Kennedy's Last Days: The Assassination That Defined a Generation (32 page)

Marina Oswald holding June, Robert Oswald, and Marguerite Oswald holding Rachel, at Lee Harvey Oswald’s funeral.
[© Corbis]

Lee Harvey Oswald’s daughters,
June and Rachel
, were very young in 1963. Their mother protected them from the press and waited about six years to tell them about their father. Both girls took their stepfather’s name.

Robert Oswald
, born in 1934, is five years older than Lee Harvey Oswald. He was in military high schools and then in the Marines while Lee was growing up. Robert remembers that Lee had a vivid imagination and thought he could be anybody and do anything he wanted. In a 1993 interview, Robert said, “I think I’ve come to an understanding of Lee.… I watched the deterioration of a human being. You look at the last year—his work, his family, trying to go to Cuba.… Everything is deteriorating. It was a terrible thing to look at.”

Robert paid $710 for Lee Harvey Oswald’s funeral, which took place on the same day as President John F. Kennedy’s and Officer J. D. Tippit’s.

You can read biographies of each of John Kennedy’s eight siblings and their parents on the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum website (
www.jfklibrary.org
).

Some of the crew of
PT-109
.
[JFK Presidential Library and Museum]

THE CREW OF USS
PT-109
ON ITS LAST MISSION

*
Killed in action

Kennedy’s inaugural remarks were addressed not only to the American people but also to citizens in friendly countries and those in less friendly ones.
[© Bettmann/Corbis]