Marina Oswald's Landlady

When I cleaned out a closet this week I found a long letter from Ruth Paine.  After Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President John F. Kennedy, Ruth Paine was described as “Marina Oswald’s landlady.” 

In 1963 Oswald was living in an apartment in the Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas, while his wife and children were in suburban Irving in the home of Ruth Paine.  Reporters who were unfamiliar with the city surmised that Oswald moved to Dallas to be nearer to his job at the Texas School Book Depository.  Actually, the commute was equally as easy from Irving as it was from Oak Cliff.  Lee and his wife were separated. 

Ruth Paine was a Quaker who took Marina Oswald and her babies into her home to protect the young Russian woman from her abusive husband.  She permitted Lee to come and stay for just one night on November 21, the night before he killed the President. 

He had hidden his rifle inside a rug in Ruth Paine’s garage.  As a Quaker, Ruth was a Pacifist;    
she was horrified when she learned the murder weapon was in her home. 

My family moved to Irving in 1966.  Ruth had not seen Marina since the Secret Service took her into protective custody after Lee Oswald was arrested.  When I met Ruth she had established a Montessori school for the poor black children who lived in the slums of West Irving, hoping to give them a step towards a good education.  

I never was a close friend of Ruth’s, but we had a mutual friend, June Allyson, a dumpy little woman in her late 30s (the same age as me), rather plain to look at but full of energy and enthusiasm which made her a fun companion.  When June was devastated by divorce, Ruth took June and her children into her home, just as she had provided a refuge for Marina Oswald.

Ruth’s home was a handsome brick “Texas ranch” with an in-ground swimming pool.  Conspiracy theorists hinted that she bought it with “hush money” for her part in the assassination.  Ruth herself told me she bought the house with an inheritance she received from her father. 

In 1970 Ruth decided to move to Philadelphia.  Her husband, from whom she was divorced, came from a Pennsylvania Quaker family.  Ruth wanted her small children to grow up near their grandmother. 

Ruth went to Philadelphia to look for a new home, leaving our mutual friend, June Allyson, to housesit.  All that summer I took my children to Ruth’s house to visit my friend June.  My children and I swam in Ruth’s pool with June and her children. 

Ruth returned to Texas to finalize her move, while my family packed up and moved.  Wally was transferred to his company’s home office – in the same city where Ruth was moving, Philadelphia.  We went to a lovely old three-story house in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania.  

That fall Ruth wrote to tell me that June had been killed.  She  was crossing a busy street in Irving when she was hit by a speeding car. 

Ruth wrote to me, telling about June.  She also told me that both her children were enrolled in Friends schools in Philadelphia and she had  been appointed as principal of her son’s Quaker school, the Greene Street Friends School.

At Christmas time Ruth came to dinner at our home in Drexel Hill.  We stood beside the Christmas tree and talked about our sadness at the loss of our mutual friend, June.  That was the last time I saw her. 

Now it is Thanksgiving time again.  Kennedy has been dead for almost half a century.  When out-of-town visitors come to Dallas, I urge them to go visit the Sixth Floor Museum and look out the window where Oswald aimed his rifle at the President passing below in the open car. 

After less than three years in Pennsylvania, my family returned to Chicago.  Wally and I divorced, remarried, and then lost our second spouses.  Wally is dead, too.  I lost my wonderful husband John 20 years ago, but he left me happy memories. 

I have a good life,.  I live in a retirement home in Garland, Texas.  Even though I go through dialysis three days a week, I have pleasant companions and days of good health, when I have fun..  On Friday a friend and I went to a wonderful concert by the Garland Symphony.

I saw on television that Ruth retired and moved to Florida.  I hope she has had a good life, too.