The ad

When this next piece, a 50's-60's advertising mat from Gates, first came to us to document as a Kelly Supply historical document, we'd planned on transcribing the text, maybe trying to use Photoshop to get a detailed photo of the farmer featured in the ad, and then do a little research on the company who made the mat, hoping to learn a bit about the printing process in which it was used. Maybe talk about how these ads were sent to Gates dealers and how the dealers would get them printed up with the dealer's own logo on it. Well, forget all that! Look what we found!

When searching for information on Jaggars-Chiles-Stoval, Inc., the Dallas printing/typography company that built this ad for Gates, we kept seeing references to the Warren Commission Report, the official report on the assassination of JFK. Weird, huh? The explanation as to why follows:

Lee Harvey Oswald found a position on October 12th, 1962 at the graphic arts firm of Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall as a photoprint trainee. The company has been cited as doing classified work for the US government but this was limited to typesetting for maps that were produced in a section to which Oswald had no access. While working for Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall, he may have used photographic and typesetting equipment in the unsecured area to create falsified identification documents, including some in the name of an alias he created, Alek James Hidell.

His co-workers and supervisors eventually grew frustrated with his inefficiency, lack of precision, inattention, and rudeness to others, to the point where fights had threatened to break out. He had also been seen reading a Russian publication, Krokodil, in the cafeteria. On April 1, 1963, after six months of work, Oswald's supervisor terminated Oswald's employment at Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall.

Robert Stovall and other employees who knew and worked with Oswald were called to testify before the Warren Commission, mainly to see if Oswald had come into contact with potentially classified materials, the aforementioned typograhic work for the government, which as it turns out was actually for the Department of Defense. As far as the Commission could tell, and as far as Mr. Stovall testified, Oswald didn't ever work on those jobs.

OK, now all of the above is the "official" story of Oswald's work history with Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall. Some theories point out some other information and testimony that leads to conjecture. For instance, by looking at Oswald's meticulously kept logs (Oswald's signature on one to the left, complete log below), they seem to show a very hard worker who frequently put in extra hours. In fact, he was such a highly regarded employee that he frequently was allowed to work in the building on the weekends, all by himself. So did he see classified material? No one seems to know for sure, but it's doubtful that Mr. Stovall would have wanted to admit as much before the Warren Commission. But some of Oswald's co-workers suggested that might have been the case. The main work that Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall did for the DoD involved maps, including maps of Cuba which Oswald may or may not have memorized. Who knows?

Doesn't it seem odd that a hard worker who worked long hours and kept such meticulous logs would be fired for "inefficiency, lack of precision, (and) inattention". One theory holds that Oswald was let go on April 1st so he could pursue the career picked out for him by the CIA (or other entity): the April 10th attempted assassination of General Edwin Walker. Oh my, this just keeps getting better and better!

Very interesting sidenote: As noted above, Oswald was fired from Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall on April 1, 1963. That happens to be the day after the famous pictures of him holding a rifle in his backyard were taken by his wife, Marina. That is of course assuming that she was actually the person who took the pictures. They could be fakes, right? :)

We found Oswald's daily work logs which were exhibits documented in the Warren Commission Report. You'll of course notice his signature below the Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall letterhead. We looked through them to see if he had "Gates" listed under "customer", but we didn't find anything. Boy, that would have been a find, huh?!

So anyway, who would have thought that an old dealer printing mat for Gates Industrial would have led us here? Phew! Well, that's it for now, feel free to leave comments and thoughts below, or if you know who REALLY shot JFK....actually, it's probably best not to leave that info in the comment box below. Go ahead and email that to us instead.