Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

Harvey Oswald was short and small throughout his childhood. He would have been about 13 in the above picture. And it was lucky for him (if we can ever apply the word "lucky" to him) that he had a late growth spurt. By 1955, he was 16, and he may have been 5'6", but he may have shorter. 

After that, he reached 5'9", but I consider that a late growth spurt. 

Why was he so scrawny? Was it just genetic? That may have been part of it, but it wasn't all of it. I think it's likely that his biological mother (who was not the short, dumpy Marguerite Oswald of fame) was poorly nourished when she bore him. It was 1939, so wartime, and the living conditions in Eastern Europe, where she was, were bad. There is speculation that he wound up in an orphanage, which meant that his post-uterine nutrition was no better than his intra-uterine nutrition. When you get a bad start in life in that respect, you never fully recover. 

And when Dr. Hartogs interviewed Harvey in New York in the early 50s, he said that he looked like a starving refugee child from the war zone. He pegged it. 

Meanwhile, Lee underwent no such nutritional strain and was beefy by nature.