Reclaiming History (128 page)

Years later, Evelyn Strickman, testifying before the Warren Commission under her then-married name of Siegel, had a very vague recollection of Oswald, but from what she wrote in her report she told the Commission he was “a youngster who was teetering on the edge of serious emotional illness. Now, whether that included violence I am not prepared to say.”
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The chief psychiatrist at Youth House, Dr. Renatus Hartogs, exhibited no such professional caution in his testimony before the Warren Commission, giving the flip side of the opinions offered in defense of Oswald by the Warren Commission critics. In the process, he embarrassed himself. Hartogs was a German emigré who had been educated in Frankfort on the Main and received his medical training in Belgium. He came to America in 1940 and took two further medical degrees, from the University of Montreal and New York University. Dr. Hartogs said he was used to dealing with children with serious mental problems, some of whom committed very serious crimes. He was intrigued by the “discrepancy” between the rather trivial reason for Lee’s remand to Youth House—inveterate truancy—and the seriousness of what he perceived to be the boy’s underlying personality disturbance.

Hartogs interviewed Oswald and then selected him as the subject of one of the Youth House’s informal Monday-afternoon “seminars,” at which all of those who had dealt with the subject child would discuss the case in great detail. Typically, the house director opened the seminar; the social worker talked about the boy’s development, background, and early history; staff from the recreation department and household gave their views; the psychologist reported his findings; and the psychiatrist—in this case Hartogs himself—discussed the recommendations he was prepared to make to the Children’s Court.
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The report to the court he dictated on May 1, 1953, is the only known report from a psychiatrist who interviewed Oswald. It reads,

This 13 year old, well built, well nourished boy was remanded to Youth House for the first time on a charge of truancy from school and being beyond the control of his mother as far as school attendance is concerned. This is his first contact with the law. He is a tense, withdrawn and evasive boy who dislikes intensely talking about himself and his feelings. He likes [to] give the impression that he doesn’t care about others and rather likes to keep to himself so that he is not bothered and does not have to make the effort of communicating. It was difficult to penetrate the emotional wall behind which this boy hides [but] he provided us with sufficient clues, permitting us to see intense anxiety, shyness, feelings of awkwardness and insecurity as the main reasons for his withdrawal tendencies and solitary habits. Lee told us: “I don’t want a friend and I don’t like to talk to people.” He describes himself as stubborn, and according to his own saying he likes to say “No.” Strongly resistive and negativistic features were thus noticed but psychotic mental content was denied [psychiatric term meaning not present or found] and no indication of psychotic mental changes was arrived at.

Lee is a youngster with superior mental endowment, functioning presently on the bright normal range of mental efficiency. His abstract thinking capacity and his vocabulary are well developed. No retardation in school subjects could be found in spite of his truancy from school. Lee limits his interests to reading magazines and looking at the television all day long. He dislikes to play with others or to face the learning situation in school. On the other hand he claims to be “very poor” in all school subjects and would need remedial help. The discrepancy between these claims and his actual attainment level show the low degree of self-evaluation and self-esteem at which this boy has arrived presently, mainly due to feelings of general inadequacy and emotional discouragement.

Lee is the product of a broken home as his father died before he was born. Two older brothers are presently in the United States Army while the mother supports herself and Lee as an insurance broker. This occupation makes it impossible for her to provide adequate supervision of Lee and to make him attend school regularly. Lee is intensely dissatisfied with his present way of living, but feels that the only way in which he can avoid feeling too unhappy is to deny to himself competition with other children or expressing his needs or wants. Lee claims that he can get very angry at his mother and occasionally hits her, particularly when she returns home without having bought food for supper. On such occasions she leaves it to Lee to prepare some food with what he can find in the kitchen. He feels that his mother rejects him and really has never cared very much for him. He expressed the similar feeling with regard to his brothers who lived pretty much on their own without showing any brotherly interest in him. Lee has a vivid fantasy life, turning around the topics of omnipotence and power, through which he tries to compensate for his present shortcomings and frustrations. He did not enjoy being together with other children and when we asked him whether he prefers the company of boys to the one of girls, he answered, “I dislike everybody.” His occupational goal is to join the army. His mother was interviewed by the Youth House social worker and was described by her as a “defensive, rigid, self-involved and intellectually alert” woman who finds it exceedingly difficult to understand Lee’s personality and withdrawing behavior. She does not understand that Lee’s withdrawal is a form of violent but silent protest against his neglect by her—and represents his reaction to a complete absence of any real family life. She seemed to be interested enough in the welfare of this boy to be willing to seek guidance and help as regards her own difficulties and management of Lee.

Neurological examination remained essentially negative with the exception of slightly impaired hearing in the left ear, resulting in a mastoidectomy in 1946. History of convulsions and accidental injuries to the skull was denied. Family history is negative for mental disease.

Dr. Hartogs then appended a summary for the probation officer, which included his recommendations to the court:

This 13 year old well built boy has superior mental resources and functions only slightly below his capacity level in spite of chronic truancy from school which brought him into Youth House. No finding of neurological impairment or psychotic mental changes could be made. Lee has to be diagnosed as “personality pattern disturbance with schizoid features and passive aggressive tendencies.” Lee has to be seen as an emotionally, quite disturbed youngster who suffers the impact of really existing emotional isolation and deprivation, lack of affection, absence of family life and rejection by his self-involved and conflicted mother. Although Lee denies that he is in need of any other form of help other than a remedial one, we gained the definite impression that Lee can be reached through contact with an understanding and very patient psychotherapist if he could be drawn at the same time into group psychotherapy. We arrive therefore at the recommendation that he should be placed on probation under the condition that he seek help and guidance through contact with a child guidance clinic, where he should be treated preferably by a male psychiatrist who could substitute, to a certain degree at least, for the lack of a father figure. At the same time, his mother should be urged to seek psychotherapeutic guidance through contact with a family agency. If this plan does not work out favorably and Lee cannot cooperate in this treatment plan on an out-patient basis, removal from the home and placement could be resorted to at a later date, but it is our definite impression that treatment on probation should be tried out before the stricter and possibly more harmful placement approach is applied to the case of this boy. The Big Brother Movement could undoubtedly be a tremendous value in this case and Lee should be urged to join the organized group activities of his community such as provided by the PAL or YMCA of his neighborhood.
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On May 7, 1953, Lee was released from Youth House and he and Marguerite appeared in court once again, this time before a Justice McClancy, who reviewed Lee’s record and psychiatric report at some length. He warned Lee that he would have to return to school and stay there. There was no change in who Lee’s probation officer would be, John Carro.
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Marguerite was beside herself. She had taken an immediate dislike to Carro and, as she said, she was not one to “mince my words.” When Carro told Lee that he would have to report once a week, Marguerite said, “Mr. Carro, my son is not reporting to you once a week. This is not a criminal offense. He was picked up for truancy. He has assured the judge, promised the judge, that he would be back to school. He has promised you he would be back to school. Let’s give this boy a chance, and let’s see if he will go to school. And then, Mr. Carro, if he doesn’t go to school, then you can have him report to you.” Mr. Carro did not, according to Marguerite, “take that graciously.”
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Carro was, however, touched by the boy’s plight. For one thing, Lee seemed like a little lost boy, particularly compared to some of the mentally defective, even psychotic kids—often hardened criminals, burglars, and murderers—with whom Carro had been dealing. Carro also understood something of the culture shock Lee underwent when he came to New York, still wearing the jeans that were common in Texas but unknown in the city, and speaking with a soft southern accent amid the harsh accents of the Bronx. Carro himself had come to New York from Orocovis in his native Puerto Rico at the age of nine, speaking not a word of English, and lived in a tiny Puerto Rican enclave surrounded by black East Harlem. Carro understood what it was like for Lee to be taunted for his accent and dress by New York kids who “wore pegged pants and talked in their own ditty-bop fashion,” but he also understood that not all boys reacted as overtly as he had as a Spanish-speaking nine-year-old injected into East Harlem. Carro told the Warren Commission that looking back, he saw no propensity for violent behavior in Oswald at the time, nothing he could equate with the Puerto Rican and Negro youth with whom he was familiar, kids that cried out to say “that they exist and that they are human beings” and who committed violent acts “just to get their one day in the sun, the day when all the papers will focus on them and say ‘I am me. I am alive.’”
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For the moment, Carro, to Marguerite’s chagrin, made it very clear that Lee would indeed have to report to him once a week, like it or not, and then set out to find an appropriate place for treatment for Lee, which, because of waiting lists, et cetera, he was unable to do.
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In the few remaining weeks of the spring semester, Lee returned to school at P.S. 44 and, even with his long absences from class, managed to finish with generally low but passing marks. Surprisingly, a teacher gave him an “O” or “Outstanding” for “Social-Participation.” This makes no sense since it contradicts all we know about Oswald at the time, and in fact, the very same report refers to him as “Quick-Tempered, Constantly Losing Control, Getting into Battles with others.”
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Indeed, the lack of social participation was a large part of Lee’s problem, in Carro’s view. Lee told him he didn’t like the teachers, the school, or the children. “I like myself,” he said. And his mother? “Well, I’ve got to live with her,” Lee said. “I guess I love her.”
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Marguerite was another problem. Carro felt the boy would respond to therapy, that he needed to be brought out of his shell, but for the therapy to work, Marguerite had to be involved, and Carro realized that Marguerite herself felt threatened, and was convinced that she had nothing to do with Lee’s problems. Even if Lee did go into the therapy he needed, if his mother communicated her own resentment, resistance, and negativity about it to the boy, the time and effort would be wasted. Carro saw that Marguerite was so involved with herself that she would blame anything and anybody but herself for Lee’s problems. These, she insisted, would take care of themselves if the authorities stopped pestering him and her.
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I
n July, Robert came to New York while on leave from the Marine Corps, and was on his way to the Marine base at Opa-locka, Florida. It had been a year since he had left his mother and brother in Fort Worth to enlist, and he had a lot of catching up to do. They were very glad to see him, but, oddly, he heard nothing of the troubles Lee had been having, or the family’s knotty involvement with the Children’s Court. Eventually, Marguerite did mention to Robert that Lee had had to appear before “a Negro judge” because he had been absent from school too much, but Marguerite brushed it off as something that never would have happened in Texas, and Robert did not get the impression it was a serious matter.
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Lee couldn’t wait to take Robert to the nearby Bronx Zoo and, proud of knowing his way around, give him a detailed explanation of the New York subway system. Lee, all of thirteen, took Robert to the top of the Empire State Building, pointed out places of interest, and planned his brother’s itinerary for the next week, from Wall Street to the Museum of Natural History.
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One Sunday Robert went up to Marguerite and Lee’s apartment in the Bronx for a Sunday dinner with a date that John’s wife, Marge, had arranged for him. When John, Marge, and their child arrived shortly thereafter, Lee left the room. Rather than join everyone for dinner, he came to the table, took what he wanted, and went into the next room to watch television. John tried to talk to him, but Lee, uninterested in anything John had to say, shrugged him off.
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When Robert’s leave was up, Lee accompanied him to the bus terminal to see him off to Florida. To Robert, Lee still seemed to be just a normal, healthy, happy thirteen-year-old boy who was enjoying himself.
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Carro continued through the summer to try to find some help for the boy. Early in September, he was turned down by the Salvation Army, which thought Lee, according to his psychiatric report, too severely disturbed for them to be able to help.
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