The President's Commission reconvened at 2:20 p.m.
Mr. McCLOY. Before I ask you to be sworn, Mrs. Paine. I will give you a
little general indication of what our testimony is apt to cover.
We have heard that you and your husband made the acquaintance of the
Oswalds somewhere during 1963, and that Mrs. Marina Oswald lived in
your home from late September 1963, I believe, to the time of the
assassination.
Since we are inquiring under our mandate into the background and the
possible motives of the assassination by Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged
assassin, we will question you regarding your association with Mr.
Oswald and try to glean from you any other facts that may bear upon the
assassination or its motivation.
I believe you have been furnished with a copy of the executive order
under which we are operating as well as the Congressional resolution?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Mr. McCLOY. Now if you will please stand, I will swear you.
Mrs. PAINE. I would like to affirm.
Mr. McCLOY. Do you solemnly affirm that the evidence you will give in
this investigation will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes; I do.
Mr. McCLOY. Will you state your full name for the record and your
address?
Mrs. PAINE. I am Ruth Hyde Paine. I live at 2515 West Fifth Street, in
Irving, Tex.
Mr. McCLOY. Mr. Jenner is going to conduct the examination.
Mr. JENNER. Your maiden name?
Mrs. PAINE. Is Hyde.
Mr. JENNER. Ruth Avery Hyde.
Mrs. PAINE. Right.
Mr. JENNER. You are wife of Michael Ralph Paine?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. And you were born September 3, 1932?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. You are almost 34 years old.
Mrs. PAINE. Almost 32. I will be 32 in September.
Mr. JENNER. Pretty bad arithmetic. Just a little bit of your
background, Mrs. Paine, very little. Your mother and father are living?
Mrs. PAINE. That is right.
Mr. JENNER. And your mother is an Unitarian Minister ordained in the
Unitarian Church at the moment?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes; she is.
Mr. JENNER. And received her degree in theology last summer I believe,
is that correct?
Mrs. PAINE. No, she has completed her work for a Bachelor of Divinity
Degree from Oberlin College and she will receive it in the spring. They
don't give them in mid-year. She completed just the first of February.
Mr. JENNER. You yourself are a college graduate?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. Antioch College?
Mrs. PAINE. Yellow Springs.
Mr. JENNER. Yellow Springs, Ohio?
Mrs. PAINE. Right.
Mr. JENNER. You have a brother and sister.
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. And your mother, your father, yourself, your brother, and
your sister are your entire family.
Mrs. PAINE. My immediate family.
Mr. JENNER. Your brother is a graduate of Antioch also, he and your
sister. Are they older than you?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes, they are.
Mr. JENNER. Which is the elder of the two?
Mrs. PAINE. My brother is the oldest.
Mr. JENNER. And your brother is a professional man, is he?
Mrs. PAINE. He is a doctor, general practitioner.
Mr. JENNER. A general physician, and he practices in Yellow Springs,
Ohio?
Mrs. PAINE. That is right.
Mr. JENNER. Would you tell us where Yellow Springs is?
Mrs. PAINE. It is about 60 miles south and west from Columbus, Ohio,
the capital, which is more or less in the middle of the State, and
just a little bit east of Dayton.
Mr. JENNER. Is your brother married.
Mrs. PAINE. Yes, he is.
Mr. JENNER. Does he have a family?
Mrs. PAINE. He has four children.
Mr. JENNER. And is your sister married?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes; she is.
Mr. JENNER. Does she have a family?
Mrs. PAINE. She has four children.
Mr. JENNER. And each of your brothers and your sister, it is their
first marriage?
Mrs. PAINE. That is right.
Mr. JENNER. Now you were married to Mr. Paine December 28, 1957, is
that correct?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes; I believe so.
Mr. JENNER. And you were married where, in Philadelphia?
Mrs. PAINE. It was suburban Philadelphia. Friends meeting in Media, Pa.
Mr. JENNER. Would you tell us what the Friends meeting is which you
have mentioned?
Mrs. PAINE. I am a member of the Society of Friends often known as
Quakers.
Mr. JENNER. You are a Quaker?
Mrs. PAINE. I am.
Mr. JENNER. When did you embrace that faith?
Mrs. PAINE. I joined in early 1951, I believe.
Mr. JENNER. Has any other member of your family embraced the Quaker
faith?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes; my brother is also a Quaker.
Mr. JENNER. When did he embrace that faith.
Mrs. PAINE. Similar in time, a year or two one way or the other. I
don't recall exactly.
Mr. JENNER. I am afraid I might have been inattentive. When did you say
that occurred?
Mrs. PAINE. Similar in time. I don't remember just when exactly he
joined.
Mr. JENNER. I was thinking more as to when you said you did.
Mrs. PAINE. In early '51, I think; I am quite certain it was winter of
'51.
Mr. JENNER. You were then in college?
Mrs. PAINE. That was the year out. I went to Antioch one year and then
I took a year out and I joined my home meeting in Columbus which I had
already attended perhaps 2 years.
Mr. JENNER. And from the time you joined the Quaker church you have
been a member of that church?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. Or that faith?
Mrs. PAINE. Or church; yes.
Mr. JENNER. Ever since?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. Now you and Mr. Paine, did you take up a residence in
Philadelphia as soon as you married?
Mrs. PAINE. I had been living in Philadelphia working there, and then
when we married I moved to suburban Philadelphia where Michael was
living, Paoli, Pa.
Mr. JENNER. His folks live in Paoli, also, do they not?
Mrs. PAINE. His mother and stepfather.
Mr. JENNER. And you remained in Paoli until when?
Mrs. PAINE. Well, it was summer of '59 we were in the process of
moving, didn't complete it until fall of '59.
Mr. JENNER. I see. You moved to where?
Mrs. PAINE. To Irving, where we are now, to the present address.
Mr. JENNER. To your present home? And that was in the summer of 1959?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. At some later stage we will go into what occurred. In the
meantime we have you now in Irving, Tex. Is that a suburb of Dallas?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. You and your husband purchased the home you have there
before you went down.
Mrs. PAINE. Oh, no; we stayed at a small apartment for several weeks
looking around and then rented for a year, and then we purchased the
house we have been renting.
Mr. JENNER. So you purchased that and moved in in 1960, is that about
right?
Mrs. PAINE. We first moved into it in the fall of '59.
Mr. JENNER. You rented it and then purchased it.
Mrs. PAINE. The same house; yes.
Mr. JENNER. All right, thank you. You have two children?
Mrs. PAINE. That is right.
Mr. JENNER. A boy and a girl?
Mrs. PAINE. A girl and a boy.
Mr. JENNER. Would you name the oldest of the two.
Mrs. PAINE. Sylvia Lynn and the boy--she is now 4. The boy is
Christopher and he is 3.
Mr. JENNER. The point I was getting at, your daughter, Sylvia, was born
after you reached Texas?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. And what was her birth?
Mrs. PAINE. She was born on November 17, '59.
Mr. JENNER. 1959. Now you are acquainted, became acquainted with Marina
Oswald, did you not, in due course in Irving, Tex.?
Mrs. PAINE. No. I first met her and her husband at a gathering of
people in Dallas at the home of Everett Glover.
Mr. JENNER. I will get to that in a moment.
Mrs. PAINE. Okay. I had not met her before that.
Mr. JENNER. At this time you and your husband were living in your
present home in Irving, Tex.?
Mrs. PAINE. In '59.
Mr. JENNER. At the time that you met Marina Oswald?
Mrs. PAINE. No. Michael moved to an apartment in September of 1962.
Mr. JENNER. There had been some strained relations or difficulties
between yourself and your husband Michael. When we shake our heads we
don't get it on the record.
The answer to that is "Yes"?
Mrs. PAINE. Is "No." I had not met her when there had been some
strained relations between me and my husband. It is just we are having
difficulties with words.
Mr. JENNER. What I was getting at--there had been some strained
relations, is that correct?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. And Mr. Paine had moved to separate quarters. This was in
September of 1962, correct.
Mrs. PAINE. Right.
Mr. JENNER. You met Marina for the first time when.
Mrs. PAINE. I judge it was the last of February, towards the end of
February of 1963.
Mr. JENNER. You were then living with your children in your home at
2515.
Mrs. PAINE. West Fifth.
Mr. JENNER. West Fifth Street in Irving, Tex. Now would you please
relate the circumstances under which the meeting between yourself and
Marina Oswald first occurred in February of 1963.
Mrs. PAINE. I was invited to come to the home of Everett Glover to
meet a few friends of his, and I judge that was on the 22d of February
looking back at my calendar.
Mr. JENNER. Would you please tell us who Mr. Everett Glover was and how
you became acquainted with him.
What was the milieu?
Mrs. PAINE. I met Mr. Glover at a group gathered to sing madrigals
together. These are old English songs where each part has a melody and
it was for the enjoyment of reading the music and in harmony, and we
often had coffee afterward and would talk.
Mr. JENNER. This included your husband, however, did it not?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes indeed.
Mr. JENNER. You had a common interest in this?
Mrs. PAINE. Madrigal singing?
Mr. JENNER. Madrigal singing?
Mrs. PAINE. Yes. And went together.
Mr. JENNER. Proceed.
Mrs. PAINE. And then Everett knew that I was interested in learning
Russian well enough to teach it, and since this gathering was to
include some people who spoke Russian, he invited me and he invited
Michael also to attend. Michael caught a bad cold and wasn't able to go.