This is a follow article to my original piece about Oswald’s tombstone. Tomorrow I will be posting an update on my travels to Boston and New York and my exclusive interview with Roger Wheeler’s son David. Stay tuned.
Unsolved mysteries abound….
Welcome back. Saturday afternoon was special in many ways at Oral Roberts University’s Mabee Center and I wasn’t alone in my thoughts as 7,745 other people watched basketball with me.
Over the last thirty-five years the Mabee Center has hosted not only basketball but has also filled its 11, 300 seat auditorium with big names stars like Tom Jones, Elvis Presley and Reba McIntyre. Many people may not realize that there is also a large Conference and Banquet Center attached to the building that can accommodate everything from business conferences to elegant weddings. On this particular day, basketball had everyone’s attention and this televised game was the final home game for Dominique Morrison, a Kansas City who has come within three games of breaking the school record of 128 starts. Although I have been to the Mabee Center many times in my life this was only my second game of the season and the love shown by the fans for this young man could bring a grown man to tears.
The accomplishments of Morrison and his two high school friends who followed him to Tulsa, Roderick Pearson and Michael Craion, have filled a whole trophy cabinet at ORU.
With four straight conference titles and three straight tournament appearances, Morrison has become the seventh all time scorer in school history and even has his own bobble head doll. All of this is leading up to what I think will be great success at the Big Dance during March Madness.
This week also brought me the news that Lee Harvey Oswald’s tombstone has again mysteriously been stolen. Three years ago I wrote about the first theft of Oswald’s original tombstone by two local Bartlesville youths on November 23, 1967. The marker was brought back here in the trunk of their VW bug and a few days later everyone from the F.B.I .to the Secret Service was looking for them here.
Well it’s happened again. It was reported in the Dallas Morning News that apparently after the Bartlesville boys returned the tombstone to Oswald’s mother, Marguerite, she hid it under her house. When Marguerite Oswald died in 1981 the house was sold and three years later the tombstone was found under the house. David Card’s parents bought the house and now he is claiming that he owns the tombstone because his parents are deceased and he and his step sister inherited all their property. Wayne Lensing who operates a small private museum in Roscoe, Illinois has the tombstone on display there and claims he bought it from Johnny Holly’s widow. Johnny Holly was David Card’s cousin and was supposed to be keeping the tombstone for him. Now David is determined to get the tombstone back. With the Bartlesville connection you may be interested in this odd piece of history surrounding Lee Harvey Oswald’s stolen marker.
Go to www.originalbuffalodale.com to read my original story and see the January 26th issue of the Dallas Morning News to learn more about these recent developments.
Till next time, I’ll see ya down the road….