Rebecca Matlock - First Moscow Tour (1961-63)

First Moscow Tour (1961-63)

Matlock had two more children during the first tour in Moscow.

I managed to get pregnant while I was in the States. I was in Florida and we were ready to come to Moscow. You can imagine my dilemma there! But I went to Lane Bryant where they make clothes for ladies who are a little bit larger than other ladies, sweaters and all kinds of things which did very nicely for Moscow. And then I had about three hours in New York and I dashed off to Saks Fifth Avenue and went waddling onto the ship loaded with two shopping bags full of maternity clothes for Moscow. Those served me well because I had not one, but two children.

Well David was born in Helsinki, I went to Helsinki with David, and since by then the twins were six, I wanted him to have a little brother right away. Well Joe came a month early so he was born here in Moscow. I wrote up the experience as I usually do when something is extraordinary. It was required reading for many years for people coming to Moscow to find out what it's like to have a child in a Soviet hospital. It's not your usual experience…

Jack Matlock was Vice Consul when they first came to Moscow.

Yes, he was the low man on the totem pole in the Consular Section. The most interesting case we had at that point was a young man who had come to live in the Soviet Union. He married here and had a child, a very young child. And he decided that he was going to go back to America. He came in to get a repatriation loan and to ask for a visa for his wife. Well this young man's name was Lee Harvey Oswald.

Now I think the tragedy is the fact that he did not return after he came to the Consulate a few years earlier to renounce his American citizenship. And in cases like this, the Consul suggests a person think about it for at least 24 hours and then come back. Well he didn't come back, so he was still an American citizen. If he had come back and done what he had originally wanted to do which was renounce his citizenship, then he would not have had the opportunity to kill President Kennedy.

Later, Jack Matlock was promoted to Third Secretary in the Political Section.

In the Political Section then, as now, people worked very, very long hours. I remember we were preparing for a Halloween party at the dacha out of town. We all had our costumes. It was going to be a great party. And on the afternoon of the day the party was going to be, the husbands started calling in and saying that they couldn't make it, including my husband. And we, the wives, were getting more and more angry. We thought that they just didn't want to get dressed in their silly costumes and drive out there. Well it was the Cuban Missile Crisis.