Judyth Vary Baker: Living in Exile

[James H. Fetzer]

JUDYTH ADDRESSES THE COLOR OF LEE H. OSWALD'S EYES

NOTE: This is a nice example of why I maintain that Judyth is better
at JFK research than 95% of all students of the assassination and of
most if not all of her critics. Here she presents a study of Lee's eye
colors compiled with comments, based upon my personal knowledge
of Lee--personal observation of Lee's actual eye colors--after running
across a "Harvey & Lee" statement that one of the subjects had blue
eyes and the other one had hazel eyes. If this is indeed the claim,
a study of the "hazel eye phenomenon" is called for. It is attached.

SEEING EYE TO EYE: A STUDY OF LEE H. OSWALD’S ‘HAZEL’ EYES

Judyth Vary Baker

The man that I knew as "Lee" considered his eyes to be blue-gray in color.



THEY WERE DESCRIBED AS "GREY" ON HIS PASSPORT APPLICATION, BUT AS "GREY-BROWN"
ON HIS MILITARY ID:



Mae Brussell reported these words, from 11:00-11:20 PM, Nov. 22, 1963:

"I was in Russia two years and liked it in Russia. . . . I am 5 ft. 9 in., weigh 140 lb., have brown hair, blue-gray eyes, and have no tattoos or permanent scars."

NOTE by Source: “Oswald had mastoidectomy scars [JVB: this scar was hidden in a simple procedure conducted while Lee was hospitalized in Minsk] and left upper-arm scars [JVB: this is true, but when Lee’s arm was straight, it was hard to see…if the autopsy was done with Lee in a stage of rigor mortis, the ventral arm scar might have been missed. ] both noted in Marine records. "Warren Report," pp. 614-618, lists information from Oswald obtained during this interview about members of his family, past employment, past residences.)..”

Source: http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/LHO.html



[Off the subject, but fascinating :Interestingly, Lee stipulated that if he dies:

(Beneficiary of Death Benefits): Marguerite OSWALD or John Edward PIC [Marguerite was also to receive his pay if he is listed as missing.] ==Where’s Robert Oswald?==And organizations to which Lee belonged while in the Armed Services:

ELSINORE PROGRESSIVE LEAGUE
EVERYBODY'S COMMITTEE TO OUTLAW WAR
IDAHO PENSION UNION
MASSACHUSETTS COMMITTEE FOR THE BILL OF RIGHTS

Source: http://www.acorn.net/jfkplace/03/MS/mil.html

Oswald joined the military at age 17, not yet quite mature. Weights also could vary due to maturation or physical stressors. But the eye colors must be confusing to those who don’t understand the “hazel eye phenomenon” of the gray-blue/hazel eye.

The above records show a multiplicity of eye colors for Lee Harvey Oswald, including eye colors of “blue-gray,” “grey” and “grey-brown” – while a few more seem to have reported “hazel.”

One comment on the Inernet reporting “hazel” is this one:

“Armstrong never said they [the two "Oswalds"] both worked at the TSBD. Nor did he say they were identical in appearance. One was 5'7" and the other 5'10". One was 135 lbs, the other was 165. One had blue eyes, the other hazel."

Perhaps Armstrong was misquoted. Perhaps this was a distinction he, himself, did not make. Please correct me, Jack, if the statement above is wrong.

Lee H. Oswald was 5’9“ ( and a bit more, but seems to have been measured while in the state of incipient rigor mortis)…and really measured 5’ 10” in shoes in the morning, as my father was 5’ 10” and Lee was the same visual height. Since I was 5’2” he seemed tall to me. Lee looked like he’d lost weight from what was 160 pounds when I knew him to about 140 pounds (my visual estimate) in arrest photos. He told me he had lost weight and not to concern myself about it.

THE STATEMENT ABOVE ABOUT “HARVEY” AND “LEE” – MENTIONS THEIR TWO DIFFERENT EYE COLORS AS A WAY TO DISTINGUISH “HARVEY” FROM “LEE.” WHOEVER WROTE THAT NEVER MET LEE HARVEY OSWALD.

PEOPLE WHO HAVE HAZEL EYES REALIZE THAT HAZEL EYES MAY PRESENT A RANGE OF COLORS, DEPENDING ON THE COLOR OF CAST SHADOWS AND WHETHER THE OWNER OF SUCH EYES IS INSIDE OR OUTSIDE WHEN OBSERVED, AND DEPENDING ON WHAT ANGLE THE LIGHT COMES INTO THEIR EYES, AS WELL AS THE THICKNESS OF THE STROMA. LEE APPARENTLY HAD THIN STROMA (SEE BELOW).

My own mother was classified as having green eyes, amber eyes or hazel eyes, depending on what the people at the driver’s license bureau decided it was. She generally was classified as having hazel eyes, because indoors, they looked more brownish. Outdoors, they were green, but in direct sun looked golden. Other forms of hazel eyes turn bluish-gray in certain slants of light, but are generally considered hazel in color.

Lee had unusual blue-gray eyes with a ring of hazel around the iris and flecks of hazel around the pupil–and exhibited a kind of blue – when indoors or under incandescent light---but they seemed hazel if he was under fluorescent light or outdoors. I have seen his eye color described as blue-gray, blue and hazel, and all would be correct, depending on lighting and his moods, re chomatophores.

JVB: Lee described his own eyes as blue-gray, but they also had little flecks of hazel in a ring around the pupil and a few hazel flecks around the outside edge of the iris. He could be classed as having blue eyes or hazel eyes depending on the light – outside his eyes looked more blue, and inside, they looked more hazel. He could pass for both.

NOTE: “The perception of [eye] color depends on viewing conditions (e.g., the amount and kind of illumination, as well as the hue of the surrounding environment),...”.[16 ] (REF: Wikipedia)



I read that Marina had to look at the eyes of her dead husband to determine it was really him…great loss of blood can flatten facial tissues, and this occurred in Lee’s case.

FROM THE INTERNET:

“I have hazel green eyesbut when I wear blue or am in a low mood they take on an aqua blue tone. When I wear green or when I am angry they turn a brighter green. When I wear golds, yellows, or oranges, they get more of a golden tint. …’

”It cannot be the light. I have hazel eyes that change from a green, to blue, to an icy looking blue. They don't change with the color of clothes I'm wearing. They change by my moods which is weird. When I cry they seem to turn a blueish color, when I'm happy they seem to turn a greenish color. I've looked through all my pictures that I took and it's never the same eye color, which I think is really cool..”

file:///Users/jamesfetzer/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/msoclip1/01/clip_image001.gif

Note about chromatophores:

Mammals and birds have only one class of chromatophore-like cell type: the melanocyte.

Eye color is a polygenic phenotypic character and is determined by the amount and type of pigments in the eye's iris.[1][2] Humans and animals have many phenotypic variations in eye color, as blue, brown, green and others. These variations constitute phenotypic traits.[3]

The genetics of eye color are complicated, and eye color is determined by multiple genes. Some of the eye-color genes include EYCL1 (a green/blue eye-color gene located on chromosome 19), EYCL2 (a brown eye-color gene) and EYCL3 (a brown/blue eye-color gene located on chromosome 15).

The once-held view that blue eye color is a simple recessive trait has been shown to be wrong. The genetics of eye color are so complex that almost any parent-child combination of eye colors can occur.[4][5]

In human eyes, these variations in color are attributed to varying ratios of eumelanin produced by melanocytes in the iris.[2] The brightly colored eyes of many bird species are largely determined by other pigments, such as pteridines, purines, and carotenoids.[6]

Three main elements within the iris contribute to its color: the melanin content of the iris pigment epithelium, the melanin content within the iris stroma, and the cellular density of the iris stroma. [7] In eyes of all colors, the iris pigment epithelium contains the black pigment, eumelanin.[2][7] Color variations among different irises are typically attributed to the melanin content within the iris stroma.[7]

The density of cells within the stroma affects how much light is absorbed by the underlying pigment epithelium.[7] OCA2 gene polymorphism, close to proximal 5′ regulatory region, explains most human eye-color variation.[8]

Blue eyes with a brown spot, green eyes and gray eyes are caused by an entirely different part of the genome. As Eiberg said: "The SNP rs12913832 [of the Herc2 gene] is found to be associated with the brown and blue eye color, but this single DNA variation cannot explain all the brown eye color variation from dark brown over hazel to blue eyes with brown spots."

In other words, witnesses could have reported Lee H. Oswald as having hazel eyes, gray-blue or blue eyes, depending on lighting and other factors, due to the fact that Lee possessed blue–gray elements as well as hazel elements in his eyes. [NOTE: Which means the alleged difference in eye color between "Harvey" and "Lee" may have no basis in fact.]

JVB