Ruth Paine: Eyewitness to History

[Music] [Applause] hello and welcome to Ruth Payne eyewitness to history a special program of the Irving archives and museum miss Payne is now at California resident but back in the early 1960s she lived in Irving Texas in this home that is now a city museum the young mother befriended Marina Oswald she welcomed marina and her husband Lee Harvey Oswald into her home that's how she became connected with one of the most tragic and most talked about moments in presidential history the assassination of President John F Kennedy over the next hour you will hear her thoughts on Lee Harvey Oswald and she will take audience questions but she begins with some brief thoughts on her proudest moments in Irving as a teacher in Bear Creek well the students of the Bear Creek integrated school please stand up Rex where are you that was probably for and that was quite a long time ago but it was the place where I felt most at home in terms of doing something constructive in Irving and being very interested in both the children and in the Montessori teaching method which was very exciting and I'm gonna give just a little more background to before we get into the ultimate part as to why I was interested in the large language of Russia you know I've Russian and as to how Michael Payne and I came to come to Texas so just a little background I was active with what was called the young friends committee of North America this is young Quakers high school to college age kids and it was a cold warrior we're talking to 50s and we were trying to see what could we do to make people be nicer to each other across the dividing lines of belief and we wanted to do an exchange of young Quakers young people from here to go to Russia and young Russians to come to the states and we've looked around to see well do we have some nice young people who speak Russian will we found one and I thought well maybe we need some more people we were told to speak to our enemies right talk to her enemies and be friendly uh-huh so I started to study Russian really intensive leave one summer Michael Payne and I was a Quaker school in Philadelphia how do we fall in love you know a couple years went by we were married in a couple years went by I have to tell you that part of what's hard for me and doing this kind of talk is that it raises multiple grief I really admired President Kennedy it was so sad to see him killed and also why was my net my house well because Michael and I had separated the marriage just really wasn't working out very sad for me and the two losses kind of intertwined in my spirit and my feelings about the loss of the dream of the marriage and the loss of the dream was President Kennedy who dreamed for us so beautifully with the Peace Corps and he's the one that made it possible for us to go to the moon and come back they've just that's been very much in the and on the TV recently come on boys come back so that's how come marina was at my house and it was very nice to have somebody to talk to I was learning it's helping me with Russian you can't beat living with somebody who's a native speaker that was wonderful for me I first met Lee Oswald and marina in February of 63 there was a party in Dallas and Michael and I were invited but he had a cold and didn't go and I met Lee who entertained people in the kitchen about his going to Russia and coming back but I spent most of my time was marina in the bedroom she had a little baby and I got the address and asked whether I could write her and wrote and actually arranged to come and visit her at their place in in Dallas and did do that they didn't have a you have to have to realize what was it like to be poor and what it was like and in 63 they didn't have a phone and so I wrote him a card and said could I visit in such a time and she wrote back and thank me for remembering her from the party and arranged to go over and visited her there and I discovered that that she was expecting another baby she had become pregnant and she also said that Lee was talking about having her go back to the Soviet Union what she certainly didn't want to do so I sort of let her know that that if she really wanted to stage she could stay at my house if she wanted but I was hard to arrange I didn't know how he felt I'm gonna fill in a couple of things that I didn't know about until after the assassination but you have to understand that Lee got his Russian rifle I'm not Russian rival his his rifle and I have to look it up March 20th we got the rifle at his p.o box and then it was April 2nd that I went and visited but it was April 10th all these guys know this his students other case was it Oswald shot at Edwin Walker to try to kill him and I asked Kevin to put this note in front of you because it seems to me so significant as to what was going on in Oswalt's mind he started out saying we all got it here here is the key to the post office box which is located behind the main post office downtown see I didn't I didn't know about this color but found out later and I'll tell you when but this is on April 10th when he went out to try to shoot general Walker and then he ends up saying I left you as much money as I could $60 on the second of the month and you and journey can live on $10 a week which I think they did and he says if I'm alive and taken prisoner the City Jail is at the end of the bridge we always used to cross when we went to town at the very beginning of town after the bridge well that happened and I had no clue but uh marina did of course she's found and though when he didn't come back as soon as she expected that evening he'd gone out she didn't know where but when she got nervous and wondering where he was she went looked on his little desk and found this note fast-forward to April 24th that's not very much after the time that he tried to shoot Walker I came over to visit and Lee was all packed up to go somewhere they had all his things and package then he wanted to see if I get a ride with me to the bus station because he was gonna go to New Orleans to see if he could get a job there and live there and looking back I probably suspect that maybe marina wanted to get him out of town they were still looking for whoever it was had fired a shot at Walker I didn't know who had done it and she was so terrified I think what's gonna happen what does it mean so I said yeah I'll take him to the bus station and they said it's gonna buy a ticket for marina I said and then he would write to her let her know phone of course write her a letter just say - come on down he's got a place to say and I said well wait a minute this is a young mother with a one-year-old and pregnant and all the equipment that goes with a one-year-old that's all gonna go in the bus and then she's gonna go down to New Orleans I said well you know we could make it easier how about if she if I bring her up to my house for a while and I have a phone you could call and say when you have the place for her to stay and I'll Drive her down with the with her or baby June well he thought that was all right so that's how I did it took him to the bus station and then packed Marino up to come to my house and that was May 24th I took a bus station it was May 10th that I took her and June and of course my two little kids who went everywhere with me to New Orleans and we stayed that weekend not an easy weekend there's a lot of strain in the relationship between Murray Natalie and a lot of trick leanness I guess you could say I never saw him hit her although I heard later that he had but they argued they bickered and so if that was pretty unpleasant for me anyway so came back after the weekend and and wrong comes to summertime and you have to understand it's not only lonely I was bored you don't get a lot of fascinating conversation from a one-year-old two and a half year old who are my kids so I'm pectins is our station wagon pardon me I think it's funny which is now owned by this man right here good and we drove we drove across country and stopping to see family but mostly family in the Northeast and Philadelphia area and and then I went visited some of the friends the Quakers that I had worked with on what's called east/west context committee the ones that are trying to talk to our enemies and and improve relationships with Russia and then on down to my sisters and visit their this was the weekend of the march on Washington where Martin Luther King spoke so eloquently and my sister had several little tiny kids and I had my two kids also tiny I wanted to go but I did not think a crowd like that was a good place to take very small children so I didn't um had to wave at it from a distance Bethesda is a far from where it was but anyway missed that and then went on down drove down to New Orleans to see Marina Lake down there on the way I stopped at the church in Birmingham where those four little girls were killed to try to say how much I regretted that happened and to leave something for them and to to say that you know there are people who appreciate who they are and what helps them and I felt like I could explain that to my kids that this was an accident that could see it you know the church was still injured you could say that they need help and to rebuild the church and that what happened was terrible and so we're blessing them and going on our way and then I went down New Orleans well well he was again ready to go somewhere and he said that he would be leaving the next day or so but I've determined that he really was comfortable with the idea of Marina coming and staying with me for a while I was very concerned that he not feel he was being undercut as the father of the house and you know with his family and well he did require some financial assistance he it was his family and and he did feel okay about it I was kind of appalled because she'd been there all summer she by now was eight months pregnant and had not had any medical attention or care and they couldn't afford it but they had lived long enough in Dallas County where they could wish I could get her in for free care to just check out house how the pregnancy was going and also if the baby came I could get her into the hospital to all the paperwork and whatever was needed for that so I think it was actually grateful for that I felt that it was you felt good about it and of course he packed up our car and looking back I realized that one of the tall Marine Corps duffel bags that he put in the back of this station wagon probably had the rifle in it but I did not know he had a rifle and I'm sure he packed it to be sure that I wouldn't know and then I just those things of theirs I put in our garage when we got back too early so marina and I were there in Irving and then after a week or so Lee came to Dallas called on the phone said he wanted to come out could I come and get it because he didn't drive it didn't have a car and marina answered the phone talked to him she said no she can't do that she just gave blood at Parkland for preparing for the baby so ok I didn't say I would or wouldn't but she said for me and so he actually hitchhiked out which works well for him he was small you know slightly built and very tidy look ok and a guy that picked him up took him right to the door he said he's going to see his family after a separation whole long story I didn't want him to stay at the house and with some of you have been at the house you know how small it is and we had a mother and two babies two young children me and two children in one bedroom and marina and her baby later by middle of October a new baby in that bedroom so I didn't want him to stay the house but I said he could come out weekend to visit with her and the story about how it came about that he worked at the School Book Depository I was next door to the Roberts house we know Roberts actually and brain and I were over visiting having coffee with our neighbors and lending me Randall the lived across the street said that to her brother worked at the Texas School Book Depository and he had a lot of work that were filling orders this is October school districts are getting their books and she thought there might be a job there and you have to understand marina did not speak any English she didn't understand a lot of English either she didn't know what that conversation was about so I explained it to her later and she said oh could you call and see if they really do have an opening and so I did called and talked to that personnel after personnel got Roy truly and I said well this young man wife and a baby young girl and a baby anyway and he's looking for work was there an opening and he wouldn't say but he said well what the young man come on so that's when when Lee called I don't want to talk to marina she's told him that and that he should go on and see which he did and I guess he did all right as far as the interview was concerned I learned today that he lied on the application I didn't know that but that's not a surprise and got the job and then arranged with Blenheim a Randall's brother wish you were here you'll fry her here yeah yeah alright oh he was here uh and raised that he would be able to transport Oswald to work and back because he was living with money moved now to house just down the street and so that was pretty good arrangement for all parties he'd come out on Friday night and then go back with fuel and money morning and I think probably it was a very relaxed setting for for also that he really enjoyed seeing his wife and now two babies and grateful to be able to come out then the one comes the well I didn't mention the baby Rachel came on the 20th of October and Lee had given us a phone number of a place to call if the baby came let him know and but we didn't use it because the baby came on the Sunday and Lee was there at the house and that was good because it was evening and my kids were in bed and we were I needed to take marina to the hospital and he could babysit he could stay with the kids through all my one took her to the hospital which is what we did and then it wasn't till quite a lot later I'll come back to this matter of the phone number that he had given us so the the that weekend of Veterans Day weekend it was Armistice that what used to be Armistice Day was a three-day weekend and marina asked him not to come out she felt me it kind of overstayed his stay the previous weekend which is when my daughter had a birthday party but she was missing him and she asked me to dial the number that we had to how to reach him so I did dial the number was speak to Lee Oswald and the lady said there's no Lee Oswald here I said was this this number yes that number confusion I didn't know what was going on and Lee had a habit of calling Marina after work every day and that next Monday then that was Sunday night and Monday afternoon when he got home he called her robbery was he called her and she asked about we tried to reach you by phone and it was the wrong number or something and he was furious I'm listening just to the side that marina is saying he said he was using an assumed name she shouldn't have tried to reach him and then she let him have it what are you doing playing these games and what's going on and they just had a pretty hard argument on the phone and that was Monday before the of the week of the assassination so of the Mamata which seemed normal we were anticipating and eager to see President Kennedy very excited very excited and we just you know we haven't had TV very long but I watched TV when the president and his wife er do it at breakfast in Fort Worth that morning of the 22nd I will have to come back to that cuz I'm skipping over what happened Thursday night will go to Thursday night and then to Friday morning um Thursday when I came along from the grocery store about 5:30 in the evening Lee was on the front lawn playing with June there's no daughter and my kids and I was very surprised to see him he didn't normally come out on a Thursday fuel you can tell me if this is true that he asked for a ride on Thursday saying he was going out to pick up some curtain rods and you asked whether he'd need a ride out on Friday and what did he say he said he what he said is impossible he said he said no yeah wouldn't he wouldn't need a ride on trotting out to the house and later of course I learned that he brought with him a big some wrapping paper that you've got it to school book depository that ultimately he wrapped up the rifle took it off the next morning but that all happened before I was up it was like seven but he was already gone and I love to coffee cup in the sink so I saw I'd been there and you could say he put a package in the back of the car so anyway so there there I am and that's now Friday morning and watching the TV and president mrs. Kennedy coming for breakfast and forth they were a little late as Kennedy joked later you know it takes women a little longer the newspaper the reporter on the TV was kind of filling time while they were not yet arrived and he mentioned this as a nation of President McKinley now how is it that that was so much in the air in Dallas people were worried about his safety it was it just speaks to the fact that the air was Laden was worried about the president's safety and I did find out like confirm that that was indeed on that tape from that morning so I had dental appointments for my kid older kid and went off to take both my kids go with me everywhere for that about nine o'clock but I left the TV on because I knew that when marina got up she would want to see what was going on and she would be up something you know a very little baby she would be up nursing in the middle of the night so if she could sleep a little later she would and I knew she would want to be able to sleep but when she got up she did I learned from her later that she was very pleased to see that TV on and to see what was going on and then when I came back with my kid from the demo appointment we all we sat there watching and we heard that the President had been shot and you know they didn't have TV cameras on the motorcade TV was so quite new and the cameras huge the one of the newspaper person reporting microphone said he saw Oh God he saw a pink cloud rise for the president's head I thought oh my god it's fatal marina Astra's it's a kind of way of praying any cousin and then more than an hour later we heard that in fact he had died when six police officers arrived at the door saying they had the Oswald in custody for shooting an officer we've uh now had heard that that an officer had been shot and I thought oh this is not good and one of the officers passage said we have a rifle and I trance I said no and translate it to marina we said yes he did and let the officers into the garage I know was this blanket rule on the floor the officer picked it up you don't know I felt like I was just devastated to think and at that point I was ready to help these officers in whatever way I could you know later we learned that that marina say she was the only one that knew about this note that he had left when he went out to try to kill somebody in April but she someone who interviewed her later told me that she had when she heard that the shots had been fired from the School Book Depository we were out hanging up diapers and I went out to tell her that they said the shots had been fired from the depository I didn't notice but she went into the garage to look for the rifle recognizing that it might be me and she thought it was there so then comes a lot of activity police station and changes and here's where the grief intertwines michael illinois had been separated for a year at this point but when he heard that the shots in betar were in the radio the shots had been fired from the School Book Depository he drove over to the house to try to help to see what was going on and so he was there and went witless and the police officers down to the police station the officers were many of these men here are really noble policemen doing their job but the this crowd of six was a mixed bag I would say a couple of them were very courteous and appropriate but they didn't know who we were what we were like and they were wanting to Russia Marino wanted to put on change of clothes they didn't want her off in a room by herself no way and so that was it was very stressful you know we were all just so stricken we did ultimately well one of the police officers said you better hurry up or we'll take the kids down to two Juvenal and he grabbed me by the arm and pull on me and I look to my little daughter and I said you can go with us like I was saying you can't intimidate me man this girl is it I'm holding her hand when my son was sleeping where went over and got you can't imagine how naive I was but here with the policeman and I said well we need to get a babysitter to come stay with the kids while we go downtown because you know they were sleeping at that time afternoon so I started to walk over toward the baby scissors and one of the officers came along I said oh you don't have to go well of course he has to come how innocent I was so we got the babysitter to come over stay with the kid soon but my daughter went with us ah she almost free members not quite that's it just had a four year before this birthday so friends that's we're gonna get to the note now okay next day well it's not evening that at the police station we met Margarito's well very interesting lady and she asked if she could come out to my house she left him Fort Worth and had negotiated herself a ride to the police station Dallas and she asked if she could come out stay at my house if you can sleep on the sofa you can come out so that's what she did but she also invited two people from Life magazine and a photographer a writer to come out and that's how come we have a picture that's on the front page of somebody's gonna lift it up yeah this is Tom Allen's book mrs. Payne's garage and this was done by the life photographer and we wouldn't otherwise know anything about that those pictures so we give Marguerite both credit for that spent the night and then they came back the two from Life magazine was a translator this time Russian speaker and went with marina to try to see Lee and that's what the picture is they're getting ready to go into Dallas and this is the morning Saturday morning the 23rd of November and I expected she'd be coming back that night but she didn't and I didn't know why and then Lee called from from jail from the police station and I wanted to talk to Marina and I said she's not here well she should be there you know he was insulted that she wasn't there when he needed her but I was curious about justice he was where she was well tommy Thompson was a writer from Life magazine and I remembered his name and he had told me what hotel they were staying in so I called the hotel may I speak to Tommy Thompson and I rang the phone Margarete answered the phone and I said they wanted to talk to Marina she said no I can't talk about him well he wanted her to be available where he could talk to her and so I well we can't be too concerned about what he thinks at this point hello mama Oswald so Lee called again later to ask me to reach a lawyer but I was not able to I had very mixed feelings you know he had a right to a lawyer right to her hearing all of that but I didn't appreciate his asking anything of me at that point you know I was not feeling very French but I could try to restore he was out of town and didn't have an answering machine so I didn't reach him well there we are I didn't know where marina was but uh she called me and asked if I could she left expecting she would come back also she said I need clothes for the kids and it's 5:00 you know stop and so I made up a package and I began to get mail for her Americans were very generous and very kind and a sent several people sent a little bit of money a donation please help out this young mother what was in such a terrible spot so I'd I'd if it was cash I'd write a check for that amount and send it on certain arena and all the clothes and stuff that she asked for and write for the Irving Police Department they had stationed an officer in front of the house and I just took the package of what I wanted to send to Marina out to the officer said do you think you could get this to Brunei as well yes he could so we did that several times sending stuff and one of the time so I sent things that I included a book that I thought would make her feel more at home is a book and Russian about child care and little advices we had been reading about pinworms they they took it to her and a few days later I had a mysterious visit from two people from Secret Service one was there Russian speaker mr. coupon see I don't remember the name of the English speaker mr. gu Ponzi I felt he wanted to check out my grocery so he spoke only to me in Russian and so I answered and he showed me little piece of paper two pieces of paper I only looked at the talk he didn't really want me to read it but I did see that it said this is the key to our post office box and that's about as far as I got and Capote was saying Mrs Payne who sent this to Marina Oswald narsing well I haven't seen it yes you did you sent it to her do you recognize a handwriting no but I did comment that whoever wrote it didn't know the Russian word for key he had transliterated in the Cyrillic letters key as it said key and so that identified that note for me even though I only saw that first portion of it and I was this is like the second bad moment after the rifle because he was accusing me and was upset so of course I turned at the English speaker shouldn't have earlier and said what was going on in the Russian language that he was saying mrs. pen you sent this say no it didn't finally think the English speaker said well it was in a book I sent a book but of course I didn't know them know what's in there and I only figured it out from news reports later as to what the note was about how it came about because of the word King in the lead of the what you have here know that it was something he left for marina in April when he went out to try to shoot general Walker and I asked much later you know was there something else besides the note that pointed to Oswald as the one who made that shot and facility onset Macmillan who was a major researcher the whole thing I said yeah he had photographs taken with his camera of the back of general Walker's house he had notes if he had made about his careful planning for the thing it arranged figured out a place to hide the gun after using it and he also figured he could ride he had both schedule how to get home on the bus and it it's just a lot of people don't know about this I keep meeting people who who didn't know that although it was made an attempt to kill somebody in April keep meeting them even the young man who recently integrated me at the local paper said that's how he found out when I told him he didn't know so I was clearly pretty clear to me from my experience in my direct experience that it was he and that I think a very important aspect that he had tried to kill somebody and planned it I do think that it's possible he didn't do much planning about shooting Kennedy because as I read his personality if he had decided Thursday morning when he left his rooming house to go to work at the School Book Depository I think if he decided that early he would have taken his pistol with him from the rooming house I went to work talk to Buell and came out that Thursday night and then amazingly just walked out I'm a school book depository after the shooting where did he go he went to his rooming house and got the pistol and use it terribly to kill officer Tippit and I was caught in the Texas schoolbook in the Texas theater a few minutes later and the arresting officer reported officer McDonald he he had been trying to grab the gun and actually it's fired and he said that it hit it hit him here rather than firing off the gun he was saved by having his hand in the way of the pin firing the gun was ready to kill officer too so those are the stories I personally had of my acquaintance with Lee and what happened and what you know you're all gonna we have time for questions one of the questions that will always be there is what motivated him why but we're gonna be stuck with that can't ask him he never did have a draw I've gotten to be friendly with a woman named Carol Klopfer she's the daughter of Ruth Klopfer and you came to New Orleans you asked sent them a letter she wanted to know I was just emailing her and she wanted to get a sense from you of the whole story of how you kind of reached out to them and what happened when you showed up yeah well I think this is when I first took her down in May to New Orleans and I was worried about her being you know without knowing anybody and I didn't know anybody to know where I saw I just talked to someone from the Quaker meeting I think it was to see if they could just bring somebody going to connect her with a Russian speaker and to see how she was doing have I answered your questions well she was saying that her recollection was that her mother got a letter from you asking her to look out from Marina because you hadn't heard from her for a while remember this was July or August but her mother didn't go there right away because she was waiting for the kids to come back from school she wanted to go with somebody and then what she said was the Ruth got a call from you saying you were gonna come and pick up Marina and if you wanted to say hello to her you needed to get there the next day so I'm that's her recollection of it from the experience and then they went to visit her and leave for a couple of hours and then as they were leaving you were driving up to pick up Marina so I wants to kind of get your sense of whether the way she remembers this remember what overlapping at that time this would have been September I think September yes probably probably did I'm just wrong and then the last question she had was after when Lee was arrested and then there were FBI interviews the FBI came to see them and she was curious because they never gave out the information no one really knew and she was wondering if it was part of a I guess when you were talking about the FBI did you mention that visit and that's how they came to speak with Ruth and the kids yeah I probably didn't mention if they FBI that I talked with her is that what you're saying well no she was saying they're the only way they thought the FBI could find out about that they had been there because they had not said anything about their address to Marina orally or anything that they can you know she was just wondering if maybe you had said something to the FBI about that brief meeting with with Lee and marina when Ruth and I don't think I did but I don't know she was just it was interesting to hear her perspective as a young kid or a college kid going and meeting and her point was that I guess you had shown up at that point when they were leaving and that you had a chance to meet them at least that's what she recalls you don't recall that no hello my name is Anthony Spurgeon I work as a tour guide for a company called Delos 201 and most most days I give tours of the Dealey Plaza in fact I was there this morning I wanted to ask you if you are still in contact with marina if you where's the last time you spoke to her oh it's not since 64 I haven't been in touch right if she were to reach out to you he would do you know what though I don't think it would I it didn't work for us we did try to get together that next fall and 64 and it was just so sad what had happened but the saddest thing that had happened to either of us so we didn't really feel comfortable well that's only that's all I wanted to know thank you so much for coming out also it's a real honor well thank you all for coming look at this crowd we fit rather well hi hi I'm Pat hall uh-huh uh-huh and I am the granddaughter of Gladys Johnson who was mr. Lee's landlady oh okay and I was wondering if you could clear up when you when Lee went to New Orleans and you took marina down later when he called and said that they had a place you then it was my understanding that you brought her back that same weekend because they started bickering oh no no it's to left her there it's two trips I took her down in May okay when he called and said he had a place in the job okay and then I stopped at the end of the summer in September in September to visit and that's when he was ready to go somewhere uh-huh and I said well if you want I can take her to my house and get rid of the hospital was needed okay I just wanted to make sure yeah that I knew - see we got some real fact checkers here thanks guys really alert having studied and taught Texas history do you think that history remembers Lee also as the way that he was from how you knew him so has he gone down in history as the person that you knew him as accurately would you say I don't know I would I don't know especially how history sees him I think the killing the president was so massive an event and so important I think that's really what people remember that the house really portrays kind of how he was in a more relaxed setting and and how you know I didn't see him as dangerous I then wouldn't have wanted him in my house if I'd known he was dangerous so that part of him isn't very well known to history they tend to rewrite history books as time goes on and I just wanted to make sure yeah thank you in fact it's one of the important factors that that that didn't show on him on me Marina marina knew that he had tried to kill somebody but really his behavior generally didn't convey that goes around him : Gibson from Irving I've had a question - regarding what I thought I heard you say was someone named Margaret Oswald was hungry yes Marguerite Oswald was that Lee's mother yes and she lived in the Metroplex to live in Fort Worth was there was there ever consideration for Lee and the family living with her oh he wouldn't even tell her they'd been a new baby he didn't wanted nothing to even wanted nothing to do with her hi Ruth it's a pleasure to meet you my name is Scott wheeler I live in Dallas of lived in Dallas 15 years I've been in the Metroplex since I was 10 what is the Metroplex I don't know anything in Dallas in Fort DFW in the area I lived in Arlington gaiters spirit anyway going on her comment about has history portrayed Leigh as you knew him made me think a lot of people I think probably don't realize from what I've gathered over the years he was a very he had the capacity to be a very polite businesslike person from what I've also heard he was a neat freak he was a compulsive compulsively clean neat it's clean I think he'd like to have his potatoes cooked just so yeah he was very and I've just gotten the feeling he was he's not at all what may have been conveyed by the photos of him after his arrest for example where he's dirty and disheveled and and you know looks vicious I mean obviously it's it's we're pretty sure he did a vicious thing but but that's not he had the ability to convey a very neat clean polite person and also I knew I knew H Lewis Nichols who was the president of the Bar Association in Dallas in 63 and I knew him I worked in building security in downtown Dallas back in the in the 90s and he was as an older man he was an attorney in that building and I and I asked him one day about it when I learned who he was and and I thought I knew that man so I next time I saw him I asked him about the visit he made dilly in jail asking him if he'd if he had counsel and he told me during we talked about it for about ten minutes that afternoon and he said he was very polite he said he if he didn't have the evidence if he didn't know what was generally known as the evidence that they were mounting against him that he would have never guessed that this man did what what they said he did he says he was very polite he says when I went into the cell with him he said of course they lock you up in there with him and he says they locked they locked the door and I was in there and I wasn't armed and the only thing I knew was that I was bigger than he was and he says I was worried he says I was truly worried what could this man be but no he was very nice very polite and he asked him if he if he needed an attorney and he said no he wanted him to contact mr. Abbot out of New York who was known to represent communists and he said that he said if I need you I'll contact you I appreciate your help and it was just very nice and and so my my thinking is is that the Lee you probably knew was simply not at all I had no clue yeah exactly and and basically I said that to the Commission before I left so if if we don't understand that an assassin can look perfectly fine you know person then we have no way of knowing it's just we just don't understand how easy it is to kill the president exactly and also one less comment and I'll have a seat and let you comment if there is any comment did you know Robert Oswald his brother at all after the assassination he has ever had contact with after the assassin after the assassination yes what was he like I always got the feeling on liked him well he was a very likable man sensible guy in the family yeah Marguerite the mother was a different story well she put him up to a orphanage early on I think that was a savior thing for but I tried to talk with him when I was trying to figure out what's going on with Marina because of those weeks right after she left I didn't know what was going on um whether she had whether she knew what her rights were or you know and so I went to try to talk to Robert and his wife talked to me through the screen door but didn't want me to come in they weren't very friendly I think he took I think Robert took a bad impression of Michael maybe this wasn't you know what did he know who were these people you know yeah I was just curious could you speak about Michael and his employment with Bell Helicopter and just your thoughts on that it seems like a odd place to work for a Unitarian and I realize his well his stepfather invented the Bell Helicopter so that he had that background so I just well that's exactly yeah Michael was an engineer and very interested in aerodynamics and he worked for his father-in-law in the barn where we were living and this is the same barn where that Bell Helicopter had first been designed by Arthur young yet father-in-law and it if Arthur recommended Michael Bell would hire him and did and I think it was a really appropriate job for Michael he loved the research and development aspect you have to make parts for the designs that they were doing so he was a machinist aha I found that out when we went for a wedding what do you call it a license to marry do they ask you what your you know your occupation is he said it was a machinist [Music] thank you there are several ways to learn more about all of this Ruth Payne's home is now restored and features interactive exhibits it is available to visit by appointment learn more and make reservations at City of Irving org slash 498 also the Irving archives and museum is scheduled to open in late December 2019 and we at IC TN everal special videos find them on our JFK playlist at youtube.com slash the City of Irving thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: The City of Irving

Views: 102,395

Keywords: Irving, ICTN, JFK, Oswald

Id: jL2isU-zS6w

Length: 58min 52sec (3532 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 08 2019