In 1961, Marina Oswald, formerly Marina Prusakova, met the man who would become her husband, Lee Harvey Oswald, at a dance in Minsk, Belarus.
It took only six weeks for the pair to tie the knot, and by October 1962, they had moved to Dallas, Texas. Marina and Lee had two children together, Rachel and June, but Marina’s life was turned upside down when her husband shot and killed John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.
Lee, a U.S. Marine veteran, never stood trial for the slaying. Instead, the accused assassin was fatally shot by Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner, two days later, on November 24, 1963.
As the nation grappled with the death of the late president, Marina became a widow and single mother at just 22 years old. She’d only been in the United States for 17 months, had two daughters under the age of 2, and spoke little English. Marina didn’t have a job, either, and feared that she was going to be sent back to Russia.
Some people from around the country did offer to help Marina, including with housing, food, clothing, and money. By early 1964, donations rose to $70,000.
Still, she wasn’t given nearly as much sympathy as the former president’s wife and children. Many even suspected that Marina had been involved in the assassination.
However, one churchgoer in Ann Arbor felt compelled to assist Marina, who seemed entrenched by the media frenzy that followed.
The churchgoer ultimately spoke to a minister at Ann Arbor’s First Presbyterian Church and proposed that the church bring Marina to the University of Michigan to study English.
The church’s executive committee was on board, with Rev. Dr. Ernest T. Campbell saying the idea was “the one thing we might do to partially redeem the tragedy.” So, by the year’s end, the church offered to host Marina at the University of Michigan.
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She began studying at the English Language Institute (ELI), which provided education and support for international students. Her arrival at the campus was leaked just before she was set to start classes in January 1965, forcing the school to release a statement.
“[Marina] has indicated a desire to continue her education and mastery of the language is a necessary preliminary to such study,” the news release read.
“We regard Mrs. Oswald as a typical institute student,” added John C. Catford, the Director of the ELI.
A few people wrote letters to the University of Michigan President Harlan H. Hatcher and expressed their distaste that she was a student, urging him to “send her back to Texas” or “get her away from Michigan.”
Nonetheless, Marina, who’d studied at a technical pharmacy school while previously in the Soviet Union, continued her English education. Alongside 29 other international students, she took an eight-week course, learning and studying for five hours each weekday.
Marina successfully completed the course, receiving her certificate in a ceremony at Rackham Assembly Hall on February 26. Then, she left the school two days later and managed to evade the press for years as she attempted to live a quiet life in Rockwall, Texas.
Most recently, a British tabloid known as the Daily Mirror released images and videos of Marina as she exited a Walmart. Now known as Marina Oswald Porter, the captured footage marked the first photos of her to be seen in approximately two decades.
She went on to remarry, tying the knot with a man named Kenneth Porter and having a son, Mark, with him. Marina reportedly worked at an Army Navy Surplus Store before retiring. She’s now 83 years old.
Marina has accepted few interview requests in the nearly six decades since John F. Kennedy was assassinated. But during her very first interview, she expressed having trouble comprehending that her husband was behind the killing.
“I don’t want to believe it, but I have too many facts, and facts tell me that Lee shot Kennedy,” she said.
However, she later claimed Lee was framed. Marina has remained convinced that her late husband was innocent of the murder.
“I’ve asked myself the question 1,001 times. I could never make myself comfortable. I never could buy the idea that Lee did not like or want to kill President Kennedy. Everything I learned about President Kennedy was good through Lee,” she stated during a 1988 interview.
Marina and Lee’s daughter, Rachel, had no idea why her family was treated differently until she was 7 years old.
“One day, my mother sat my sister and me down on our big green couch and told us that the man who had raised us as our father, our stepfather Kenneth, was not, you know, our real father and that our real father’s name was Lee Oswald and that he had, well, that he had been accused of killing the President of the United States,” Rachel recalled in 1995.
“This helped explain why our school bus was sometimes followed by news teams, why our mailbox got shot at, and why kids at school would ask, ‘Did your daddy shoot the president?'”
Marina and Lee’s other daughter, June, also spoke to the press in 1993. She revealed how, for 25 years, her mother tried to shelter her and Rachel from the topic. Additionally, June declined to say whether she believed that her father was responsible for killing Kennedy.
“There’s a lot of information that we’d like to get for me and my family,” June said.
“If all the facts are out and say Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin, and he did it, then I will accept that. I’ll accept whatever the truth is.”
By Katharina Buczek
Katharina Buczek graduated from Stony Brook University with a degree in Journalism and a minor in Digital Arts. Specializing in... More about Katharina Buczek
