Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy

Oswald Children’s Time at Bethlehem Children’s Home

Following Robert Oswald’s death, Marguerite placed her two older sons, John and Robert, in the Evangelical Lutheran Bethlehem Orphan Asylum (Bethlehem Children’s Home) in January 1942, contributing $20 monthly plus clothing. Lee was later admitted on December 26, 1942, after Marguerite could no longer leave him with her sister. The children had generally pleasant memories of the home, which had a Christian atmosphere, allowed considerable freedom, and was visited regularly by their mother.

Marguerite Oswald’s Employment and Meeting Edwin Ekdahl

In July 1943, Marguerite Oswald was hired to manage a small hosiery shop on Canal Street in New Orleans, where she quickly hired additional staff; however, she struggled with figures and was eventually discharged. Around the same time, she met Edwin A. Ekdahl, an electrical engineer originally from Boston, and they began a relationship. Ekdahl met the Oswald boys, and the family spent at least one weekend together at a resort area in Covington, Louisiana.

第二章 With the assistance of Agent in Charge Sorrels of the

In January 1944, Marguerite Oswald withdrew her son Lee from the Children’s Home and moved with him to Dallas to live with Edwin A. Ekdahl, whom she had decided to marry despite an initial change of heart; after marrying in May 1945, she sent her older sons John and Robert to the Chamberlain-Hunt Military Academy in Mississippi while keeping Lee with her as the family moved between Benbrook, Covington, and Fort Worth, until her marriage to Ekdahl deteriorated and ended in a contested divorce granted in June 1948. After the divorce, Marguerite worked at department stores to support her sons in Fort Worth before moving with Lee to New York in August 1952 to stay with John and his wife, an arrangement that collapsed when Lee threatened his sister-in-law with a pocket knife and struck his mother, after which they moved to a basement apartment in the Bronx. Lee’s chronic truancy in the New York schools led his mother to seek help from the Community Service Society, but she missed her appointment; on March 12, 1953, an attendance officer filed a court petition alleging that Lee was “beyond the control of his mother insofar as school attendance is concerned,” and on April 16 Justice Delany declared him a truant and remanded him to Youth House for psychiatric study.