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When Byron Meyer and his mother were going through papers and pictures at their Chalmette home about a year ago to see what Hurricane Katrina’s floodwaters had spared, they came upon a tattered assortment in a dresser drawer in her bedroom.
Courtesy of the Meyer family
Lora Lee Meyer of Chalmette and her son, Byron Meyer, recently found 1960s mementoes fromt the friendship between Lora Lee Meyer and Marguerite Oswald, shown here, mother of Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin of President John F. Kennedy.
It held yellowed newspaper clippings, fading Christmas cards and a few letters and pictures. In a February 1969 note to Lora Lee Meyer, when she was six months pregnant, the writer says: “I would be so honored to act as ‘Godmother’ for the new baby” — the child who would turn out to be Byron Meyer.
What makes this letter more than a routine note is the identity of the writer: Marguerite Oswald, the New Orleans-born mother of Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who assassinated President John F. Kennedy in November 1963 and was shot dead two days later.
“It’s weird, it’s bizarre, it’s freaky,” Byron Meyer said a few days ago as he was leafing through the trove. “She was going to be my godmother — the mother of the assassin of one of the best presidents in the history of America. It was so close.”
Seeking legal help
It didn’t happen, his mother said, because Oswald told her she felt authorities wouldn’t let her leave Texas, even though more than five years had elapsed since the assassination and she had not been charged with a crime.
Marguerite Oswald never met either Meyer in person, but she and Lora Lee Meyer exchanged letters and spoke frequently on the phone.
Oswald, who was living in Fort Worth, Texas, found Lora Lee Meyer because her husband, John Meyer, was a lawyer in Jefferson Parish who had planned to represent her in litigation in Texas in which Oswald was fighting back against attacks on her and her son.
But that came to naught, Lora Lee Meyer said, because her husband would have had to work with a Texas lawyer, and no one was willing to represent Oswald.
“I was hoping he could help her,” Meyer said, “but he couldn’t because the lawyers wouldn’t do a thing to help him.”
Women share tears
Oswald died in 1981, and John Meyer died in 1998. Meyer’s name “didn’t ring a bell,” said Robert Oswald, Marguerite Oswald’s surviving son, in a telephone interview from his home in Wichita Falls, Texas.
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Matthew Hinton / The Times-Picayune
Byron Meyer found correspondence from Marguerite Oswald, mother of Lee Harvey Oswald, to his mother Lora Lee Meyer when he was going through stuff at the family’s Chalmette home after Hurricane Katrina. The correspondence was on the second floor of their home, top right, so it survived but the neighbor’s home did not, background. Photo taken Thursday December 10, 2010.
Because John Meyer didn’t tell his wife much about his work, Lora Lee Meyer said she had no idea how he knew Marguerite Oswald, with whom he met several times on trips to Texas.
But that didn’t stop the women from launching into a long-distance friendship.
Marguerite Oswald was a lonely woman, Meyer said. “She’d cry over the phone, and I’d cry back.”
In a letter to Meyer, Oswald said, “I do have my moments of sadness, frustration and tears.”
During these conversations, both women said they felt Kennedy’s assassination was the result of a conspiracy, even though the Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.
But, Lora Lee Meyer said, “she was sure he had something to do with it.”
‘Weird as can be’
Marguerite Oswald befriended reporters in her part of Texas, said Gary Mack, who was one of them.
Oswald was “a nice lady, and I enjoyed talking to her and answering questions for her, but she was really different,” said Mack, who described her as “weird as can be.”
He is the curator of the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas, which occupies the part of the building on Dealey Plaza from which Oswald shot Kennedy.
“She would call any hour of the day or night,” Mack said. “Sometimes she was able to gain (reporters’) sympathy. They’d buy her a meal. She was good at telling tales of woe.”
Byron Meyer said his mother frequently sent Oswald money to help her make ends meet. A cashed Whitney National Bank check from 1978 for $5 — equivalent to slightly more than $16 today — is part of the Meyers’ collection.
View full sizeCourtesy of the Meyer Family
Correspondence from Marguerite Oswald, mother of Lee Harvey Oswald, was found by Byron Meyer when he was going through the family’s Chalmette home after Hurricane Katrina.
So are a signed photograph of Marguerite Oswald; a copy of “Aftermath of an Execution,” a booklet in which she wrote about her son’s arrest, death and burial; and a copy of “The American Heritage Book of Presidents and Famous Americans.” It is the volume devoted to Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, Kennedy’s successor. Marguerite Oswald inscribed the book to John and Lora Lee Meyer and their children just above a picture of the presidential seal.
“It’s pretty ironic that the papers are here,” Lora Lee Meyer said, “because the house was burglarized after the storm.”
Papers have little worth
Neither Meyer has decided what to do with the documents.
Marguerite Oswald’s papers, which had filled 30 cartons, are at Texas Christian University, where she wanted them to go, said Roger Rainwater, head of special collections at the Fort Worth school.
Because material pertaining to Lee Harvey Oswald had been sold, TCU’s holdings have “very little of substance” about the assassination, he said, and seldom attract much attention.
“Very occasionally, somebody with an interest in the assassination or a conspiracy will contact us, but that’s about all,” Rainwater said. “People know they’re here. I send out a finding aid (to the collection) fairly regularly, but people rarely follow up on it.”
Naomi Hample, who handles signed documents at Argosy Book Store in New York City, said the Meyers’ papers probably wouldn’t fetch much from autograph collectors unless they mentioned Marguerite Oswald’s son.
“She was a very peripheral person,” Hample said.
John Pope can be reached at jpope@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3317.
© 2010 NOLA.com. All rights reserved.
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