Mr. Jenner. And it was your impression that Lee had that social force, whatever it was; is that right?
Mr. Voebel. Yes, sir; he met it head on.
Mr. Jenner. He was inclined to meet it head on and not back up?
Mr. Voebel. Right. He wouldn't take anything. I used to try to avoid it as much as possible, until you just couldn't avoid it any more. I think a few of the boys at the time got a wrong impression of me. They thought I was just a fat kid, and I wouldn't do anything, and I used to take a little pushing around, and another thing, they would always be in gangs. Now, if you got them alone, you could whip them, but they would hang around in bunches.
In fact, I had an incident like that happen to me over at that school where this boy marked me out. He said he didn't like the way I looked, so he just kept talking and trying to force me into an incident, and finally he got it. I beat the dickens out of him, and it was after school, almost the same way this happened to Lee.
Word got around at the school what I had done, and a whole gang of people met me after school one day, but I was lucky enough to talk myself out of it. Now, when they passed the post on Lee, he was inclined to fight back, but I had sense enough to know that you can't fight a whole gang, so I talked myself out of it. This gang came over to my house and piled out of automobiles and started joshing and using all kinds of vulgar language to try to get me to come out, and my uncle ran them off, and after that I didn't have any more trouble. You just had to prove yourself to gain the respect of those gangs.
Mr. Jenner. They didn't attack you any more?
Mr. Voebel. No.
Mr. Jenner. Would you say that the course of conduct of Lee Oswald was normal, having in mind the problems he was facing?
Mr. Voebel. Yes, except that he didn't make friends.