What do yachts have to do with Loren, Marie, and Oswald? A yacht brought together the couple who would meet Lee Harvey Oswald in Russia, a few short years before Oswald would be arrested for assassinating President John F. Kennedy.

Notice that I wrote Uncle Loren, not Loring. Uncle Loren was a bit of a sharp character, as you will see, and for some reason he changed the spelling of his name. I don’t know when, but I remember my grandmother, Loren’s sister, and the other sisters laughing about it, probably before his visit, without Marie, in 1966. Preparing for his visit, my great aunts and grandmother told me all about Loren’s and Marie’s courtship. Stories that I’d heard before, but they now recounted with much laughter.

Uncle Buster (Henry Hyde) was there, too. He had stopped wandering the globe after World War II. He had spent at least part of WWII in London and had a wife in London, who died in the blitz - so romantic. We learned decades later that when he went home to London after the war, a man answered the door. Uncle Buster told the stranger to tell the woman that her husband had dropped by. We never even knew that temporary aunt’s name. Yes, our uncles were characters. Uncle Buster left the room when the sister gang got going.

The love story unfolded thus: in the early 1920s Marie came to New London with an older woman - my grandmother thought the woman was Marie’s mother - and a younger woman from New York, a cousin of ours of some sort. Uncle Loren was in and out of New York to visit the corporate offices of his employer Merrit-Chapman & Scott, and he kept up with his uncles and aunts who had left New London when he was a teenager and prospered in New Haven, and, apparently, New York.

Marie was standoffish and unpleasant, but she was happy to go out on Uncle Loren’s yacht. Impressed with his job and yacht, she married him. After the wedding, Marie was furious to learn that Loren had lied. The yacht belonged to Loren’s boss, who let him use it. Eventually, Loren and Marie moved to Washington state.

Sometime after August of 1961 and before 1963, my family and I visited Connecticut. My father was going unaccompanied to Seoul in the late summer of 1962, so I’m pretty sure it was then, because he wanted to see his mother and sister before leaving. Uncle Loren and Aunt Marie came out from Washington. The sisters tried to be polite, to no avail. Marie spoke to me, and I trailed behind her, fascinated by her beautiful skirt. And asking questions, as always. She evaded many of them, so thinking I wasn’t clear enough, I persisted. I wanted to know about the trip to Russia (or all their globe hoping). Finally, she said that she didn’t want to talk any more and complained to my grandmother. Shooting eye daggers at Marie, my grandmother escorted me out of the room. Mama Betty enjoyed telling family stories and encouraged my questions.

Dad came home from Seoul in the summer of 1963. Before heading to Fort Monmouth, we drove to see Mom’s sister’s family in Irving, Texas. While there, we heard people saying that if Kennedy came to Texas, he’d get shot. That this talk was going on in Irving has been reported in many sources, but at the time, it surprised my family. We had the military respect for the Commander in Chief.

From Texas, we went to see the Connecticut family. Either during that visit in September of 1963 or just after, we learned that Uncle Loren and Aunt Marie had just returned from or were in Texas. Surprised that my father’s family from the coast would visit Texas, where my maternal aunt lived and we had just come from, I asked what part of Texas and why. Dad said that they had friends or, he guessed, relatives in Dallas. I wish I could remember the exact date of this conversation, but it had to occur after we returned from Texas in the late summer of 1963 and before November of 1963, because it didn’t strike us as anything but an odd coincidence. After November of 1963, I didn’t make the connection, but I was only eleven. If Dad did, he never mentioned it. I’ve looked in the declassified papers to see if he was interviewed, but either he wasn’t or it’s not declassified. He would never have told us.

I started by recounting Uncle Loren’s visit to Connecticut in late 1966. As I mentioned, he came without Marie, and everyone was having a great time. My grandmother actually had a highball, as they called it, and got giggly. Sometime during the high spirits, I asked Uncle Loren about his trip to Russia. Friends say I’m a focused person, and I guess this proves it. Uncle Loren looked shocked and turned away. He avoided me for the rest of the visit.

If he didn’t want to discuss his travels, why did Loren tell the family about their trips to Russia and to Texas? I have some ideas about that. But I do know that Dad said that Loren and Aunt Marie went on both trips, and he said they, together, happened to meet Oswald in Russia in a public place. The government never interviewed Loren/Loring, but they did look for him.

(Aunt Marie took the picture below. Lee Harvey Oswald is on the right.)