Dallas.90 They entered the nearby Davy Crockett Elementary School the following September.91

Ekdahl visited Mrs. Oswald on weekends and stayed at Victor Street. 92 By the following year she had resolved her doubts about marrying him, influenced in part by his substantial income 93 and perhaps by the visit some time earlier of his sister, who favored the marriage because of his ill health.94 Explaining that she expected to travel a great deal, Mrs. Oswald tried unsuccessfully to return the older boys to the home in February 1945.95 She and Ekdahl were married in May.96 After a brief honeymoon, they returned to Victor Street.97

Ekdahl got along well with the boys, on whom he lavished much attention.98 John testified that Ekdahl treated them as if they were his own children and that Lee seemed to find in Ekdahl "the father he never had"; John recalled that on one occasion he told Lee that Ekdahl and his mother had become reconciled after a separation, and that "this seemed to really elate Lee, this made him really happy that they were getting back together." 99

Because Ekdahl's business required him to make frequent trips, in September, John and Robert were placed in the Chamberlain-Hunt Military Academy at Port Gibson, Miss.;100 their mother paid the tuition herself, using the proceeds from the sale of the Alvar Street property. 101 They remained at the academy for the next 3 years, returning home only for or vacations. 102 Lee accompanied his parents on their travels.103 Mrs. Myrtle Evans, who had known both Marguerite and Ekdahl before their marriage,104 testified that Marguerite insisted on keeping Lee with her; Mrs. Evans thought that Marguerite was "too close" to Lee and "spoiled him to death," which hurt her marriage to Ekdahl.105

Sometime in the fall after John and Robert were at boarding school, the Ekdahls moved to Benbrook, a suburb of Fort Worth, where they lived on Granbury Road, 106 in a house of stone or brick, set on a large plot of land.107 Records of the Benbrook Common School show Lee's admission into the first grade on October 31; his birth date is incorrectly given as July 9, 1939, his mother presumably having given that date to satisfy the age requirement. 108 On February 8, 1946, he was admitted to the Harris Hospital in Fort Worth with "acute mastoiditis."109 A mastoidectomy was performed without complications, and Lee left the hospital in 4 days.110 (In 1955, Lee indicated on a school form that he had an "abnormal ear drum in left ear," 111 presumably a reference to the mastoidectomy; but when he entered the Marines year later, physical examination disclosed no physical defects.)

The Ekdahls' marriage quickly broke down. Before they had been married a year, Marguerite suspected Ekdahl of infidelity.113 She thought him stingy, 114 and there were frequent arguments about his insistence that she account for her expenditures and his refusal to share his money with her.115 In the summer of 1946, she left Ekdahl, picked up John and Robert at Chamberlain-Hunt, and moved with the boys to Covington, La., 116 where they lived for at least part of the time