase where -- amid his orderly, shelved books about Robert E. Lee, Thomas Jefferson and 
other American giants -- there lies, incongruously on its side, an old illustrated children's book with a worn binding. 

"My Rip Van Winkle book," Robert says softly. He opens the book and, without warning, there's Lee. It is Lee in pencil -- the boyishly loopy signature of 9-year-old Lee Oswald at a time when his handwriting and psyche were still in flux. It is Lee Oswald in August 1949, two months before his 10th birthday, when he'd taken possession of Rip Van Winkle from his big brother. The signature looks astonishingly fresh, as indelible as Lee himself. When Robert Oswald's fingers run over it, his jaw goes a little slack. 

"There but for the grace of God, go I," he sometimes says. He does not mean that he was ever on a path to becoming an assassin, not even toward serious trouble. He means simply 
that, absent grace and fortune, he may have been pointed like his brother toward a tormented life. 

The grace, as he views it, was that he had enough days with his beloved father to acquire an image of himself as a cherished son in whom much had been invested. He was the beneficiary of time that Lee never had because their father died of a heart attack two months before Lee was born, when Robert was already 51/2 years old. 

After more than 20 years of declining interviews with newspapers and magazines -- and having had no lengthy discussion of his or Lee's life with any writer since William Manchester 
interviewed him 33 years ago -- he says he has chosen to talk now partly to help other families that may be trying to cope with an infamous wrong done by a relative. 

"My heart just ached when I saw the father and mother of John Hinckley," he says, referring to Ronald Reagan's would-be assassin in 1981 . "And you think of what the families of people like Tim McVeigh go through." 

HONORING AND HUMANIZING 

But the sense grows, in listening to Robert Oswald, that he talks to honor his family's name and to humanize his brother -- the one reduced, by turns over the years, to murderous monster, dumb deviant or pathetic patsy, depending upon whose history one reads and believes. 

He seethes over the authors and movie makers whom he believes have pushed conspiracy themes for little more than financial gain. Most notably, he despises Oliver Stone, who "had Lee hanging out with perverts and terrible people, totally misrepresenting the facts of the case and ignoring other things -- the fact that Lee had taken a shot at [retired Maj. Gen. Edwin] Walker, 

Lee wanting to go after Nixon, the whole pattern ... of Lee's problems --just so [Stone] could sell a movie and have Lee looking pathetic, inhuman." 

Robert remembers the boyhood Lee who loved to fish. His wife, Vada, recalls the young man who was "so wonderful with children, so sweet," but had "two sides to him." Robert still thinks history has missed the brother whom he knew, the one bereft of a father and mistreated by a mother, a blank slate that got filled in with the wrong things. 

"You got all these movies and books that have dehumanized Lee," he seethes. "I can accept that he did what he did, OK? He did a terrible thing, and there's no doubt that he'd become sick. But they don't have to turn him into a nothing. Maybe it sells, but it'd be more meaningful to show him as he really was, and what went wrong. ... If you don't know about our father, you don't know what Lee missed, you don't know the key part of the story." 

A life insurance salesman, the boys' father typically finished his days by sitting with Robert on the porch of their small house in New Orleans, contentedly waiting for nothing more pressing than the ice-cream man. Robert's older half brother John -- born to his mother during her first marriage -- would join them, happy to have a devoted stepfather. The man was many things to both boys -- a hugger, a disciplinarian, an earnest and nicely dressed man who had intense interests in boxing and thoroughbred racing. 

After Robert Oswald Sr. died at 43, Robert carried around a 5-year-old's idealized picture of the man whom he wanted to emulate. "I had 51/2 wonderful years with father and I had 
memories; Lee had zero time, OK?" he says, repeating the figures — five, zero. "I don't think we'd be having this conversation if father [had lived] and Lee had had him around. ... We all know that lots of people do OK with just one parent, one good loving parent. ... But let's just say we had a situation that was different." 

The "situation" was their mother, Marguerite. A year after the death of her second husband, she placed her two oldest sons, 8-year-old John and 6-year-old Robert, in the first of two 
orphanage asylums in New Orleans, where they would live for the next four years. 

"I recall each time it happened, I had these intense headaches," Robert says. "It came across to me that you're being left, you're being abandoned." He has a vivid recollection of watching his mother drive away from one orphanage. "I was looking out a window and just had tears running down all over the place." 

The day after Christmas in 1 942, Marguerite Oswald turned over her youngest son, Lee, then 3, to Bethlehem Orphanage Home. Lee lived at the orphanage for more than a year, sleeping at night on a small bed alongside Robert's in a large room crowded with other children. Five years older, Robert served as his baby brother's protector along with John -- who, as the eldest brother, had the additional responsibility of cleaning little Lee when he dirtied his britches. "John was my rock," he recalls, "and we were Lee's." 

Robert temporarily lost touch with the woman responsible for their predicament. "There was this one time," he recalls, "when I was allowed to visit my Aunt Lillian, who lived in the area, and this woman came up from behind me and said something, and I said to my cousin, 'Who's that?' He said, 'Your mother.' I've asked myself what made her dump us. I've tried to be as gracious as I can. But through the years, the story -- that times were hard -- doesn't hold up." 

BRIEFLY BACK TOGETHER 

Before their mother married for the third time, Lee came out of the orphanage, to be joined, a half-year later, by his older brothers. "All that mattered was we were back together, so we were happy, " Robert recalls. "We were a family again." 

He possesses a small photo of the brothers, taken not long after their reunion. A cherubic, bushy-haired, 5-year-old Lee teeters between the big boys. He is grinning hugely, joyous in the way only a small child can be, an image wrenching in its suggestion of what might have been. Looking at it, Robert alternately smiles and swallows thickly, blue eyes batting hard. "A good time," is all he says. 

He wants a visitor to see Lee the boy. He has a sibling's encyclopedic recollection, a meld of the trivial, affectionate, bizarre, comic and arresting about the youngster in the photo as he grew older. Lee had an I.Q. of 1 18, he says. Lee could not drive. Lee wanted to be a writer. In 1959, fresh out of the Marines, he told Robert he was thinking of going to Cuba to emulate Ernest Hemingway. A week later, he impulsively headed for Russia instead -- which has always made the idea of orchestrated CIA involvement in the president's death fairly laughable to Robert. 

Lee the toddler wore hand-me-down knickers in the orphanage. Lee played cowboys and Indians. He liked being Two-Gun Pete. 

"There was a lot of love," Robert says, in his den chair. "Lee needed my brother and me." 

Sitting in his den, he hears a noise then. He perceives noises that others don't, his senses conditioned over 34 years to remain on guard even when the rest of him is engaged with a 
guest. He quickly rises and walks out into his back yard, gray hair blowing in the stiff autumn breeze, blue eyes like a hawk now, looking right, looking left, scanning the area beyond his yard and the alley behind it. 

"Our neighbors are gone. I'm keeping a watch," he says. "Guess it was nothing." He turns in the direction of the basketball hoop that he has erected for his grandchildren, then turns back for another look. "No, nothing," he says, mostly for himself. "Nothing, Mom," he calls to his wife, who has come to the edge of their porch. 

Virtually all his life, Robert Oswald has been a protector, a guardian looking to shield loved ones, a Dad or surrogate Dad for somebody. But there are limits, he knows, to what he can do. 

Members of his family, when apart from him, have had to fend for themselves. 

Once, when he was away in Washington testifying to the Warren Commission about his brother, a peculiar-sounding stranger knocked on the door and told Vada Oswald that he 
wanted to talk to her husband. The next day the police picked up the man in Dallas, after he made a ruckus over demanding to see the imprisoned Jack Ruby, who had fatally shot Lee on Nov. 24, 1963. "I shook in my boots for a long time after that," Vada remembers. 

"It's been hard on Vada at times, especially this time of year," says her close friend of 1 9 years, Annette Lemley, who lives in the house that the Oswalds are looking after on this day. 
"You know, 'Oswald' isn't like the name 'Smith.' 'Oswald' has a ring to it. There've been some things said to her over the years. ... People's hearts bled for them when Cathy went through that trouble with her [high-school] teacher. This whole town stood up for them then. ... Robert has been a wonderful friend to us. It's amazing to me to think he had the same upbringing as his brother. But Robert came out stronger. You wonder why." 

Robert will tell you that the two brothers' upbringings were as different as night and day once they escaped that orphanage. The boys moved to Fort Worth and then Dallas to live with their mother's new husband, an engineer from Boston named Edwin Ekdahl. This union, like those before, was brief. Marguerite's third marriage lasted only three years, and in its first year, after being thwarted in an effort to place Robert and John back in the Bethlehem orphanage, she sent them off to a military academy in Mississippi. 

"I felt dumped again," Robert says, "But, looking back, it was the best thing that could have happened to us. We were around caring people who gave us values, discipline and love -- and we were away from her. Soon, Ekdahl was gone and Lee was alone with mother, which was difficult. ... She tolerated people only for as long as they could do something for her." 

START OF THE SPIRAL 

He believes Lee's spiral began there and then. 

Over the next 1 8 years, something obviously went terribly wrong with the boy in the picture, Robert says, looking blankly at his old Rip Van Winkle book. He sees a maelstrom of craziness and his mother's harebrained, "selfish" decisions — most notably a gypsy trip with 13-year-old Lee out of Texas to New York City. There, in Robert's words, his mother hoped to "mooch off" John, by then married and stationed in the Coast Guard at a New York port. 

John threw out his mother and half brother after Lee threatened John's wife, Marge, with a knife. The boy became a chronic truant, hanging out at the Bronx Zoo. A New York school 
psychiatrist told Marguerite that her son's behavior was a protest against her neglect and the absence of any real family life. School officials said they'd put Lee in a special program for truants. 

Time for another gypsy trip: She fled to New Orleans with her son. 

"There's a big gap with Lee after that," Robert says. 

Lee's doings became ever murkier. A stint in the Marines. The move to Russia. Renunciation of his American citizenship. A pledge of loyalty to communism. He came home in June 1962, frail-looking, with a wife and daughter in tow -- after Robert had wired him $200 for the final leg of his plane flight. 

That autumn, a husband and father himself, Robert tried to go a distance toward reuniting the Oswalds. On Thanksgiving, having carefully excluded their mother from the guest list, he brought Lee and John together for the first time in nine years, since just after Lee had threatened John's wife. The date was Nov. 22, 1962, exactly one year before the assassination of President Kennedy. It would be the last time that Robert saw Lee before his younger brother's arrest in Dallas. 

Robert Oswald possesses his own short home movie of the Thanksgiving holiday, which he presents to a visitor with characteristic understatement, remarking, "I've got something you might want to see." Remarkably, the Warren Commission never viewed the footage because Robert had forgotten about it, and the investigative commission never asked him to turn over photographs or films. 

The silent movie, in washed-out color, shows Lee Oswald -- in brown pants, white shirt and a gray vest -- sitting on an end of a couch in Robert's living room. Lee's head is cocked slightly to the side, smiling at sweet, blond, 5-year-old Cathy Oswald, who is dancing and cutting up for the adults' amusement. John's wife has taken a seat at the opposite end of the couch from Lee. John is in the middle, grinning between the old antagonists. 

Lee's head then turns back from the pretty dancing girl. His lynx-eyed wife, Marina, has materialized on the armrest alongside, talking to him. He points out the camera to her without 
ever quite looking at her, leaning back then ever so slightly, a polite but remote figure, staring with a tight smile straight ahead. He suddenly seems distanced from the frivolity. 

Near the end of the movie, Robert sits down on the floor directly in front of Lee, holding Robert's own 2-year-old son, Robert Jr., in his lap. The mender of the Oswald family smiles 
beatifically for the camera. Then the film ends, only 1 minute and 15 seconds after it began -- the screen suddenly black, Lee gone. 

"I was feeling good," Robert reflects. "We didn't talk about politics or anything heavyweight that day. Just family stuff. Enjoying each other and the kids." 

"But Lee showed you different sides," Vada Oswald interjects. 

The smile slowly leaves Robert Oswald's face. "Yes" is all he can say for a long moment. 
Then he stands and puts Rip Van Winkle back on the bookcase. 

In early 1963, the brick company transferred Robert to Malvern, Ark. He received a letter from Lee in mid-March. The return address listed a post office box in Dallas. 

Dear Robert, 

... Well how is everyone adjusting to the new city? I've never been to Ark. as I don't know how 
it looks, but somehow I got the impresstion it must be something like Belerussia, pine forest, 
ect., Marina says where there are pine forest, the air is very good, which will be good for the 
kids. 

June Lee was a year old in Feb.... 

My work is very nice, I will get a rise in pay next month, and I have become adept at my 
photographic work... 

We don't have a phone, and we have moved to the new apartment just March 2nd so it would 
be better for you to write me at the P.O. Box since I shall always have it. Well, write soon. 

Maybe send me some pictures of the senery. 

XXX 

Lee 

Lee sent Robert a birthday card in April. In September, Acme again transferred Robert, to its Denton plant. Robert wrote Lee a letter saying he had returned to Texas. "I told him we were back, but that we didn't have any address for him except his post-office box," he recalls. "I wrote, 'Let me know where you and the family are living so we can get together.' " 

He never received an answer. "Lee wasn't at that photographic place anymore," he remembers. "I didn't know where he was working or what he was doing." 

Lee Oswald turned 24 in October 1963. There was no way to wish him happy birthday. 

Robert did not know that Lee and Marina had essentially split up. He did not know that Lee had gone to Mexico City in late September and paid a visit to the Soviet Embassy. Remembering that happy Thanksgiving of 1962, he assumed he would see Lee again when his younger brother got around to making contact. 

"I've lost sleep thinking about that period," he says. "We know now his marriage was gruesome. We know he had all kinds of problems. I just think if I'd known. ..." He stares up at 
the ceiling, unable to finish the thought. 

Nov. 22, 1963, started out to be just another Friday. If a scheduled meeting and luncheon with some of his bosses had not prevented it, Robert Oswald might have driven into Dallas and watched the presidential motorcade. He was a Barry Goldwater supporter, although he had voted for Kennedy over Richard Nixon in 1960. Politics aside, it would have been special, he thought, to see a president up close. 

As he and the bosses were preparing to leave the restaurant, a cashier told them the president had been shot. During midafternoon, distracted like most of America, he tried doing 
some paperwork in his office while half listening to reports of the assassination coming from a radio in the receptionist's area. Suddenly, he thought he heard the name "Oswald." Did the announcer say "Harvey Lee Oswald" or "Lee Harvey Oswald?" 

He remembers walking toward that radio as the receptionist stared at him. The announcer said something about the shooting of a Dallas policeman named Tippit. Then, Robert heard the other name again: Oswald. Lee Harvey Oswald. 

"Something must have shown in my face," he recalls, "because this receptionist took a look at me and started crying." 

"That's my kid brother," Robert Oswald said to no one in particular. 

AT THE POLICE STATION 

At 3:15 the next afternoon on the fifth floor of the Dallas police headquarters, he saw Lee, who had been formally charged with the assassination of the president and the murder of patrol officer J.D. Tippit. The brothers spoke over telephones separated by a glass partition with reinforced wire. 

Lee had a black eye. Robert asked him if he was being treated all right. 

Lee said he was fine, then gestured at his phone. "It's tapped," he said. 

"It may or may not be, Lee." 

It was a conversation between a big brother and his flighty little brother. For a while, Robert tried not to bring up the unthinkable. They talked about family matters, with Robert wondering aloud why Lee had not answered his September letter or mentioned the birth of his second daughter, Rachel. 

"You know how that goes," Lee said. 

"Whatever," Robert answered. 

Finally, Robert asked it: "Lee, what the Sam Hill is going on?" 

"What are you talking about?" 

"They got you charged with shooting a police officer and murdering the president. They got your rifle and they got your pistol." 

"Don't believe all that so-called evidence." 

The casualness of the response triggered something in Robert, who stared hard into his brother's eyes. As he remembers, "I was pretty intense. I was looking for some kind of reaction from him, anything, plus, minus, anything. ... But there wasn't any expression at all. ... He knew why I was looking in his eyes. He said, 'Brother, you won't find anything there.' And he was right. There was nothing." 

Lee told him not to come up to the jail so much that "you get yourself in trouble with your boss. ... You stay out of this." 

"I can't," Robert said. "I've already been dragged into it." 

He told Lee goodbye and said he'd see him soon. 

Robert talked to the Secret Service sometime that day — touched to learn that Jacqueline Kennedy had inquired about the background of his family -- and asked that his condolences be relayed to her. His voice broke. A Secret Service agent said he understood. 

That afternoon, he climbed into his car that still had its Arkansas license plate and drove 90 minutes north to the farm of his wife's family in Keeter, Texas. After making sure his two children were in another room, he told his wife and in-laws what he knew, giving voice for the first time to his fears over what the mounting evidence might say about his brother. He began sobbing. 

"A lot of tears and hugs," he remembers. "You appreciate more than ever the family in those moments. ... And Lee was my family, too. I didn't know exactly what to believe yet. ... I thought there'd be time to talk more to him, to find out. ... You always think there'll be more time and that you'll be there seeing him soon." 

SOBS AND A SNEER 

The next day, Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald to death on live television. Hearing the news at Parkland Hospital, Robert cried. A gruff Secret Service official told him, "What do you 
expect? Violence breeds violence." 

His nerves were close to snapping. The next morning, while under protection by the Secret Service at the Inn of the Six Flags in nearby Arlington, Robert learned that no minister in the Dallas area would agree to perform a funeral service for his brother. Two strangers in clerical collars suddenly appeared in the Secret Service's hotel room. Robert repeated that he wanted a brief chapel service. 

The ministers listened intently. Then one asked, "Robert, what about you?" 

"What about me what?" 

"Are you involved?" 

Stunned, he turned and walked out of the room, suspecting to this day that the men were Secret Service agents. The agency interrogated him for most of the next week in the hotel. "I think I would have had one heck of a time, as it turned out, had I been in Dallas on the day of the assassination," he says. "There'd been all kinds of theories and questions." 

After a few weeks, the Secret Service cleared him of suspicion. The nightmare seemed to be winding down. His brother had been buried without a chapel service on a chill, gray Monday, with reporters plucked out of a knot of onlookers to serve as pallbearers. 

His sister-in-law Marina had left with her two children and her own Secret Service detail. She soon sold Lee's Russian diary for $20,000 and hawked photos of her late husband with his guns. His mother -- who had not seen Lee for more than a year before the assassination — went home to peddle her interviews, calling herself "the mother of history" while simultaneously claiming Lee was an intelligence agent who'd been framed. Robert went back to the brick lot. 

Of course, it wasn't finished. He could barely sleep for six months. He drove alone to the farm of his wife's family so that he could test-fire his rifle and consider whether Lee could have fired three shots in the time it took to wound the president and then kill him. In the end, he decided it was do-able. 

The '60s turned bloodier. When Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King were slain in 1968, he agonized over the sense that the assassination of President Kennedy had "opened a 
window" through which disturbed men everywhere had realized the possibilities for political killings. "It is real hard for me to think that my brother might have given people the idea," he says. 

"Never going to be finished," he says today, philosophical about this truth, having found ways over the years to be amused by his life's darkly comic moments. About two years after the assassination, he was filling out a registration card at a Dallas hotel when the desk clerk took a look at his last name and turned pale. 

"I thought you were dead," she said. 

Oswald dead-panned: "Pinch me and we'll see." 

He hoped the passage of time would cool passions. He wrote a book about his brother, used the royalties to attend college and earned a degree in 1970. He was readying himself for 
commencement exercises when a clerk in the registrar's office took one look at his name on a diploma form -- Robert Edward Lee Oswald. She said sideways to him, "I'd really get rid of that 'Lee' if I were you." 

He said nothing. 

Thirty-four years of restraint and dignity have carried him and his family to safe ground, in this immaculate den, after an odyssey no one else will ever fully understand. "They're just normal people like the rest of us, I guess," says his backdoor neighbor Bob Lemley -- a remark that the retired Robert Oswald regards as pleasant news. "I guess it's worked out," he drawls. 

His son, Robert, a thriving 36-year-old businessman who happily cruises around town in a cowboy hat, now has his own little Robert Oswald. Daughter Cathy long ago married a teaching tennis professional and lives an upscale life as a mother of three, with her house's remodeling and the kids' tennis tournaments to preside over. "Things are copacetic," Robert Oswald likes to say. 

But sometimes when the big house goes dark, the strange dream returns. Lee is still there. And Robert is waiting for him. He remains the loving brother of the boy whose hand he held in the orphanage, the protector who swore to look after both his family's name and the small child his father never knew. He watches Lee tear up the paper. It cannot be fathomed, but all these years later, he has come to peace with it. 

[Mike Aitken]

Thanks for sharing this.

[Jean Ceulemans]

Someone just told me he thinks Rachel has also given an interview ca. the year 2000 or later.  He doesn´t remember details, but was thinking it was published in a magazine or something, not a regular newspaper.  He read the 1995 one, and it wasn´t the same.  

I don´t know, only have those mentioned in the topic title. Can´t think of a specific reason either, perhaps something like a documentary in those years, no idea...

Anyone? 

 

Edited August 4 by Jean Ceulemans

[Jean Ceulemans]

So we have:

June    x2

Rachel x1

That´s verrrrrrrrrry few...

Now I can understand them avoiding the media, the history remains, but they need to live their own lives, we have to respect that.  Don´t know if have been asked for interviews during the last 30 years.

They were small children back then, but it would be interesting to know how their opinions could have changed, or their view on Marina.  Each and one of us can think of dozens of questions.

Perhaps, some day.