RUTH PAINE (PART 5)

[David Von Pein]

ALBERT JENNER -- "Would you please give me your impression of Lee
Oswald's personality, what you think made him tick, any foibles of
his, your overall impression now, as you have it sitting there, of Lee
Harvey Oswald?"

RUTH PAINE -- "My overall impression progressed through several
stages. .... I formed an initial negative opinion about him, on really
very little personal contact. I saw him very briefly the evening of
the 22nd of February {1963}, the evening of the 2nd of April, and the
afternoon of the 20th of April, and again on the 24th of April, and so
as far as I remember that is virtually all of the contact I had had
directly with him.

"And this impression stayed with me throughout
the summer and throughout my visits to various friends and family on
my trip of August and September 1963, and I undoubtedly conveyed to
the people I talked to during that time that impression, which I
carried at that time.

"When I saw him again in New Orleans, beginning
the 20th of September, I was impressed quite differently. He seemed
friendly. He seemed grateful...even grateful that I was offering to
have his wife in my home and help her make arrangements at Parkland
Hospital to have the baby there, at a fee adjusted to their income.

"He appeared to me to be happy, called cheerily
to Marina and June as he came in the house with a bag full of
groceries. He...washed the dishes that evening that Marina and I went
down to Bourbon Street. And particularly in parting on the morning of
September 23rd, I felt he was really sorry to see them go. He kissed
them both at the house as we first took off and then again when we
left from the gas station where I had bought a tire.

"And I felt...that he hoped to have his family
together again as soon as he could. Then, of course, the impression
enlarged as I saw him in my home on the weekends beginning October
4th, and I have read into the record one letter I wrote to my mother
during that period which shows that he tried to be helpful around the
house, that he played with my children, that he, it appeared to me,
was becoming more relaxed and less fearful of being rejected, and I
had sensed in him this fear earlier.

"It was because I had sensed in him in the spring
this insecurity and feelings of inadequacies that the thought once
crossed my mind as expressed to Mrs. Rainey that he could be guilty of
a crime of passion if he thought someone was taking away from him his
wife, something valuable to him. Clearly he valued Marina. She was his
only human contact, really...so far as I could see, the only friend he
had.

"And while he did quarrel and was petty with her
on many times that I saw, he, I felt, valued her, and, of course, it
is also true, as I have reported, that I never saw him physically
violent to her or cruel, so that my impression of him, which I carried
with me throughout my trip during the summer, changed, and my
impression of him up to the time...of the assassination, was of a
struggling young man who wanted to support his family, who was having
difficulty, who wanted to achieve something more in life than just the
support of his family and raising children, who was very lonely, but
yet could meet socially with people and be congenial when he made
efforts to be. ....

"It is in this period when he was coming out
weekends in the fall to my home that he seemed to me a man striving,
wanting to achieve something, a man without much formal schooling nor
much native intelligence really, but a striver, trying hard; and I
never felt any sense during that period that he might be a violent
person or apt to break over from mild maladjustment to active violent
hostility towards an individual. ....

"I don't believe he felt successful. As I have
said, I didn't talk much with him about what his aims were. But it
seemed to me, and Marina expressed to me her feeling, that he had an
overblown opinion of himself, and of what he could and should achieve
in the world. ....

"I did feel that very likely he took fewer and
fewer risks making friends as he grew up than he perhaps had as a
child. .... If he allowed himself to be friends or be close, then he
opened the possibility of the friend hurting him, and I had this
feeling about him, that he couldn't permit or stand such hurt."

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