Among the thousands of non-native English speakers who came to the English Language Institute seeking to master the English language was Marina Oswald, the widow of Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy.
Marina Oswald had moved to the United States with her husband in 1962 after being trained as a pharmacist in Russia. She arrived in Ann Arbor from her home in Dallas for an intensive eight-week course in English instruction in January 1965, two months after Kennedy’s slaying there. She returned to Texas, rejoining her 3-year-old and 1-year-old daughters, after completing her ELI course.
According to reports in the Ann Arbor News, the 23-year-old widow’s first impression of Ann Arbor was about the people: "They are like the weather-crisp and cool. In Dallas, people are warm like the weather."
After her graduation, Oswald was asked to pose for a picture shaking the hand of ELI’s director at the time, Prof. John C. Catford. She reportedly smiled and said, "This will look just like a Russian newspaper picture. They always are filled with pictures of people shaking hands." When a photographer asked her which side of her profile she preferred him to take, she replied, "It doesn’t matter. It is ugly from either side."
The news story continued: "She insisted on posing with her instructor, [the ELI’s] Mrs. Edward M. Anthony. ‘With my favorite teacher,’ Mrs. Oswald said with another smile. And with a final icy glance at the newsmen, she turned with a smile to her classmates."
. . . October 1995
