Double Exposure

"In the fall of 1953, five foot four inch 'Lee Oswald' was attending
Public School #44 in New York. 'Harvey Oswald' was in New Orleans
attending Beauregard Junior High School (64).

"There are two starkly contradictory exhibits from the records of the
Warren Commission. One shows "Lee Harvey Oswald" attending Beauregard for
89 days during the fall term of 1953 in New Orleans. The other shows
Oswald attending 62 days during the fall 1953 term of Public School #54
in New York. If both documents are correct, there are two Oswalds --
"Lee" in New York, "Harvey" in New Orleans -- in the fall of 1953 (65).

"How do we know which Oswald was in New York and which was in New
Orleans?" (66)

Myra DaRouse taught at Beauregard Junior High School in New Orleans for
three years. She had a homeroom class for only one year, the 1953-54
school year. John Armstrong interviewed and videotaped Myra in 1996.
Here's what she said:


I began teaching in New Orleans Parish in 1953, September. And the school
I was assigned to was Beauregard Junior High School, which is located on
Canal Street. I was a physical education teacher. In my second year there
I was given a homeroom . . . Sometime after Christmas I got a new
student. It turned out that his name was Lee Harvey Oswald. I never
called him Lee Harvey Oswald because he asked me not to call him Lee. And
I asked him what he would like to be called, and he said Harvey. So I
knew him as Harvey Oswald. My contact with him was just in a homeroom
roll call because I taught girls' physical education. But sometime -- how
it happened I don't know -- he and I became friends. And each afternoon
as I did my coaching after school, he would always seem to be in the yard
sitting around. Harvey seemed to have only one friend, Ed Voebel (67).

Edward Voebel is well known to students of the Warren Commission volumes.
The Commission interviewed Voebel, who affirmed his friendship with
Oswald. In fact, in his testimony and when interviewed on television
after the assassination, he had the nerve to say, 'I liked the guy.' That
took guts. (68).

Myra DaRouse remembers one incident in particular:


On one occasion we were practicing basketball in the schoolyard. Ed
Voebel comes running out and says, 'Ms. DaRouse! Ms. DaRouse! Come inside
quick!" So Dorothy Duvik [another teacher] and I went into the basement,
and there on the floor was Harvey, and an upright piano that had fallen,
[on] his legs from the waist down. So with the help of Ed Voebel [we]
pulled the piano up, and I asked him if he was hurt, asked Harvey if he
was hurt, and he said no, he didn't think so. And I said well maybe we
should call your mother and he said no, because she is at work: "She is
working at the bar."

Well, you know, this happened at school, and you can't be too careful, so
I called our principal, Mr. McMurdough, and asked him what he thought I
should do. And he said, 'Well, Myra, take him down to the Monte Lepre
Clinic on Canal Street . . . So we got in the car, and I drove Harvey
down, and they examined him, and they said he was fine, and it was
getting dark. It was a little after five, and I didn't want him going
home by himself, so I asked him where he lived, and he said on Exchange
Alley, down near the river. So I drove him down, and it was kind of a
disgusting place. And I was very glad I didn't live there. And he lived
upstairs over a ballroom (69).


How tall was Harvey? Myra said, "Well, I'm about 5'3" now, but I was
about 5'4" back then, and I would say he came up to about here
[indicating]. I would say he was about 4'8", 4'6", or about 4'8"."

"That small -- 4'6" or 4'8"?"

"Yeah, he was little, scrawny" (70).

"Myra DaRouse saw Harvey every day at Beauregard in 1955. Myra's
description of a 4'6" or 4'8" Lee Harvey Oswald in the spring of 1954
differs considerably with his New York court and school records -- if
this is the same Lee Harvey Oswald. In his 1952-53 school records, in the
two columns marked for the seventh and eighth grades, Oswald's height is
listed as 64 inches, or 5'4". He has shrunk eight inches or more since
leaving New York (71).

This is "Harvey," the boy from New York, not "Lee," the boy from Fort
Worth, Texas (72).

This author spoke to Myra DaRouse on October 4, 1998. She told me
precisely the same thing as she told John Armstrong, with one only
slightly disturbing difference. I asked Ms. DaRouse if he had introduced
himself to her as "Harvey." (A leading question, true; I took the answer
for granted.) She said, "No, he always called himself, or wanted to be
called by his full name." By full name, I wondered, did she mean "Lee
Harvey Oswald?" "That's right," she said. "I called him 'Lee Harvey.'"

She said that Ed Voebel was Oswald's only friend, aside from herself. She
described him as a small boy, very soft-spoken, one who was teased by the
other boys for being a "sissy." While the Warren Report says Oswald
enrolled in the eighth grade at Beauregard on January 13, 1954, Myra
DaRouse remembers him having attended briefly the previous semester --
"not long enough to get a grade," she says, but for a short time before
the Christmas break. The Warren Report devotes exactly one line to
Oswald's eighth grade year (73).

Ms. DaRouse takes issue with the Warren Report's characterization of
Oswald as a troublemaker and a scrapper. She says he was only in one
fight that she ever knew, an occasion when a small group of boys came
riding up on the bikes after school and ganged up on him and Ed Voebel.
She says he was knocked around pretty badly before she came upon the
scene and interceded. This occurred outside on an asphalt black-top
section of the school grounds. Knowing that Oswald was supposed to have
had a tooth knocked out the following school year, I nevertheless asked
her if this wasn't the occasion that he had the tooth knocked out. She
said, no, she didn't remember anything like that.

Ms. DaRouse said that Oswald spent a lot of time at the school library
before and after the school day. She added that, this being a school
library, there weren't any books that would put any "funny ideas" in his
head. I said, "You mean political things?" "Right." I took the
opportunity to ask her if she'd ever heard Oswald say anything about
politics, Communism, or any such thing. "No, never." I asked if she
remembered the way he talked: whether he might have had a Southern
accent." Her first recollection was of his being very quiet and
soft-spoken, not talking much. She said that, of course, being from the
South, she herself wouldn't have noticed such an accent. "But you don't
remember him sounding like a Northerner?" I asked. "No."

I said that John Armstrong had recently found a report card or a school
record of some kind -- actually a registration card -- for Oswald in the
eighth grade that listed his homeroom as room 303, a room on the third
floor. I asked her if that could be consistent with her homeroom roll
call in the basement; could she have been assigned room 303 despite
actually using the stage in the basement? "No, 303, that's the ninth
grade," she said. "You mean the whole third floor was for the ninth
grade?" "Right." Yet this registration form at the National Archives said
Oswald was in room 303 in the eighth grade.

I asked her, when she heard the name "Lee Harvey Oswald" following the
assassination, how long it took her to recognize it; was it right away?
"Yes, right away. I said, that can't be." Later she added, "I still don't
believe he did it. I don't put much stock in that *Warren Report.*" She
notes that she was questioned in a locked room for two solid hours about
Oswald. Nothing she said was used in the Report.

Lee Oswald, the tall southern boy, moved to New York in 1952, and was
teased by his classmates for his southern accent and for wearing
unfashionable blue jeans. He once called a truant officer a "damned
Yankee." Harvey, who lived in New York, was the 4'6" kid interviewed by
Dr. Kurian, photographed at the Bronx Zoo, and unrecognized in this
photograph by his half brother John Pic. "Harvey" moved to North Dakota,
and then to New Orleans, where he enrolled in Beauregard, and was
assigned later to Myra DaRouse's homeroom. She saw him every day before
and after school. Myra's memory of "Harvey" as a physically small child
is consistent with Dr. Kurian's observation of Oswald in New York (74).

Marguerite Oswald had driven to New York with "Lee Oswald," the tallest
kid in his sixth grade class -- as recalled by classmates for the FBI and
Life magazine. A year and a half later, 4'6" "Harvey Oswald" was in New
Orleans. It was "Harvey," not "Lee," who was teased by his New Orleans
classmates for his New York accent, an accent which he retained all his
life (75).

It was "Harvey" who was ridiculed and physically beaten by his fellow
students for sitting in the back of the bus with "negroes." "Lee Oswald,"
the boy who had grown up in the South, would have known local customs
better than to sit in the back of the bus; and certainly would not have
traded in his Texas accent for a New Yorker's in only a year (76).

"When we understand there are two teenagers using the name Oswald, we
also realize each of these boys had a parent or guardian. Perhaps this is
the reason we see Oswald's mother identified sometimes as Marguerite and
other times as Margaret. Marguerite Oswald must be viewed with a great
deal of skepticism" (77).

For more of John Armstrong's research on Marguerite Oswald, please click
here. Link 5