Gail Fenley Rothstein Oral History

The Museum's Sarah Fenley Collection (1995.030) includes numerous reporter's notebooks belonging to the late Bob Fenley, including those used during his coverage of the Kennedy assassination and Jack Ruby trial. The collection also includes press badges, newspapers, magazines and books. As discussed during this interview, donor Sarah Fenley (1930-2004) was Gail Fenley Rothstein's mother. Rothstein's father, Robert Gene "Bob" Fenley (1927-1989) was a reporter at the Dallas Times Herald from 1955 to 1967. He then became the director of medical information at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas from 1969 until his passing in 1989. - Stephen Fagin, Curator

Robert Gene "Bob" Fenley's testimony before the Warren Commission, taken on July 14, 1964 in Dallas, appears in Warren Commission volume 11 from pages 314 to 318. Fenley was primarily questioned about an encounter he had following the assassination with a Dallas Western Union employee named C.A. Hamblen. According to Fenley, Hamblen volunteered to him that Lee Harvey Oswald had come into his Western Union office and either sent a telegram or cashed a money order. The Warren Commission took testimony from Mr. Hamblen a few days later, on July 23, who suggested that Bob Fenley was mistaken in his recollection because Hamblen only thought the individual in question looked like Oswald. Contrary to Mr. Fenley's testimony, Hamblen said, "I wouldn't say that it was Lee Oswald. I would say it was someone that resembled him from the picture that I had seen in the paper and on TV." - Stephen Fagin, Curator