Michael Paine (engineer)

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Michael R. Paine (born June 25, 1928 in New York, N.Y.) is a retired engineer who worked for Bell Helicopter in Fort Worth, Texas in 1963. He became notable after the assassination of John F. Kennedy because of his and his wife's acquaintance with alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.

[edit] Background

Michael Paine was born in New York in 1928, the son of Lyman Paine and his first wife Ruth Forbes Paine. He attended Harvard University and Swarthmore College though he did not graduate. On December 28, 1957, Paine married Ruth Avery Hyde in Pennsylvania.

In 1958 Paine became employed at Bell Helicopter through his mother's second husband Arthur Young, designer of the first commercial helicopter, the Bell 47. The following year the Paines moved to Irving, Texas when Michael began work at a Bell Helicopter facility in Fort Worth.

In late 1962 Michael Paine left the family home and moved into an apartment in Grand Prairie. According to the author Jim Bishop (The Day Kennedy Was Shot), it was a "friendly estrangement".

Ruth Paine continued to live in Irving and at a party in February, 1963 she was introduced to Marina Oswald and Lee Harvey Oswald by George De Mohrenschildt. On 24th April, 1963, Marina and her daughter went to live with Ruth Paine. Lee Harvey Oswald rented a room in Dallas but stored some of his possessions in Ruth Paine’s garage. Ruth also helped Oswald to get a job at the Texas School Book Depository.

While Ruth Paine was herself a confirmed Quaker and active in the Young Friends Committee of North America, Michael said it was "not quite correct"^[1] to describe himself as a Quaker, but he was interested in the Quaker religion and the social circles that her wife brought him in contact with. He was no easier to pinpoint politically: he was a member of the ACLU^[1] but also attended an introductory meeting of the John Birch Society. He actually brought Oswald to an ACLU meeting in Dallas, at which he said Oswald remarked that "he thought President Kennedy was doing quite a good job in civil rights", which, he noted, "was high praise coming from Lee."^[1] According to Paine, this was the only time Oswald had made mention of JFK during the time of their acquaintaince.

The testimony of Michael Paine would later become a central feature of the Warren Commission's investigation of the assassination, particularly in regard to the presence of the purported assassination rifle in the garage of Paine's Irving residence.