Oswald's mother dies of. cancer ri 4C.t By MARTY SABOTA: and LISE CHANDLER 'WHITE t Staff Writers Sunday, January 18, 1981, DALLAS TIMES HERALD Marguerite C. Oswald, mother of accused presidential assassin Lee Har- vey Oswald; died early Saturday of cancer in a Fort Worth hospital.. • Mrs. Oswald, 73, had staged a fiery, sometimes bitter campaign against the OSWALD — From Page One findings of the Warren Commission, which concluded her son had acted "She would stand around and call alone in killing President John F. all the press. She was. an opportunist Kennedy in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. and the rest of family didn't have She contended he was framed. much to do with her at all," Aynes- "The Warren Commission was worth said. wrong," she told a reporter on her She also, had tried to sell her story 70th birthday in 1977. " . I'm going recent years, but found no book to defend Lee Harvey Oswald until lisheis interested in the idea, she • ad said: - the years..following the assassi- See OSWALD on Page 10 atiOn, Mrs, Oswald, a retired nurse, 0Cb4ely sought to' have her son's cleared. But in her later years, e less active, occasionally interviews, Sometimes for a :fee;,0i-gfiring speeches for *-7.„Aer.. first Major attempt to, argue iitga ikst the Marren Commission's dings came before the commission in 1964. Oman beings are.not infallible," hesaid on that occasion. "They are :aubject to error. I can prove my son's innocence.' Bttt, after her - six-hour testimony tefore the commission, Chief Justice Fifj.,Warren said'she had added hoth- intio the "picture as I see She was later barred from the trial of_ Jack Ruby, the man accused of shooting her son in the basement of the Dallas police station. Marguerite Oswald Mrs. Oswald also charged local po- • lice with following her whenever im- by an English assassination theorist to portant political figures came to the exhume the body in Oswald's grave Dallas-Fort WoP'th area.• Her most to determine if it was..Oswald or a heated charge came after Vice Pres.i: Soviet imposter buried there. dent Hubert Humphr visited Fort During that controversy last year, Worth in 1965. Mrs.-Oswald telephoned an Associat- ed Press reporter to contend it was, "No sooner had I driven away from indeed, her son and Marina's husband my home than I noticed this car right buried at Rose Hill. She said, howev- behind me," Mrs. Oswald said at the er, it was possible that Oswald's body time. "I took all sorts of unusual could have been removed from the streets and made a lot of funny turns casket before burial_ and still they were behind me. Although she opposed the most re- "It's a sad thing when you are sus- cent attempts to exhume the body in pected like this." the grave, in 1967 she had told a re- Mrs. Oswald fought recent attempts porter she favored an exhumation to tent discredit portions of the Warren Corn- She died "with a great deal of a niission report. A state district judge aplomb," Johnson said. She died ch in Fort Worth refused to allow the about 5:45 a.m. in a private room, exhumation. where Johnson said he had placed sil Johnson, a Fort Worth internist, her in isolation because of her preoc- said Mrs. Oswald had been "quite cupation with "the whole Oswald It alert" in her last days although she thing." often had been sedated. Mrs. Oswald's, presence at the hos- "I thought she faced death with a pital had been kept secret and only a great deal of courage," he said. few staff members knew she was un- "She was a very friendly and talk- dergoing treatment since her admit- ative person, but a very lonely tance on Nov. 21, one day before the person." 17th annivearyrs of Kennedy's Kate Morris, a former neighbor of assassina ton. Mrs. Oswald, said, "She would share One of her surviving sons. Robert what she had with anybody that was Oswald, of Wichita Falls, declined to in need. Most people didn't know she discuss his mother's death with a re- was barely getting by." porter as he stood at the front door of She said Mrs. Oswald rarely dis- her neat brick house in the Arlington cussed the assassination. Heights section of Fort Worth. the day I die, but I'm not going to Marina Porter, the widow of Lee take up for him. There's a Harvey Oswald, learned of the death difference." from her husband, Kenneth Porter, A recluse in recent years, Mrs. 'Os- when she came home shortly before 8 wald in one of her last requests asked p.m. Saturday. that she be buried next to her son in- "It's sad news," Mri. Porter said. Fort Worth's Rose Hill Cemetery,, said She said she was unaware that Mrs. John Johnson, her personal physician. Oswald had been in the hospital suf- Oswald was buried at Rose Hill after fering from cancer. he was shot and killed by Jack Ruby "We didn't have anything to do while being transferred from City Jail with each other since all of this hap- to Dallas County Jail two days follow- pened 16 years ago." ing the president's assassination. She said she has felt sorry for her Johnson said Mrs. Oswald had been former mother-in-law '"all along. in and out of Fort Worth's Harris She's old and it must have been hard Hospital for more than a year in her for her to find a job." losing battle with cancer. He. declined Hugh Ayneswbrth, a Dallas jour- to describe the type of cancer she suf- nalist who interviewed Mrs. Oswald fered, but a spokesman for Baum- several times in the 1960s, said Mrs. gardner Funeral Home, where her Oswald would to go to her son's grave body was taken, said she had been every year on the anniversary of his receiving radiation treatment. death. .