[Sample B: Approval/Signature Sheet] - George Mason University

In Jean Stafford’s profile of Marguerite in A Mother in History, the author clearly
suggested that the alleged assassin’s problems started, like Norman Bates in Psycho, with
mother. As Stafford wrote, “while she [Marguerite] remains peripheral to the immediate
events of the Dallas killings, she is inherent to the evolution of the reasons for them.” 170
The author accepted the official version of Oswald as the lone assassin, and the premise
that “the child is father of the man: we need to know the influences and accidents and
loves and antipathies and idiosyncrasies that were the ingredients making up the final
compound. 171 In her three days interviewing Marguerite, who called herself “a mother in
history,” Stafford found her subject to be obstreperous in defense of her son, adamant in
her claim he was an agent of the U.S. government, keenly interested in making money
from her notoriety, and somewhat addled in her thinking. As Marguerite described
herself to Stafford, “I should say I’m very outspoken, I’m aggressive, I’m no dope. Let’s
face it, if you step on my toes I’m gonna fight back, and I don’t apologize for that.” 172
Certainly, many Americans now believe Marguerite’s claim that her son was
framed, that he may have been a government agent, and that he was not the deranged
“lone nut” of the Warren Commission. However, Marguerite did not come across as a
sympathetic character. She described her son as intelligent and courageous, and rejected
the supposition that Lee was a failure at everything he did, pointing out that he was only
24-years-old when he died. Marguerite also had a singular way of looking at the
170
Jean Stafford, A Mother in History: Three Incredible Days with Lee Harvey Oswald’s
Mother, (New York: Pharos Books, 1992 (1966)), 4.
171
Stafford, 4-5.
172
Stafford, 30.
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