Ruth Paine's 50th Anniversary Recollections

This is an excerpt from the book Where Were You? It is Ruth's recollections during the 50th anniversary in 2013. I am posting it as a separate thread so as not to interrupt the flow of discussion between Greg 1 and Greg 2 in the other thread.


Ruth Hyde Paine
Raised in Columbus, Ohio, Ruth Hyde Paine, a Quaker convert,moved to the Dallas suburb of Irving with her husband after he got a job with Bell Helicopter in Fort Worth. By 1963 they had separated amicably, and she was a thirty-one-year-old single mother and part-time Russian language teacher. That same year, through her interest in Russian, she met and befriended the Oswalds.
 
I was in Irving, which is a suburb of Dallas. A friend of mine knew that I was studying Russian and knew this couple was coming to a party he was having, so he invited me, thinking I might enjoy meeting them. Marina was a young mother who didn’t speak English and didn’t understand the English at the party, so I talked with her in a bedroom where she was changing June’s—her baby’s—diaper. We just talked about mother things; we both had very young children.

She was glad to have someone to talk to. I had studied enough Russian that I could converse with her a little bit, and I could understand what she said, which helped a lot. Her husband, Lee, was enjoying the attention of telling about going to Russia, then deciding that wasn’t a good place, then coming back. He was talking to the group in the living room or kitchen, wherever it was, about that. But I wasn’t really listening; I was mostly spending my time with Marina in a separate room.

I realized she was feeling very lonely, so I got their address—they didn’t have a telephone—and wrote to her. I
asked if I could come by sometime to visit, and we worked that out. I visited at least once, and another time we invited both of them to my house to have dinner with me and my husband. Although we were separated at this point, he did come for dinner occasionally; we all had dinner together.

Lee didn’t talk very much. He didn’t want to talk English with me, but he would talk with my husband, Michael. I
overheard some of the conversation. I felt like Lee would take offense if you disagreed with him, that it was easy to have him dismiss you as somebody who didn’t understand things. I wasn’t willing or able, for that matter, to talk politics with him,so I avoided talking with him.

Marina really did care about him. He was kind of exotic in Russia, somebody very different and interesting, and apparently he paid attention to her and so on. But she did find herself in a country where she didn’t speak the language, and he didn’t want her to learn it, which really bothered me. She just didn’t have very many friends. I learned later that they did have some friends in the Russian community but at that point were not seeing them, and they had very little money. He lost his job in Dallas at a photographic shop. I went to visit one time when they were living in Oak Cliff, and he said he was going to look for work in New Orleans and had bought a bus ticket for Marina to go to New Orleans with her little baby and all the paraphernalia that goes with that. I was kind of appalled.

He was going to send a letter when he had a place for her to come to, and I said, “Why doesn’t she just come and stay with me for a couple weeks or whatever it takes while you look for a place? Then you can call me and say when you’re ready to have her come down.”

To Be Continued

He did, and after about two weeks I drove Marina and the baby, along with my two kids, to New Orleans. They were there over the summer, and when I visited them in New Orleans, I discovered that Marina, eight months pregnant, had never seen a doctor. I was worried about that.
I wasn’t willing or able, for that matter, to talk politics with him, so I avoided talking with him. Then Lee was saying he was going to look for work
somewhere else. He’d lost his job again, and I said, “You haven’t been able to get medical care here because you haven’t lived in Orleans Parish long enough to get help with that. But you’ve lived in Dallas County long enough. Come back, and she can stay with me. I can get her to a doctor’s care, and to the hospital if necessary, and could translate to do that. So how about if she just stayed with me for a little while?” He was really quite glad of that. He seemed grateful, helped us pack up the car and everything.

He looked quite sad when she was leaving. There really was caring between them. It was a troubled relationship, and Marina did wonder whether she could stay with him and whether it would be all right. She said, “He has fantasies,” and she was worried about his doing things in order to think of himself as a great man. I could see how she was worried about him.

We got back to Irving, and she was at my house from the end of September really until the day after the assassination.Lee showed up early in October to say he was in town and ask if he could come out. He actually asked if I could come and get him in Dallas, and Marina, who talked with him on the phone, said I couldn’t because I had just given blood at Parkland Hospital, anticipating that she would be there. They wanted a blood donation as the only way we could pay for entering there if the baby came.

Anyway, he hitchhiked out and spent the weekend, and he spent almost every weekend from then until Thanksgiving. They were definitely friendly. Probably being separated was actually good for the relationship; they then enjoyed each other, and he was relieved of some anxiety about their care. They sat on the sofa, watched a movie or something together; he patted his lap, and she sat on his lap—there was definite affection there.

One day I was next door at a neighbor’s, discussing the fact that it’d been well over a week, maybe two, and he wasn’t having any luck finding a job, and his unemployment payments were coming to an end. Here was a young man who didn’t drive. He went right into the Marine Corps at age seventeen,lied to get in, and the kinds of jobs he could get were pretty limited. My neighbor said her brother was working at the School Book Depository, and he thought they might be still hiring; it was early fall.My neighbor said her brother was working at the School Book Depository, and he thought they might be still hiring.

They were delivering books, so I translated to Marina what the conversation had been about. She asked me to tell Lee that when he called, which he usually did in the evening to talk to her. I told him; I guess he showed up at the School Book Depository, and they hired him.

To Be Continued

There was a lot of fear about President Kennedy coming to Dallas. Just a few weeks before, Adlai Stevenson had been poorly received there. A lady banged him on the head with a placard, and there was a lot of hostility. People were worried.It was definitely in the air.Marina thanked me for turning on the TV that morning, and we watched the motorcade as it came into Dallas. It was such an enthusiastic crowd, and the feelings were so good in the reception. I heard over the television that shots had been fired and that the president’s head had been hit. I was afraid it might be fatal. Marina said, “Oh, this is so sad for Mrs. Kennedy and for the two children.” She was feeling as a parent how that would be. I lit a candle, and she said, “Is that a way of praying?” I said, “Yes, it’s just my way.” Then we sat watching television until we heard that he was, in fact, dead.

It was really not too long after that there was a knock at the door, and several police officers said they had Lee Oswald in custody for shooting an officer. They wondered if they could come in, and I asked, “You have a warrant?” They didn’t, but I didn’t see any problem with their coming in. One of them asked, “Did Lee have a gun?” I said, “No,” and translated to Marina. She said, “Yes, he did,” and led them into the garage,where there was a blanket roll. She thought the gun was in there; she had seen it there.

The police officer picked up the blanket roll and it folded over his arm. I realized that there had been a gun and that it was gone, that he probably had come out that night, as he never had on a weeknight before, and got the gun. It was at that point, when I saw the blanket roll was empty and
discovered that he’d had a gun, that I thought it could’ve been Lee. I felt like, whatever these policemen need, I’ll help them find what they need. But it was the loss of Kennedy that was the most powerful feeling for me right then. That it might’ve been Lee who shot him was added distress. But I really was like the rest of the country, feeling that loss.It’s very hard to go back through the pain of that time.

The police wanted us all to come down to the police station,to make statements and so on. Marina really didn’t say anything. She was very worried and distressed, but we all were. They wanted her to come, but they wouldn’t let her go into the bathroom to change her clothes; they didn’t want her to disappear from their view. I had to get a babysitter to stay with my son, who was asleep. The police had no idea who we were or what kind of people we were, so they were very nervous. At the police station, we were separated, put in different rooms, and I was grateful to hear that they’d arranged for a translator to be with Marina. They interviewed me and had me look over a statement, which I signed after I corrected the grammar. My mind was reeling at that point—you go into a kind of stupor almost, not really able to take it all in.

To Be Continued

We went back to my house after the police station. We came back, and Lee’s mother was there as well. She didn’t know about the new baby—the second daughter was born in October, and Lee didn’t want his mother to know about it. He didn’t want any contact with his mother. Marina felt that was wrong, so when she saw Marguerite Oswald, there was a reunion; Marina showed her the baby and so on. They all came back to my house. Marguerite hinted that it would be very hard for her to get back to Fort Worth, so I said, “If you can sleep on the sofa, you can stay at my house.”

Marguerite and Marina were together in the evening, and I was putting my kids to bed; it was late. We knew it was going be a hard day the next day; we’d better get sleep if we could.I don’t really know what Marina did at that point with her mother-in-law. The next morning some people Marguerite had invited from Life magazine came with a translator; they were going with Marina and Marguerite to try to see Lee at the jail.

They left that morning with Marina’s two little girls. I didn’t see Marina again until after she testified in Washington. She left on the 23rd, that next morning, and it was well into March of the next year before I saw her. I think she was getting advice,probably from Oswald’s brother, not to talk to me.

General Walker—that’s a very important story, and it’s often overlooked, especially by the people who want the assassination to be a plot. I learned all this after the assassination, as did the rest of the world. Nobody knew about it until after the assassination, except Marina. Lee had written her a note, and he left, not saying where he was going; he had a whole plan diagrammed. He’d taken photographs of the home where
Edwin Walker lived. This was in April, less than a month after he got his mail-order rifle.He actually thought he had hit Walker—he broke the glass,
but Walker had moved just at that point. Lee apparently hid the rifle and either walked home or took a bus or something.Then he made fun of the people who said they saw cars speeding away. He said, “Everybody in America thinks you have to have a car.” But Marina was very distressed, didn’t know what to do. She was very dependent on her husband,so she hid the note he’d written: “Here’s the key to the post office. If I am arrested, this is where the jail is. Don’t keep my clothes, but keep my papers. You can get help from the embassy”—a variety of things that said he didn’t expect to come home or that he might not. She hid the note in a book, telling him that if he ever showed crazy ideas like this, she’d
tell the police or something.

I didn’t know the note was in the book, but I was sending things to Marina those days after she left, things for the babies that she called and asked for or letters that came for her, money—people were very generous to help this woman who was a stranger in our land. One of the things I sent was this book. When Oswald was shot on Sunday, an Irving police officer arrived at the front of my house in a car. He came into the house and wanted to close all the curtains and peer out, not knowing what else might be going on. I convinced him that he didn’t have to close the curtains. I was afraid he’d scare my kids. But I was sending things through the Irving police. I’d take things to their police officer out in front of my house and say, “Can you get this to Marina?” and I’m sure they did.

To Be Continued

The book was one of the things that went to Marina. This was almost two weeks after the assassination. Two Secret Service guys showed up at my house and showed me the note that was in the book; it was in Russian. Whoever wrote it didn’t know the word for “key,” because he transliterated it.

The Russian speaker, who apparently was trying to see what language I knew, did all the talking.He said, “Mrs. Paine, you sent this note.”
I said, “No, I’ve never seen this note.”“Do you recognize the handwriting?” “No, I don’t recognize the handwriting.”He was back and forth. I was saying, “I don’t know a thing about this,” and he was saying, “You did this.” So I finally got polite and talked to the English speaker and said, “He’s telling me that I sent this note, and I’m telling you I didn’t.”The other guy said, “Well, it was in a book.”I said, “I sent a book.”

When Oswald was shot on Sunday, an Irving police officer arrived at the front of my house in a car. He came into the house and wanted to close all the curtains and peer out, not knowing what else might be going on.We might never have found out about that attempt except for the accidental discovery through the book. Because the Oswalds’ things were in my garage, they could’ve come and gone after the assassination, the book included, and that note would never have come to light. I’m distressed that it doesn’t get more attention, that people don’t recognize the importance of Lee’s having tried to kill General Walker. I was watching television and saw Lee shot. It was around noon, and there was quite a while when I couldn’t manage lunch. I did feel some relief in a sense, like a closure. It was only later that I realized we’d lost a lot of information—what he could’ve told us about why, or what he thought.

He was already a fragile personality, and he might’ve come apart while in prison. He had done an odd thing, like telling us how to call him if the second baby came while he was in Dallas but not telling us the name to ask for. He was using an assumed name. So I had only just the week before seen that he wasn’t really glued together very well. There were gaps, and I think he would’ve deteriorated in custody.

Some time later, Marina invited me to meet her at a friend’s house in Dallas, and I went over. She wanted to reassure me that the interview with the old men at the Warren Commission would be all right and that they were nice people.She was just being careful, friendly, to tell me that. She’d been through a great deal of course.

She’s never tried to reach out to me again. I was following the lives of Marina and the children for a while through Priscilla Johnson McMillan, who interviewed Marina at length and was close to her. But recently I don’t know the story of their lives. I knew at one point that she was persuaded by the plot people to think that it could’ve not been Lee. I suppose, in her place, one would prefer it not to be Lee.

I think he did it, and I think he acted alone. The Walker incident really illustrates how he could plan something and carry it out and that he was willing to try to kill somebody.It comes up very little today. Very few people know unless I tell them. It will come up because I had to say where I was going today. I feel very lucky that most of the people who are sure there was a plot don’t even look me up. I’m spared that for the most part. I don’t think there was plot. I think he did it, and I think he acted alone. The Walker incident really illustrates how he could plan something and carry it out and that he was willing to try to kill somebody.

Why he did it? That’s the hardest thing of all. I don’t understand it all. I think he had no particular anger at Kennedy. I feel like he was shooting at the office, not at the man, that he wanted to do something big, which he did. In the meantime, he cared something about his wife and family,
but what could he have done that was worse for them?History has been poorly served by all the plot stories that came out. A book was written, within a month or shortly after the assassination, by Mark Lane, who made quite a living talking to people about what he thought. But he wouldn’t talk to the Warren Commission. All these people seem unwilling to think a single disgruntled person could do this. The Secret Service has learned what kind of personality to watch. There was a program about that, and, boy, they nailed it. They said:a person who could do planning, was reasonably intelligent, but was angry, dissociated from other folks, and had the opportunity—and that was Lee.

The emotions really don’t fade. It’s like any form of grief.It’s always there. You go on; you do other things. I’ve lived a couple of lives since then; that’s the way it feels to me. I went back to school, became a school psychologist, taught, and so on. But the pain doesn’t go away. I don’t think my faith was changed, really. My belief in trying to help other people and to do what I can to make the world better just goes right on.