Mrs. Oswald. Mike Howard? Mike Howard was toward the end, because I was so persistent in them talking to me, that finally he decided he would put me on tape. But I do not consider this questioning. It was the date of the funeral—I remember now.
Mr. Rankin. November 25th?
Mrs. Oswald. Was that the day of the funeral? If this was the day of the funeral—I can tell you why. He decided he would put me on tape. So I started to tell him about my having the papers, and Lee's defection. And then Robert came out of the room and was crying bitterly. I saw Robert crying.
Wait, I am ahead of my story.
You have to understand this. As a family, we separated—not maybe for any particular reason, it is just the way we live. I am not a mother that has a home that the children can come to and feed them and so on. I am a working mother. I do 24-hour duty. So I am not that type mother, where I am a housewife with money, that the children have a home to come to.
So I said to Mike Howard, "I would like Robert to hear this. Maybe he will learn something." Because Robert never did want to know about my trip to Washington. He doesn't know. Robert never was interested in anything. Lee did not want to know about my trip to Washington. So I thought well now this is an opportunity, since the tragedy has happened, for Mr. Robert Oswald to know some of these things that his mother has known all of these years.
So I started.
Then Robert had a phone call and he came out of the room, and he was crying bitterly. So I ended the tape—I would say I talked approximately 10 minutes. I ended the tape saying, "I'm sorry, but my thoughts have left me, because my son is crying."
I thought for a moment that Robert was crying because of what I was saying, and he was sorry that he had not listened to me before, because I tried to tell him about the defection and my trip to Washington. But Robert was crying because he received a telephone call that we could not get a minister at my son's grave.
They had three ministers that refused to come to the ceremony at my son's grave—for church. And that is why Robert was crying bitterly. So that ended the testimony. That little while I testified, that ended it.