John Armstrong's Harvey and Lee

[Jim Hargrove]

Jim...

That was me talking to John about that... Asst Principal HEAD says both things in the FBI telling of it. He first says it's the TOTAL number of school days, then he says it's the number Oswald attended.

Very true, but if we're to believe anything about these reports, only the second description is possible since the total days (Re Ad) for 1954-55 are less than the required number of school days for the state of LA.

We have to deal with one of two realities: These records are accurate OR these records were created. If created - which is most likely - then the conflicts betray the forgery... if they are accurate, they illuminate the conflicts with other records that were created (NYC school records).. Either way, some or all of these records which are all COPIES of COPIES with no originals available - were created after the fact. (NOTE: the HSCA handwritting experts spell out how the process of copying and altering is why they cannot make a definitvie conclusion about NON-ORIGINAL examined materials. NONE of these records are original... purposefully.

The records HAD to be forged, or at least altered, if it is correct that the FBI was trying to merge two kids into one. What's odd, though, is that they didn't do a more logical job. If you were going to create school attendance and grade records out of thin air, wouldn't you get yourself a school calendar and make something that makes sense? And would it be too much to make the individual and cumulative records match, reasonably closely?

Why I even argued that the 89+1 days for the FALL term does not look correct is the GRADE CARDS related to those two classes.. There are a number of things wrong about these cards that suggest they were created via copying after the fact...

1) Room 303 as a homeroom was only for 9th graders.. that these 8th grade cards also show 303 suggests they were created after the fact. (here are all the cards for BJHS: CE1413 http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc..._0419b.htm


2) in the SPRING TERM we have 3 term grades that represent the entire semester. in the FALL TERM we only have the one TERM REPORT... While this still suggests that OSWALD attended prior to January 13, 1954 I do not see it indicative of 89 days of attendance for those 2 classes...

3) The grade cards do not match the attendance info. Science has 1 while PE has 2 absences.. (you will also notice that CE1413 shows the 54-55 grades yet shows a range of 5-9 days absent... NONE of the grade cards show 12 days absent... (see below)

4) Also shown in the image below is that the grades from General Math also do not match the permenant record

5) From 1/13/54 to 6/4/54 is 90 days as shown on the BJHS record.. yet for OSWALD to attend 89 days IN THE FALL he must start on September 1, 1953 which I believe was about 2 weeks prior to the actual start... Labor Day that year was Sept 7. In NY, PS44 started 9/14/53 are there are indeed 69 days attended thru 1/4 when we ASSUME Oswlad stopped going to PS44 and left for NOLA and MO's sister Lillian's. (Note: MO had no car.. HOW they got from NY to NOLA - with a possible side trip to Ft Worth - is unknown) The conflicting school records that appears copied from form to form - which was supposed to be a single form to follow the child thru NYC schools - is at the bottom.

6) As JA mentions, there is no PS 44 - BYRON JHS (Oswald will also list Ridglea West JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL & Arlington HS on forms (Ridglea was his elementary school) which makes finding previous records very difficult)

Some of these problems may or may not be as contradictory as they seem. I taught jr. high school for two years before I entered the publishing biz, and there is a lot of near chaos in some of these situations. For example, attendance records for any classes other than home rooms are notoriously inaccurate. Teachers not in home rooms often don't know all the kids by name, giving the opportunity for all sorts of student mischief, class cutting, substitutions (sheesh!) etc. Kids are often counted when they're not there and sometimes even missed when they are. Generally, attendance records are posted by home room records and supplemented by the office for tardies, half-day absences, illness, etc.

By the same token, setting up floor-by-floor grade levels is fine until the numbers of needed classrooms don't add up to the available spaces and suddenly a change is needed, though I see no indication whatsoever that something like that happened in this case. I wouldn't bet the NYC school calendars match others from middle America, either. Here in the Midwest, many public schools start before Labor Day, some in mid-August. Don't know about New Orleans, though.

The summer of 1953 remains one of the most intriguing and under-documented period on Oswald's young life. The maid, Louise Robertson, tells us the OSwalds moved in the summer of 1953, Robert tells us he visits the Oswalds that summer and takes the famous Zoo photo while denying he was there in Nov 1952 (John Pic tells a different story)... Then there is the North Dakota testimony, the belief by MO's sister Lillian that they first went to Ft Worth

John has become even more skeptical about Ms. Robertson, though he questioned in the book how HARVEY's "mother," always seeming to live hand to mouth, could have afforded a maid. Robert probably believed he was doing his patriotic duty when he testified, but he made some obvious slip-ups; Stripling School, for example. "What tangled lives we lead when at first we do deceive," eh?

Jim