John Armstrong's Harvey and Lee

[Jim Hargrove]

Quote, JVB in Exile thread Ed-Forum:

Armstrong reported that both (Harvey and Lee) had attended Beauregard Junior High School, but that "Harvey" had left at the end of 5th grade, while "Lee" showed up at the start of the school year for 6th grade. Given his aggressive tendencies--not so much of starting fights but of ending them--the story is related of his having taken a punch from a classmate and losing a tooth! That all sounds fine, where "Lee"'s missing tooth henceforth distingishes him from "Harvey". But the story went on to explain that Lillian Murret remembered the incident and had paid the the dental visit. That was very peculiar, because Lillian was the aunt of "Harvey", not of "Lee", so what was she doing paying for "Lee"'s dental work?

Karl,

[size=12]Not sure whose story you're referencing above, but it seems to refer to Lillian Murret's WC testimony (Lillian was the aunt of American-born LEE, not Russian-speaking HARVEY. It is doubtful Harvey had any American blood relatives before he brought his family back from Russia.) Here's what Lillian Murret told the WC:

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"Another time they were coming out of school at 3 o'clock, and there were boys in back of him and one of them called his name, and he said, "Lee," and when he turned around, this boy punched him in the mouth and ran, and it ran his tooth through the lip, so she had to go over to the school and take him to the dentist, and I paid for the dentist bill myself, and that's all I know about that, and he was not supposed to have started any of that at that time."

From her description ("this boy punched him in the mouth and ran") this appears to have been a retaliatory ambush from the big fight with the Neumeyers a few days earlier. That fight lasted a long time according to the witnesses who saw it. One of them was Ed Voebel, who had this exchange with Jenner:

Mr. JENNER. But you do remember that you attempted to help him when he was struck in the mouth on that occasion; is that right?

Mr. VOEBEL. Yes; I think he even lost a tooth from that. I think he was cut on the lip, and a tooth was knocked out.

Lillian Murret says Marguerite took LEE Oswald to the dentist for a cut lip; but of course you'd be more likely to do that for a broken or lost tooth (can a dentist treat lips?), and so one or the other of the witnesses is probably slightly mistaken about the results of the fight.

But the kicker, for me, is the photo of LEE Ed Voebel sold to Life Magazine for $75, which certainly seems to show Oswald with a missing tooth.

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You can see a slightly larger blow-up of the cropped image here: http://harveyandlee.net/Tooth/Tooth.htm . On that web page, you can also see the exhumation photo which clearly shows Harvey had no missing front tooth. (When I got the Life photo in 1999, I was just putting the H&L website together and most of us were still using slow dial-up connections. So I compressed the hell out of all the photos and documents to perserve bandwidth. Jack White sent me a quite a bit clearer image for the Life Magazine photo, but I can't find it now. I need to look around the web to see if anyone has a clearer image.)

Jim