How Oswald Became Oswald: The Childhood & Education of JFK’s Alleged Assassin #leeharveyoswald

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]The following chronological view is an effort to present Oswald as an individual driven by his own beliefs and personality, but with his attitude and actions at any moment influenced by who he was with and what was going on around him. Tracing Oswald's personality and character through his school years, his time in the Marines, his service in Japan, and his experiences in Russia is a key to evaluating the consistency and continuity of his basic behavior.

[00:00:36]Hello and welcome back to my channel.

[00:00:39]And if you're new, then welcome. I am Jess Canel and I would love to earn your subscription today. Well, we are starting a little minieries on Lee Oswald. I started thinking about um just questions that I have and I I ended up making a list of different books and issues that will speak to those questions and a good number of them are about the person of Lee Oswald. And so what I thought we were going to do is we're going to take a couple of different books, three different books, uh, that deal with Lee Oswald as an individual, uh, to look at his nature, his upbringing, the the psychology and person of Lee Oswald. Uh, and so we're going to be doing that through a few different books that I have here. This one just came in the mail yesterday. I actually had not planned to include it, but it fits perfect. So, we're going to do that. And then at the end of those books, we're actually going to take a distinct look at John Armstrong's articles about Harvey and Lee. We will not have I don't have the whole book, although the Grodens have offered for me to borrow it. Um, so I may end up holding it at some point and getting to look at it a little bit with you, but we're we're definitely not going to look at the entire book. We're just going to try to crystallize, especially in my mind, y'all. This is a question that I have not just who is Lee Oswald that I hope these books will help us answer or get a better look at, right? So we can have a working theory so that I can have and you can have a working theory of who was he, what were his goals, uh what was his makeup and what may have been some subterranean motivations uh actually driving some of his actions that we can see. Was he just a psy? I actually really like this title. One of the books we're going to look at is a newer book, Lee Harvey Oswald, Patriot, Provocator, or Psy by Jim Pertell. And so, um, yeah, what thing was he? Which thing was he? Was he just a psy? Okay, but we're after that, we're going to get into some other questions that I have in regard to the assassination. So, I'm excited about that with you guys. Um, that's what's coming up on this channel. I do want to let you know my second channel. I just completed the HL Hunt book. It is just a quiet reading channel and I am going to go great guns with this channel and get myself to where I have some margin before I start publishing on that channel again. So, uh, now is a great time if you are in the need of some quiet reading, you have a road trip, you have a surgery, you have a project you need to do, and you just need something to just read and keep you linear in your thinking while you're doing that thing, then you may want to check out that playlist because that HL Hunt book was fantastic. I had no idea uh about his background life. Well, this is a busy time for me. Uh, that's why it's been a few days since I published.

[00:03:43]And so I'm I'm just going to get back on track with regular posting and have enough back matter to where you guys won't feel the lulls in my schedule as much as I feel them. Uh it was just Mother's Day yesterday. I've got a graduation coming up this summer. We've got camps and different things coming up. So I'm going to try to stay very consistent with my posting, which typically is every 48 hours. So 7 a.m.

[00:04:09]if it's on a Monday, then 7:00 a.m. on the Wednesday is when the next video will publish. That tends to be my pattern unless I have a big interview or something. Then I then I will give it three days because often people need time to digest those bigger ones. So that's my pattern. That's my plan. I hope you'll join me for these various questions of the JFK assassination. The other thing I want to share with you guys is this. a viewer named Jack sent me I'm going to take out the thing that has his address on it, but he sent me this packet that I think I mean it was still taped up and it still had the prize tag on it. So I wonder if he even opened it. But as I've gone through, it doesn't just have Okay, so it has Detroit papers from November 22nd, November 23rd, November 24th, November 25th of 1963, but it also has something crazy neat that I've never seen before that I want to share with you guys as soon as possible. So once we get through the J the Lee Harvey Oswald stuff, I think we will do this pretty soon. It's my story by Jack Ruby. It literally says like copyright Jack Ruby and William Reed Woodfield. So, it's his explanation and timeline of what happened. I've never seen that before. Uh other things are here in this packet as well, but I just I'm very thankful, Jack, from Michigan that you shared these goodies with us. Uh I'll be sharing them on the channel as soon as I can. And so, that's something else to look forward to. And I I just feel really grateful that I whenever I received that one and then yesterday in the mail, this one came, I've just told my husband like, I feel so uh grateful for you guys. I feel very supported. But I feel very like you're cheering me on and investing in what we're doing here on this channel, which is trying to uncover bit by bit the truth and cut through the noise, which is hard to do when our government uh controls media as we know they do through project marking bird and have done for decades. Uh and now I suspect it's happening like through independent journalists, right? Um we have a lot of people who have gone from the mainstream media into independent journalism and are still drawing the same amount of influence and it makes you wonder are they still being controlled. So when that is happening the narratives that come through to us are very loud they are very specific and they follow a pattern that is desired to be believed.

[00:06:51]And so my mind when whenever I face a story in the in the current world, my mind looks for details that slip through that don't fit and particularly if they don't fit the overarching narrative that we were told within a few days of the event or within, you know, 36 hours of the event. What slipped through in these early moments that doesn't fit here? and whatever we can find out in the back matter that doesn't fit here. Those are the kinds of things that we want to know. Lately, just in my personal uh investigations, I've been looking at the Las Vegas shooting, for example, in that regard. Um, so there's a lot of situations where we're told a narrative, but the backstory and the details that we were told in the beginning don't fit the narrative that we end up being told.

[00:07:44]That seems to be the case with Oswald.

[00:07:46]So, today we're going to be digging into the Oswald puzzle. This is an updated edition that's just come out this year.

[00:07:53]So, this is an older book, but it's been updated by Larry Hancock and David Boland. I would love to have them on the show at some point. Uh, so hopefully we can do that. I would love to interview these authors about the things that they have learned in this process of not just writing the original book, but also the updated things and why they matter. So, we're just going to read uh a few bits about Oswald's early years and what we can learn about the things that made up those years. Uh for now, next time we will be getting into the fingerprints of intelligence in Henry Hurt's book, Reasonable Doubt, and then we'll be getting into uh The Summer in New Orleans before uh the JFK assassination in that other book. So that's where we're headed.

[00:08:43]Let's go ahead and dig in. Now, this is from the introduction. It says, "The net result of the Warren Commission's report, the subsequent congressional inquiries, and decades of books on the Kennedy assassination has left Lee Harvey Oswald as something of an enigma.

[00:08:59]What is in the history books is either misleading or at best incomplete.

[00:09:04]Readers who have turned to one or more of the assassination related books will either find the characterizations of Oswald which support the view of Oswald as the sole assassin or a broad variety of very different images of him. This book takes a very different approach to Oswald, focusing entirely on him as an individual with his own deeply personal history and development with a consistency in his character and worldview. All of which were were in many instances the antithesis of that presented in the Warren Commission report. The Oswald puzzle is first and foremost a book about Lee Harvey Oswald.

[00:09:43]It is also a book about the Kennedy assassination but only to the extent that the assassination touched Oswald during the last 72 hours of his life. So we are going to the chapter that's called character and development. So, it's giving us a look at and this is what I was talking about about what was the truth about Oswald. Some of those things presented in the Warren Commission report. Uh even at times like Sylvia Maher talked about how things were presented that twisted uh the actual meaning. So, for example, they asked the the doctor about if Lee was a troubled youth, and they represented his answer as if yes, he was an extremely troubled youth, when actually the answer was something far less sinister and far less clear than that. So, we're going to get into character and development, chapter 2. Uh, I do want you to know the the uh footnotes here or the end notes are pretty lengthy. There's a long pattern here of 40 pages, 50 pages, 40 pages of um of end notes. So, it is well researched. It is lots of citations throughout the text. Okay. Chapter 2, Character and Development. We start with a quote. John Caro, probation officer, Warren Commission Hearings, volumes, volume 8, page 212.

[00:11:12]There was nothing that would lead me to believe when I saw him at the age of 12 that there would be seeds of destruction for somebody.

[00:11:20]Opposing views. The Warren Commission report in chapter 7 offered a view of Oswald as being unable to establish meaningful personal relationships, perpetually discontented with his own life, a communist in his political views, and moved to action by an overriding antipathy toward America and his surroundings.

[00:11:42]Oswald was moved by an overriding hostility. This is the quote uh from the Warren Commission. Oswald was moved by an overriding hostility to his environment. He does not appear to have been able to establish meaningful relationships with other people. He was perpetually discontented with the world around him. Long before the assassination, he expressed his hatred for American society and acted in protest against it. Oswald's search for what he conceived to be the perfect society was doomed from the start. He sought for himself a place in history, a role as a great man who would be recognized as having been an advance of his times. His commitment to Marxism and communism appears to have been another important factor in his motivation.

[00:12:28]In the years following the Warren Commission's report, a broader exploration of Leeha Oswald's history and personal relationships has brought the commission's characterization into serious question, including the contention that Oswald sought a place in history for himself. something that literally no one associated with Lee Oswald had ever heard him actually express in public or indicate in any of his own relatively extensive views on social and geopolitical issues written circa 1963.

[00:13:00]In essence, seeking a place in history became a place filler, a fallback response in place of any substantive motive for what was seemingly a spontaneous decision to kill the president of the United States. Okay.

[00:13:16]Helpful helpful to see that these things are being mischaracterized.

[00:13:21]The search for a more objective historical characterization of Oswald, one including his history as well as his own remarks and writings begins with Oswald himself. In that respect, the Warren Commission's 26 volumes contain a huge amount of relevant information. The majority accumulated from FBI research into his family background, education, and time in the Marines. While some critics literally trust no information provided by the FBI, a good deal of the material in the appendices to the Warren Report has been corroborated and is internally consistent. In addition, the information in the background collection is also at odds with the commission's summary report in a great many areas. I do want to point out to y'all um I have these volumes here. Just a reminder, the Warren Commission was a seven member commission appointed by LBJ to uh answer the questions regarding the JFK assassination. at the end of their 9month investigation that was portrayed as if it was very extensive, very detailed, but actually consisted of 49 meetings. The bulk of which uh most members were not at and the bulk of whose testimonies most members did not hear.

[00:14:42]uh and the vast majority of whom of whose interviews were taken by like lawyers and subsidiaries and then just put into the record. So we have no way of knowing that any of those seven members actually read those uh reports and and eyewitness accounts either. So all of those things were printed in 26 volumes. But what was done first was a report was printed. I have mine right there. It's the second book on my shelf. Um it's a thick book and I think 800 and some odd pages and it was supposed to be a summary of what was in the 26 volumes of evidence printed here.

[00:15:28]What actually turned out to be the case once because they didn't report they didn't release the two at the same time.

[00:15:33]They released the report. So everybody read it and thought, "Okay, that's the that's what the evidence shows." And then I think five weeks later along came these 26 volumes which Sylvia Maher did a great job of showing didn't actually support uh the conclusions that were reached in the report. So that's that's the history of that is seven a seven member commission 9 months uh the report was released and then about a month later the 26 volumes of supposed evidence was released to support that report. Okay. So when we're talking about the report that's what we're talking about. But he's saying the evidence that was given in a large in in a large degree was internally consistent with itself. However, it didn't actually it wasn't accurately reflected within their own report.

[00:16:25]In addition, the information in the background collection uh is also at odds with the commission's summary report, providing a useful illustration of the extent to which the commission chose to cherrypick and load its language to build a case against Oswald. Additional information critical for corroboration includes remarks from Oswald's personal friends. He did have friends and lovers, individuals who did socialize with him, whom he liked and talked with at length.

[00:16:57]So, we're given this picture of unable to keep personal relationships. I mean, it's meant to produce an antisocial perspective on Lee Oswald, like, oh, he was one of those bad eggs. He was he was off at the fringe of society. he couldn't connect with people and so therefore he took this extreme action whereas actually there were there were friends and lovers who gave their accounts of Oswald.

[00:17:19]Uh there are also factual sources including his own press and media interviews, his documented reading preferences and his own writings. That writing, which was extensive during 1962 and 1963, was collected by the Warren Commission but placed into appendices, escaping those who did not venture beyond the commission's summary report.

[00:17:40]So again, there was a summary report that was released and a lot of people just said, "Oh, okay. If that's what's contained in the 26 volumes, I'm content with that. I can believe the government's account. I'm good." uh when actually these 26 volumes that were released afterward do not fully uh represent what was put there in the report. Um and many people didn't bother to take a look.

[00:18:05]A combination and crossch check of these sources allows the development of a totally independent image of Oswald as well as a critical baseline in which to judge both the continuity and evolution of his very personal interests and worldviews from his teenage years through the months immediately prior to his own death. Viewed chronologically and with multiple sources, the details of Oswald's life reveal considerable consistency in both his character and behavior over time. While demonstrating that as much as anyone, he was apt to act situationally at times. Situational behavior is neither unusual nor mysterious, much less conspiratorial, regardless of how it may appear at any single point in time.

[00:18:52]An example, uh, over a year after the assassination, the press carried stories based on Marinas, Marina Oswald, his wife. Marina's just released remarks to the commission. In her testimony, she described Oswald changing after their move from Russia to the United States.

[00:19:10]She had described him as a caring and affectionate father, helpful, but far less attentive to her than early in their marriage. He seemed more irritable, bothered by what she considered trifles, and did not like the Russian friends she had made in the Dallas Fort Worth area.

[00:19:28]Those remarks and others were leveraged by both the press and commission to infer that Oswald had changed dramatically, becoming reclusive and dangerous in the fall of 1963.

[00:19:40]Yet, what is missing is the element of context. With additional sources and background research, it becomes clear that Oswald's change in attentiveness and his romantic interest in Marina had begun well before they left Russia.

[00:19:54]Noted even in KGB monitoring of Oswald following their marriage. The fact is Oswald himself consistently demonstrated a tendency toward becoming bored with jobs, affairs, and even special interests such as astronomy or photography.

[00:20:12]We now call that ADHD or some other thing where and I have that tendency where I'll get super into something and then I set it aside for a while, get super interested in something and and he showed that pattern and showed it toward Marina. Equally relevant context for Marina's remarks comes from the couple's time in Dallas and Fort Worth after their return from Russia. Over some 16 months, the Oswalds developed a repetitive pattern of behavior. Marina repeatedly separating from Oswald as he moved through a success succession of jobs. She would rely on Russianspeaking friends and live with her young child June in several different homes. That was a weird pattern. It's not typical and we can't blame all of that on Lee.

[00:21:03]In return, as Oswald found new jobs or simply began to miss his family, he would return to Marina. On occasion, literally pleading for her to rejoin him in a new apartment. That pattern had begun again in Dallas following the birth of the couple's new baby in the fall of 1963. And in totality, Marina's remarks about her husband's frustration during his visit on the eve of the assassination were much less sinister than the newspaper coverage implied.

[00:21:33]Directly related to yet another effort by Oswell to get her to reunite their family with promises that with yet another new job, he would immediately get an apartment and they could be together again as a family. As Marina herself said, she had agreed to bring the children and join him. But with a young child and a new baby, she was being much more pragmatic, demanding that she would bring the children and join him after the holidays when he had gotten the apartment and a washing machine. So, she had But but we look at this and we go, was this some new unique pattern in their lives where Oswald was completely deranged and ready to throw it all in because he had had this encounter with Marina? No, this was their ongoing pattern of connection, withdrawal, connection, withdrawal, pursuit, you know, etc. That was their pattern.

[00:22:25]A study of Oswald over time certainly does reveal situational behavior, but it also makes him more real, subject to basic human weaknesses and with his own particular personality flaws. The following chronological view is an effort to present Oswald as an individual driven by his own beliefs and personality, but with his attitude and actions at any moment influenced by who he was with and what was going on around him. Tracing Oswald's personality and character through his school years, his time in the Marines, his service in Japan, and his experiences in Russia is a key to evaluating the consistency and continuity of his basic behavior. Okay, so it says we are going to study the patterns that Oswald developed through his school years and we're going to explore details that the Warren Commission did present and also things it ignored. So for his school years, it says, "We see an early example of Oswald's situational nature in the differences between his behavior and his grades in elementary and secondary education. Oswald's academic performance in elementary school was mixed, likely due to the ongoing problems with his home life. Problems which were quite real and involved his mother's divorce, remarage, and growing discord within her second marriage. In the first grade, Oswald's academic performance in Fort Worth, Texas schools was a combination of A's and B's. His attendance was acceptable within 82 days in school and 15 days absent record. Yeah, I mean that's that's like one in five days you're missing. Given his absences, he did not complete all the elements of first grade. He was enrolled in Clayton public school for his second year of school, but due to the breakdown in relations between his mother and stepfather, he was withdrawn before completing the second grade there with no grades recorded. So really hasn't completed school yet. Lee Oswald, I I do want to say though, the things you accomplish in first and second grade are easily mitigated if you're reading outside of the home. Like these are these are grades where it's not content focused. you're not uh going to miss something critical and never be able to make it up again. Like first, second, third grade, they could all be rolled together with a child who reads and is engaged in learning. It's not it's not the end of the world if you've missed those if there's other education happening or if you have a precocious child.

[00:25:02]Lee Oswald entered the third grade at Arlington Heights Elementary School and remained at Arlington Heights for the entire school year, completing the third grade with a satisfactory record. He scored A's in social studies, citizenship, elementary science, art, and music, and a D in spelling.

[00:25:20]Something that would be something of an Achilles heel given that writing would become a major interest for him. That's where that lack of schooling is showing up where he's very diligent in the other things. He's able to keep pace. But spelling would be something that builds on itself that starts to collect.

[00:25:39]Especially at this point in time when they were teaching spelling so specifically as had been done for like a hundred years. People don't learn spelling near as well now as they did back then. It was something they kind of drilled into you. And he had missed some of the previous two school years. So that makes sense. In September 1949, he transferred to Ridgely West Elementary School, where he remained for the next three years. His record at Ridgely is not particularly remarkable. In the fourth and fifth grades, he received mostly B's. In the sixth grade, a mix of B's and C's. He had learned to read relatively well. However, his spelling and writing skills may have suffered due to an undiagnosed problem, possibly disgraphia, which is known to affect either spelling or handwriting or both.

[00:26:25]Oswald would become an ineterate and prolific reader, yet continually had difficulties with both his handwriting and especially his spelling. Yeah, that's not an uncommon affliction. In the fourth grade, his IQ was recorded at 103, which would be, I think, a little better than average. I haven't looked at the averages lately, but particularly at this point in time, IQ's were not exceptionally high consistently. And 103, I think, is around the average.

[00:26:51]Okay. Yeah, I just verified it. In 1960, 100 was average. So, it's slightly better than average. It's not wildly intelligent and it's also not not intelligent, but he was an average or slightly above average student. On achievement tests in each of his three years at Ridgely, he did his best in reading and his worst in spelling.

[00:27:15]The Warren Commission quotes his early elementary teachers as describing him as a normal boy, but with the tendency to keep to himself and not socialize with other children. As a counterpoint, a classmate of Oswalds in the fourth grade recalled playing with him often at school and walking together with him on their way home from school. The same teacher, whom the Warren Commission recorded as describing Lee as a quiet and shy boy, also remarked that he was given a puppy for Christmas in 1949 and brought the puppy to her home to show it off and to talk with her and her family.

[00:27:48]So that's not a description of a withdrawn, you know, gaunt, haunted child who just can't connect with others. Uh that's somebody who gets something special, wants to share it with his teacher. Really a natural fourth grader.

[00:28:04]Given that Oswald had attended three different schools in his first three years of elementary education, it seems no surprise to find him without a series of close childhood friends during that period. Right? Yet, he did make individual friends both in elementary school and later in high school, something the Warren Commission chose not to elaborate on. Instead, they continually presented him as asocial and even antisocial, based largely on an extended detailing of events in New York City. The move to New York was a sudden one and placed Lee and his mother in a room at his brother's apartment. The brother, John Pik, was serving in the Coast Guard, assigned at Staten Island, and he and his wife were living in his mother-in-law's apartment. Whether or not the move was announced to his brother in advance remains a matter of debate. The spare room was only temporarily available because Jon's mother-in-law was visiting another daughter. Oswald's mother stated that she and Lee had been invited, but Jon's remarks suggest that their arrival may have been a surprise.

[00:29:10]In either event, the move, sharing a relatively small apartment with his mother, brother, and brother's wife, certainly added to the chaos of Oswald's home life and has to be considered as an element in his personal problems when he and his mother lived in New York City.

[00:29:26]There is ample evidence to confirm that Oswald's mother's appearance at her son's apartment created a stressful and challenging situation for everyone involved. I mean, it sounds stressful, right?

[00:29:38]that you just show up at your son and wife's apartment. How many young couples do you know that would just go, "Oh, cool." Not only is my mother-in-law here, but also my kid brother who's at a trying age entering the New York City schools in the seventh grade. I mean, who wants to do that? Would you volunteer to change schools in the seventh grade? Sounds awful.

[00:30:06]Uh, it proved challenging for Oswald.

[00:30:09]His southern accent and his clothing made him stand out in class. And once again, he was a new kid with no local history. His response was to simply avoid the situation, ducking out of school to become involved in a pattern of truency. Seems really rational for a lot of kids to do that, especially in a city like that where you could just disappear. His behavior became extremely situational during that period, very much dependent on what was going on around him both at home and at school at any point in time. So here we see this, this is their thesis that we're seeing carried through this is that his behavior is very dependent on the situation around him that when he has a stable situation, he does well in school. He doesn't do well in spelling, but he's friendly. He's showing his teacher the dog, whatever. Uh, but then when things get chaotic, he pulls out.

[00:31:00]Peace out. I'm out of here. I'm gonna get to somewhere that's a little bit more controllable and less chaotic.

[00:31:09]Initially, Lee Oswald attended school in New York regularly, but his conduct was recorded as unsatisfactory.

[00:31:16]Teachers reported that he did little work and seemed to spend most of his time sailing paper planes around the room. At the same time, neither his mother nor Lee appear to have gotten along at all well with his brother's wife. There were constant conflicts with Mrs. Pik and even hostility towards her from Lee. The situation reached a point where it became clear that Mrs. Oswald had to leave her son's home. And she did so, finding work at a dress store and moving Lee into an apartment in the Bronx with his mother working. I mean, I just want to say about that that the closer you are in proximity to other human beings, the more quickly you have to clear the slate of relational offense.

[00:32:00]Otherwise, things build and build and build. Like, forgiveness is a very important part of daily relationships.

[00:32:08]And especially with somebody that you don't know, whose patterns you don't understand, whose moods may be a mystery to you, it is very easy to see why this poor Mrs. Pic who suddenly is, I mean, she's a new bride. She's already adjusting to one significant new relationship in her life, or at least there a young couple. I don't know how many years in marriage they are, but they're a young couple who's still adjusting probably very likely to one another and the patterns of marriage and the stresses of marriage and bills and daily life is hard. Uh she's married to a serviceman.

[00:32:43]Hard.

[00:32:45]And then here comes in Margarite Oswald with her quirky weird behavior. Like she's got a strange voice. She's got a strange mannerism about her and she's got a, you know, 10, 11, 12 year old kid who is not wanting a big change in his life and here he is having to deal with it. Like none of that sounds like a recipe for a good relationship. So, and and especially if you're not dealing with things as they come up. If there is just offense and then misunderstanding and offense and maybe a needling remark from one or the other or both and then this, you know, this kid is suddenly thrown into the mix as well. It just sounds awful. Honestly, sounds awful.

[00:33:26]With his mother working, Lee's truency only increased. At the time of their move from the pics, he was in junior high. Obviously an especially challenging time for any young person and having a particularly hard time fitting in. His problems were not a matter of intelligence. By now he's testing with an IQ of 118, which is the upper range of bright normal. So age and maturity has brought about this change in IQ.

[00:33:59]Teachers found him courteous but with problems of dependability and self-control. Happier by himself, one of his favorite interests was the Bronx Zoo. When he was caught there by a truent officer, the officer stated that Lee was clean and well-dressed, but was sirly and referred to the officer as a damned Yankee that led to an appearance in children's court. following that. I mean, none of this sounds like, you know, he's just an antisocial violent person jonesing for a fight. We're talking about a kid who has constant chaos at home, uh, in his school life, not spelling well, having a southern accent, poor clothes. You can see why he wouldn't want to be at school, but he's not ditching school to go join the gang.

[00:34:44]He's not like taking up a Tommy gun.

[00:34:46]He's got he's at the Bronx Zoo.

[00:34:51]Following that experience with the legal system in New York, his mother moved the two of them again. Oh, that's a good solution to a chaotic childhood is let's introduce another move.

[00:35:03]Uh she had found a new and better paying job with Martin's department store in Brooklyn. It should be noted that Lee's own work experience would later reflect the same pattern as his mother's with an inability to hold any single job for any extended period and the tendency to simply jump from place to place and job to job. That's a that's a great point.

[00:35:23]Our patterns do reflect that of our parents. I mercifully was given a a deep work ethic by both of my parents and they each would hold jobs for we're talking about my father worked the same job from first grade all the way through my college years like faithful steady hard work show up day in day out never miss a day like very faithful and that was instilled in me from a young age and I'm so thankful for that my husband had a similar pattern where he had drilled into him you've got got to be faithful in your work life. And so our children uh are very diligent and beloved employees by their employers. They thankfully are able to to work hard and desire to do well at their jobs. But I say all that to say the pattern of what you receive I I didn't manufacture that in my own life. It didn't bubble out of me just because that's who I was. It came from two parents that were steady with their jobs, that put themselves into their jobs, that cared about their work life and sought to bring the best and a faithfulness about their work to each work environment that they were a part of. Lee does I I had never put that together, but Lee's inconsistency actually reflects precisely what had been given to him by his mother. It's such a good observation. In her newest job, Lee's mother had a long commute to work, resulting in her leaving home early and returning late. This made further truency all too easy for Lee, who had been enrolled in yet another junior high school, which was his third in seven months in New York.

[00:37:06]Professionals who evaluated Oswald over his truency and behavior commented that his mother was not spending enough time with him and that he had become socially maladjusted, which is not surprising given the situation of his constant moves between schools and a minimal family environment, right? I mean, y'all y'all know I'm a mother of many children.

[00:37:28]There's little paper bouques from two of them from church yesterday. Um I have nine children and so far we have let me do the math uh six kids who have gone through some level of their teenage years and those are there is so much going on internally in a child in their body. Like one thing we talk about with our new we're we're talking about it right now with our 13-year-old is your body is larger than you think it is. you still feel like a small child who can just like take up a little spot on the couch, but actually when you sit on something, you're getting towards a man's size. And so, you know, you can break things more easily than you think you can. You your your little what you think of as a little leg jiggle is actually shaking the entire couch, right? Like bodily awareness. Little things like that are going on constantly in the body and life of a 11, 12, 13, 14year-old child. But then add in three junior highs, a mother like Margarite, a chaotic and stressful relationship with your older brother and his wife who probably I mean put yourself in the shoes of that 10, 11, 12-year-old Lee.

[00:38:43]What do you want? You want your big brother to like you. You want to appear cool. You want to be like him probably.

[00:38:51]Like those are really natural emotions for any child to feel toward an older brother.

[00:38:57]And but then there's this chaos and conflict. Like it makes complete sense why he would be socially maladjusted.

[00:39:07]Like, yeah, I'm I'm checking out of all this, y'all. Y'all have crazy lives. And he was the one who was seeing the situation sely, right? Lee's continuing truency problems led to school probation to counseling and even time in a special youth house where professional personnel noted that he was wellendowed mentally but that he was withdrawn. They evaluated his problems as largely due to his lack of a real family life and insufficient attention from his mother who was described as self-involved and conflicted.

[00:39:42]So really the thing that we can say most most crystallized at this point in his life is he's got a very undependable mother. That's the most clear truth about his life. Not so much about him.

[00:39:57]He's a he's a fairly normal kid responding to very adverse circumstances. That's my perspective. If you see it differently, you can say so in the comments. Perhaps the most insightful remarks on Oswell during that period, came from his school probation officer, John Caro. That's who we got the quote from at the beginning. Carol had several exchanges with Lee regarding his truency. Carol found him to be bright, but tired of being teased by classmates over his accent and clothes.

[00:40:27]Oswald did not think he was learning anything in school and that it was a waste of time.

[00:40:32]This early boredom in school would evolve into a major element of Oswald's personality. His mother worked and he stayed home and read by himself, even at that point in time, expressing a desire to go into the Marines.

[00:40:47]When Carol made it clear to Oswald that his choice was either to stay in school and adapt or face some sort of ongoing state commitment like a youth farm or children's village, Oswald immediately replied, "In that case, I'll go back to school." It appears that Oswald's mother did become more personally involved with her youngest son at that point, and school authorities are on record as stating Lee's overall behavior quickly improved, although he still showed signs of being quick-tempered with classmates.

[00:41:19]Okay, so we see his choice to, you know what, if that's my choices, I'm going back to school. His mother's behavior adapts. His behavior improves immediately, except he's still contentious with peers who tease him about his accent. And which totally makes sense like that that might not immediately improve, but his behavior quickly improved. With improved attendance, Oswald completed the seventh grade with low but passing grades in all of his academic courses. He received a failing mark in home economics. His conduct in the classroom improved significantly with his being rated as generally satisfactory.

[00:41:57]In contrast to the image created by the Warren report, Oswalt's final period in the New York City schools demonstrated that he was not intrinsically a loner.

[00:42:08]His school evaluation rated him as outstanding in social participation. He even began to demonstrate more personal interests, joining a model airplane club and even, seemingly inexplicable, but possibly as a joke by his classmates, being elected the president of his class. Wow. The improvement in Lee's behavior and attitude was significant enough that when Oswald's brother Robert visited New York on leave on leave from the Marines, he found that Lee did not appear to him to be unhappy or acting abnormally. Nor did Robert observe any strained relations between Lee and his mother. Lee's truency the previous fallen winter was apparently discussed only in passing when Mrs. Oswald mentioned that Lee had had to appear before a judge. Oswald's 16 months in New York City received an exceptional amount of attention and focus in the Warren Commission's overview of Oswald's personality. It highlighted school problems and displays of temper and noted purported instances of threats to family members.

[00:43:16]Its summary overview gave little note of the fact that Oswald's behavior substantially improved during his last months in school and in the city. Even less mention was made of the dramatic improvement in his school attendance following his mother's moving them both back to New Orleans to a more familiar environment. So now we get it. We're moving towards his high school years. It says back in New Orleans while in New Orleans and his ninth school in 10 years. Oh my goodness, you guys think about that. Nine different environments.

[00:43:52]Who of you could stand up against that?

[00:43:55]A completely new social environment, moving homes regularly, having these periodic, you know, you're missing too much school and your grades are bad, so teachers treat you differently, you're changing school, so you're making all new friends. Who among us could do that as adults? Go to a new work environment nine times in 10 years. That is a lot of chaos.

[00:44:17]Oswalt continued to develop into an omnivorous reader, moving on from comic books to a broad range of fiction and non-fiction. Although his school attendance problem virtually disappeared, his actual class performance is recorded as mediocre but acceptable. one placement achievement test showed that he was capable of better than average performance in both English and in his vocabulary knowledge which is really common for readers that you your vocabulary uh recognition is higher than your even your pronunciation like that's a classic uh you know criticism of homeschoolers like you can always tell a homeschooler because they pronounce words wrong which means they've read them but they haven't heard them said in a personal history form Oswald wrote that he enjoyed outdoor sports, especially football and reading.

[00:45:08]In terms of classes, he liked civics and science best and art and English the least. As in New York, his stated career goal was to either join the military or possibly work as a draftsman. Oswald also also socialized to a greater extent in New Orleans. He made school acquaintances such as Edward Vobyl, who helped Oswald after he was punched by a guy while they were on their way home from school. Oswald didn't hesitate to fight back and received a badly cut lip out of the exchange. Vogel remarked that Oswald would never start a fight, but that was because he was something of an outsider. So, he would get picked on and was never afraid to fight back. So, while he wouldn't start a fight, he would respond. In one instance, a group of boys beat him up for sitting in the rear negro section of a bus.

[00:46:00]So, he just went back and sat there, which is interesting, especially coming from New New York City. Perhaps there was far less segregated attitude up there, and perhaps that was something he brought back with him.

[00:46:12]Vobel talked about he and Oswald having a common interest in astronomy and spending time together, throwing darts and shooting pool near the French Quarter. Vobel also related that Oswald once showed him a toy pistol and talked about how they might get a real one.

[00:46:26]Vobel talked him out of any thought of stealing one from a pawn shop. Oswald would continue that interest in guns later disciplined in the Marines for having a pistol in his barracks locker. Right.

[00:46:39]And he joined a factory hunting club in Russia. That's true. which I think the report from that is that he was such a bad shot that his Russian friends would shoot multiple pieces of game and then donate some of theirs to him so he wouldn't be embarrassed coming back empty-handed. So he wasn't known he was known for an interest in guns but not a success rate.

[00:47:05]Between the ninth and tth grades, a schoolmate of Lee and Edward invited them both to join a student aviation group sponsored by the Civil Air Patrol.

[00:47:13]That excited Oswald to the extent that he got a job as a paper delivery boy to earn money for a uniform. He eagerly joined in CAP activities, including cookouts and other group events. One of the CAP officers recalled Oswald is quiet, but serious about the Civil Air Patrol activities. Photos show him smiling and joining in the fun at CAP activities, including a cookout with CAP officers, among whom was an adult leader named David Ferry at the time, a commercial airline pilot. That's true.

[00:47:48]Let me get a photo of that for you guys.

[00:47:50]Here I have come to a trusty book, The Search for Lee Harvey Oswald by Robert Groden. This one right now I think is only I think you can get it on like secondhand places. I got mine off of eBay. Um but it has a huge collection of photographs about Leehari Oswald's life.

[00:48:12]For example, here is Lee at the zoo in New York during those years. So great photography in this book. Really good look at some of the things we've been talking about. Um, but then we do get a whole page about the Civil Air Patrol. In the summer of 1955, Lee's life changed. We can see him here.

[00:48:33]And we can see David Ferry here.

[00:48:38]He's looking on. They're doing their little military looking situation. David Ferry is an oddlooking fellow uh who many people associate with the JFK assassination. If you've seen the movie JFK, it talks about this. He was a New Orleans um very odd person. Uh he was connected with suspicions in regard to the JFK assassination. And it it is strange that eight summers prior to this, we find him and Lee in this same photo here. Right, they're both standing there. We've got Captain David Ferry here. Got more photos of him there. But there is a closeup of that. Look at Lee.

[00:49:23]You can hear my dog going nuts. There must be someone outside, you guys.

[00:49:27]There's someone walking along the street. But that's a look at that summer. And we have a photo of the two of them in that civil air patrol summer.

[00:49:38]That group excited Oswald to the extent that he got a job as a paper delivery boy to earn money for the uniform. He eagerly joined CAP activities, including cookouts and other group events.

[00:49:52]One of the CAP officers recalled Oswald as quiet but serious about the Civil Air Patrol activities. Photos show him smiling and joining in the fun at CAP activities, including a cookout with David Ferry.

[00:50:09]During his school days in New Orleans, Oswald developed a pattern of social behavior which would remain consistent throughout his short life. Outgoing at times and in individual situations, but only becoming close to a limited number of associates who shared his personal interests and views. I mean, wouldn't we just call that an introvert?

[00:50:32]somebody who cautiously assesses the situation, connects with a few individuals privately on things they care about, and doesn't care to be the the centerpiece of social events. I don't know, that just strikes me as really like about half the population acts like this. It seems fair to say that if the commission had chosen to publish or emphasize the photographs of Oswald's life that are available to us now, showing him clowning around in a school classroom, laughing with girls at the water fountain, showing off and smiling widely in various poses in the Marines, socializing with Russian families and fellow factory workers, and particularly a variety of young Russian women, not to mention the courtship wedding and family photos with his Russian wife and child.

[00:51:17]It would have been hard to sustain the image of a fundamentally bitter and antisocial Lee Oswald that was presented in its summary report. None of those images are found in the 26 volumes, nor were they found in post assassination coverage. So, we'll just flip through a bit and see some of what they're talking about. Um, but yeah, we get a, you know, we see a cautious little boy. The photos here reveal somebody who is just reserved, right? What we've just been reading about. Then we've got that New York photo I showed y'all. But then as we get towards Civil Air Patrol and those things, we've got photos like this one where he is occasionally very silly.

[00:52:03]Do you see him there just sitting there goofy with his thumb up? We've got a picture of someone just being being a kid being, you know, not all one way, which is very accurate, actually. Here's a here's a funny photo of him laughing kind of riotously.

[00:52:23]So, yeah, even while we get this picture of someone who we've got, he's goofy.

[00:52:30]There's this famous one with some of his co-workers in Russia where he's kicked back and playing the part of a cool guy there in the middle.

[00:52:40]Yeah. So, I mean, and here, gosh, he's being embraced by a friend and her boyfriend, but lots of photos of him in varying states where he seems pleasant and cheerful and connecting with others, not the picture that was given. And again, whenever we are presented with one picture and then later the the details don't sus out in the way that that overriding story is presented to us, we have to ask why.

[00:53:10]There's a lot of social situations in America or news stories in America where that is the case where the more you look at the details, the more fuzzy and murky the situation becomes. It should be the opposite, right? that if you've gotten the case correct, it's like it's like monk, right? Or uh back in the day with Columbbo that if you've actually got the correct solution that details start to fall into place that you start to go, oh, that's why they mailed the letter on that day or that's why the girlfriend showed up at that particular moment to distract us from whatever, right? That all the details suddenly click. But with this situation, with the Oswald puzzle, the more you look, the more you go, this doesn't click into place. It actually feels very it it does not click at all.

[00:53:56]It feels very confusing. It feels more murky than when I started looking.

[00:54:00]That's a sign that that the answer we've been given is not the actual truth of the matter.

[00:54:07]Yeah. It would have been difficult for them to present, oh, he was such an antisocial jerk with friendly photos and courtship photos. Right. While not at all antisocial, Oswald clearly remained innerdirected and somewhat asocial, consistently spending more time with books and other printed materials than in socializing with others. Reading rather than his peers shaped his personal attitudes and opinions, and he was never bashful about sharing those with others from his teen years onward.

[00:54:41]that assertive behavior had developed during his teen years and remained a consistent behavior for Oswald. We're gonna get one last look at his worldview. It says in the fall of 1956, before starting his junior year in high school, Lee's mother withdrew him from school in New Orleans, ostensibly due to her planned move back to Texas. In reality, she was attempting to facilitate his early underage entry into the Marines. She had done the same for his older brother. In Leah's case, his true age was discovered and his initial enlistment effort failed. At that point, Oswald convinced his mother that he was bored with school and was learning nothing new. So, she accepted that and left him to his own devices. His response was to begin spending much of his time at the library. Again, this isn't a kid who then goes, "Fine, I'm going to go work for the mob. I'm going to make some money." Like, he's going to the library and the zoo. These are his inclinations when he's skipping school.

[00:55:40]He's not exactly a reprobate, you know, un unretrievably evil person. We're talking about somebody who goes to the library.

[00:55:50]Years later, his mother's only comment was that he appeared to have begun bringing home a considerable number of books, including books on Marxism and socialism. During the remainder of their time in New Orleans, Lee had worked for a couple of months as a messenger for a freight forwarding company, then worked part-time for another, and followed that by working as a runner for a dental company. That sort of transitory work history would become something of a standard for Oswald. He seems to have become bored with jobs just as easily as he had become bored with school. Boredom would become a basic element of Oswald's character and a major factor in his behavior during the years that followed.

[00:56:29]Oswald's early reading and later his own writing both reflect a fundamental interest in the issue of economic justice for the working class.

[00:56:37]That interest developed while he was in New Orleans and continued following his mother's move to Fort Worth. In a letter to the young socialist league, he described having studyings studied socialist principles for some 15 months and declared his desire to join the socialist movement. In his correspondence, he also inquired about any local chapters of the youth league he could join or the possibility of starting a chapter of his own. At the end of summer 1956, his mother moved the two of them to Fort Worth, Texas, and Lee was again enrolled in a new school.

[00:57:13]With no local friends and increasingly independent, he refused even to take orders from the football coach when trying out for the B team. He made no real effort to fit in at school and stayed on his own up to the point where he turned 17 and was able to successfully enlist in the Marines.

[00:57:29]Oswald told his mother he wanted to drop out of school and enlist in order to do something different, which is really common for young men, actually.

[00:57:38]Very common. Uh you're exploring your options. Sometimes it does feel better to just scrap it all and start fresh or have somebody else tell you the direction you're going to go rather than you having to figure it all out. And that is the appeal of that marine's path is like, they're going to shape me into a man. They're going to give me a job.

[00:57:55]They're going to train me in things that are manly and cool, and I won't have to think about food and housing and what I'm going to do. I just get to show up and turn into a man. That's very appealing for some young men. Years later, when asked why someone as obviously independent as he was would sign up for the military, Oswald responded that he saw the military as an opportunity for travel and adventure.

[00:58:18]Oswald's school years, both in and outside of class, reveal a great deal about his basic personality during that period. We can observe how he reacted to others, his tendency to be a contrarian, more than willing to assert his own views over the adults around him and his strong streak of independence. As we have seen, Oswald could play inside the box if he had no other choice. He could understand and follow the rules, but following the rules needed to be his choice. An important question that follows from that is whether such behavior would prove to be consistent as he grew older and went out on his own.

[00:58:52]his Marine Corps experience provides us with details needed to evaluate whether the behavior of his school years was just a phase. Did he fundamentally change during his time in the core?

[00:59:03]Okay, so you can see we are done with that chapter, but you can see them building this thesis that Oswald the the kernel of who he is is this inwardfocused person who's interested in learning. He is, you know, when given the option, he goes to the library.

[00:59:21]Um, but his relationship with the external world, they're saying, and I I can see their thesis. I think it's an interesting one, is situational that if you provide me with structure and I choose it, then I I'm willing to do that. I'll go back to school, you know, I'll join the Marines and follow their rules. if he's choosing it, but when there's chaos externally that he would withdraw and that his response was situational, that he's responding to the situation around him in ways that are typical for that age and stage, uh, but maybe in conflict with his typical behavior. I think that's an interesting thesis. Let me know what you think. Uh, what did you notice about this reading from Hancock and Boland? Uh, I really can't wait to read more of this book. I find it fascinating. I think it's good that they are trying to piece together one narrative uh rather than trying to take disperate parts. Again, once we go through these books, then we are going to look at the Harvey and Lee theory and decide for ourselves. Do we see two different Oswalds being raised simultaneous with two different names?

[01:00:29]If you don't know, that is the theory of Harvey and Lee. Do we see that? Is that accurate? Or do we see this a boy who depending on the situation can respond in different ways and therefore we see different sides of his personality coming out depending on what he's served up by his unpredictable mother. That's a very interesting thought. Well, uh I enjoyed this reading. Next time we're going to come back with Henry Herz book uh Reasonable Doubt. We're going to read a chapter that's called Fingerprints of Intelligence. And we're going to work through it at whatever pace we need to.

[01:01:03]It's actually a pretty long section. Um, but I really kind of want to hone in and and get there with you guys and think through because you know people talked about this. Um, even people on the commission said there were fingerprints of intelligence that everywhere you look in Oswald's life, there's these hints of intelligence. So, that's what we're going to look at next time. I hope you'll come back for that. And then at the end, we will be getting into a newer book about his time in New Orleans as an adult, particularly the summer before the assassination, what that was, what we know now. Um, because that's a recent book, that's part of why we're going to read it is that it will have uh more recently found evidence and coate that for us. So, I'm looking forward to those things. I hope you'll come back and we'll see you next time as we look for the truth about Lee Harvey Oswald. Have a great day. Bye.