At 1 PM on Wednesday,
June 13, 1962, amidst an unusually heavy downpour, the SS Maasdam docked at Pier B in Hoboken, New Jersey as it had many
times before and continued to for several years hence. She was a fine ship,
part of the prestigious Holland-America Line, and amongst its passenger roster
this day was an oddly attired young man, his bride of fourteen months, and an
infant girl who couldn’t help but glare and screech at the stormclouds raging
above.
Despite every
observance to the contrary, history was indeed being written in Hoboken on June
13, 1962, but until now, the entire story has never, ever been told.
After having
mysteriously defected to the then Soviet Union whilst on Marine duty in the
South Pacific, Lee Harvey Oswald seemed to have remained in Russia only long
enough to renounce his American citizenship, attempt suicide, take a young
bride in Minsk, then perform an abrupt about-face of conscience and petition to
return to the very country he had just made such a big fuss over denouncing.
With a Russian wife and newborn daughter in tow, despite this being the very
height of the Cold War, the Oswalds had absolutely no difficulties whatsoever
in securing permission – and even Government funding – for a journey back to
the U.S. in May of 1962. A mere four weeks later, the Maasdam deposited this motley trio on the wrong side of the Hudson.
It was then that a
man known as Spas T. Raikin, who depending on which blogs you consult was
either a representative of the Traveler’s Aid Society or a high-ranking member
of an anti-Communist emigré group with FBI links, met the young family and
invited them to partake in refreshments at the piano bar of the Redwood Lounge,
just a short walk up Third. There, to the strains of “St. James Infirmary,” it
was decided Lee’s wife and child should take a room for the night at the nearby
Meyer Hotel before continuing on to Texas the following morning.
Raikin had other plans for the man of the house, it
seems.
A late-afternoon
bar-crawl along Hudson Street (then nicknamed The Barbary Coast for its
preponderance of watering holes) seems to have strangely endeared the usually
suspicious Oswald to his traveler’s aide, so much so that Lee readily agreed to
accompany Spas into the nearby Lackawanna Rail Terminal. Apparently oblivious
to the rush-hour crush, the two lingered here for several hours, darting in and
out of Duke’s Pool Room where, as if by pre-arrangement, a third man suddenly
joined the proceedings. Revealed here for the first time, Oswald was now
escorted outside into a waiting maroon Lincoln Continental with New York plates
and driven to the far end of town, Fourteenth and Washington to be exact, to
the site of the infamous Madison Hotel.
Hudson County’s most
notorious flophouse, where furnished rooms were rented in eight-hour shifts to
visiting seamen and their playmates, the Madison provided an incongruously
seedy backdrop to a rendezvous of then-unimaginable historical import. For it
was here, very late on the night of June 13, 1962 that Lee Harvey Oswald first
came face-to-face with the man who would put into motion a tragic chain of
events which would culminate less than a year and a half later in no less than
the death of American Camelot and the squandering of an entire generation’s
spiritual innocence.
Despite an
over-abundance of adventure and intrigue in his short life already, Oswald was
scarcely prepared to break conspiratorial pasta with the man who now beckoned
him forward to a rickety table in the corner of the Madison Lounge. Oswald had
seen this man before: not in person of course, but on the television, in the
magazines, and even on the silver screen. Why, even his friends in Russia knew
of this man; this legendary American who forever seemed larger than life and
was now involved, it transpires, in an escapade that over-shadowed even his
greatest achievements in the entertainment field.
Young Lee Harvey’s
eyes remained transfixed as the envelope now changed hands and his mission was
described in ominous detail by the man whose voice tonight sounded a far cry
from its usual silky radio baritone.
A minute later, the
man quickly stood, threw a coat over his shoulder, and darted towards the
Madison’s side entrance, but not before tossing a wink and an oddly reassuring
grin back at the twenty-two-year-old ex-Marine. “Don’t let me down now,” that
smile seemed to say, and no, history chillingly records, each of us knows only
too well that Lee Harvey Oswald did NOT let Hoboken’s favorite son down.
