SANTA ROSA, Calif. — The words that come to mind are peace, serenity and beauty. It is here, in the foothills of California wine country, that Ruth Paine has chosen to make her home, in a Quaker retirement community, far from the sound and fury of Nov. 22, 1963.
Almost 59 years have passed since a sniper, firing from a sixth-floor window in Dealey Plaza, killed America’s 35th president, John F. Kennedy. Paine, who recently turned 90, voted for Kennedy, but for her, the news of his murder was deeply personal.
At the time, Paine was living in a small suburban home in Irving, Texas. Estranged from her husband, she and her son and daughter were sharing the two-bedroom, one-bath house with a 22-year-old mother of two girls, a toddler and infant. The young mother, a Soviet emigre named Marina Oswald, was, because of money woes, apart from her husband, who in more ways than one was struggling.
