Fooled you,  you thought this was going to be about May 4th.   We will get to that but it is really about my first visit to the campus on April 30,  1966.  Four years and four days before May 4th 1970.   I was 15 and it had taken over two years for me to begin fashioning a new identity after it was fractured in 7th grade.  I had managed to cobble together an acceptable mix of aspiring writer and what remained of my jock aspirations with risk-taking bad boy poker player and aspiring career Army officer.  These components provided a decent enough self-image which held up well to all but the most determined attacks.   That was who I was when Nick Moore and I arrived on campus that Saturday morning for Journalism Day.

I discovered this brochure recently while sorting through some of my old Ashland stuff.  It inspired a visit to campus on May 4th 2016 for both the May 4th commemoration services and a less public homage to the 50th anniversary of Journalism Day 1966.  SPA stands for Student Publication Association,  the Northern Ohio Chapter held this event each year for high school journalism students.  It was a full day of lectures, demonstrations (journalistic - not protest), and workshops on the Kent State campus. 

The former student union (now re-purposed and renamed Oscar Richie Hall) was where Nick and I took our two hour lunch break.  Instead of exploring other areas of the campus we found a booth and began playing poker,  we had been playing poker in school all year and considered ourselves expert players.  We almost always carried a deck of cards.  We routinely won and it nicely supplemented our income.  A couple of 15-year-old rubes flashing money around quickly attracted several Kent State students and they joined the game.  I don't think we won a lot but we did all right and we really thought we were big shots sitting there in the student union holding our own with a couple college guys.  We got so caught up in the game that we had to run across campus to be on time for our afternoon workshop in the University Television Studios (the building circled in red).

Cartwright Hall - University Auditorium (first map) was the administration building in 1966.  This is where we assembled as a large group for the opening session and returned in the late afternoon for the closing session.  Just before lunch they put on a dramatized news event on the mall behind these buildings.   This was on the way to the student union across the street.  They did a good job keeping most of the students in this general area as workshops were held in the surrounding buildings;  Kent Hall,  McGilvrey Hall, Van Deusen Hall, and Merrill Hall.  There were two exceptions as Bowman Hall and the afternoon workshop Nick and I had signed up for,  Radio-Television News,  were on the other side of campus.  Although the campus was much smaller in 1966 - it seemed much further then than it did during my Wednesday visit.

This is the building where the television studies were located;  then called the Music and Speech Building.  Wednesday,  as I retraced our path across the commons 50 years before to attend our afternoon workshop,  I marveled a bit at the degree of transformation in the appearance of the Kent State student from 1966 to 1970. 

I recall us pausing to look at the shabby wooden ROTC building; a ROTC scholarship was on my agenda and the woeful look of that building eliminated Kent State on-the-spot from my list of possible colleges.   Scheduled for demolition the building would be burned early in the demonstrations four years later.   We then ran through the area of the commons where the National Guard would retreat after the shootings, which is probably why it seemed vaguely familiar to me during the 1970 newscasts.  If someone had told us in 1966 of the events that would unfold on that ultra-straight campus just four years later we would have told them to stop talking to the Martians living in their tomato plants.   It was unimaginable.

But memories of the campus visit in 1966 would connect to the events in four years and make them a significant influence in my life.

I recall finding the television workshop a source of considerable dismay as I had to confront my innate shyness to appear on camera and seemed poorly matched for such a career.  Yet just three years later at an Eastern college I would find myself pressed into service doing the news broadcasts on the campus radio station and handling the public address duties at home basketball games and wrestling matches.

Taylor Hall viewed from the commons in 2016.  I learned on Wednesday that it was opened in 1967,  helping to clarify whether a portion of the April 1966 Journalism Day had been conducted inside.  As we were potential Kent State journalism majors and it was to house the Journalism program,  the construction site was probably pointed out to us,  building designs shown,  and the building identified by name.  Which would account for it seeming familiar to me when the news of the shootings broke and when I read Michener's book.

The dark spot at the center of the flower is a bullet hole from a shot fired 15 yards further up the slope, obviously an intentional miss.  That and the many bullets that struck parked cars and the surface of the parking lot would indicate that some of the shooters felt compelled (from peer pressure or from orders) to fire,  but refused to aim at people.   Or perhaps those who intended to shoot people wanted to deflect blame and lured the others into firing by claiming that the intention was to just throw a scare into the crowd.  Nobody is telling.

The Prentice Hall parking lot from the vantage point of the shooters,  there is a single person standing vigil in each of the four parking places where a student was killed.  The edge of Taylor Hall is just visible on the left edge of the top photo.  Below that Taylor Hall column on the level of the parking lot was a small company of guardsmen who had been stationed between Taylor and Prentice Halls to prevent students from returning to the commons through the gap between the buildings.  They were much closer to the main body of  students than the guardsmen up here beside the Pagoda (say 60 feet vs 400 feet).   They looked on in stunned amazement as without warning 13 seconds of carnage took place a few feet in front of them.   This is rarely mentioned but I find it the most telling aspect of the entire incident.   A much larger group,  much further away and holding the high ground,  claimed to have fired because of an immediate threat from the students in the parking lot;  while this tiny group simply stood at ready on the side of that same parking lot and held their positions.

When the shooting ended and the main body of guardsmen pulled back,  the squad who had been in the parking lot with the students took a position by Jeff Miller's body.  This accounted for the strangest photo of the entire event,  a handful of bewildered soldiers standing alone in the parking lot more than 200 yards from the rest of their force,  which by that point was out-of-sight and moving away from them on the commons.   If you wondered how (and why) they came down the hill after the shooting, they didn't.   They were already there and were probably even more shocked than the students.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-girl-in-the-kent-state-photo?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us

How do you feel as you cut

Down your children now

And leave them dying

On the grass in the sun

What do you see

When you look at one another

Now?

Tell me old man

Tell me where will you run?

Sing a song

For the children going down

Remember - the ones you know

Remember how we danced

And remember what we sang

In America

So many years ago

      "What If You Knew Her and Found Her Dead on the Ground?"

To most of us Allison became the face we associated with these lyrics.

The standing joke at these May 4th rally's over the years has been the high school photo of a relatively straight looking Jeff Miller,  finally replaced with one more contemporary to 1970.  Just in front of the tree line in the background is the sidewalk Nick and I followed in May 1966 to get to the campus television studio.  Behind that is the student union where we had our poker game.

10 May 2015

On Monday May 4th I drove up to Kent for the 45th anniversary commemoration ceremony.  A rush of emotions

as in many ways Kent State was the most important event in my life,  although I think it was more validation than revelation.  I think that I had long identified with the rebellion shown in "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" which came out when I was in Junior High -  I understood the ending and absolutely connected with the main character (still do),   I just didn't know how it had shaped my world view until May 4, 1970.  The shootings were the most popular murders in the history of the country and the continuing failure to punish those responsible provides an ongoing commentary on the myth that the average citizen places any real value on being part of a society that proudly tolerates dissent.

 Interestingly I have only visited the memorial four times (1973, 1990, 2003, and today) and each time has been during a point of crisis or remake in my life.  During the 2003 visit (I was actually there for some Miami University softball games) I knew that I was going back to school and had ditched my career.  And it occurred to me that I was so lucky to have a chance to embark on a second life,  in contrast to the four murdered students.   That same thought came back to me Monday,  as I begin a third life.   But at least in the intervening years I have found something to help me manage my anger:

“Anger and resentment can stop you in your tracks. That’s what I know now. It needs nothing to burn but the air and the life that it swallows and smothers. It’s real, though – the fury, even when it isn’t. It can change you… turn you… mold you and shape you into something you’re not. The only upside to anger, then… is the person you become. Hopefully someone that wakes up one day and realizes they’re not afraid to take the journey, someone that knows that the truth is, at best, a partially told story. That anger, like growth, comes in spurts and fits, and in its wake, leaves a new chance at acceptance, and the promise of calm. Then again, what do I know? I’m only a child.”

Lavender “Popeye" Wolfmeyer

There is a well made and very moving 2014 documentary called the "Hillsborough Disaster" in the "30 for 30: Soccer Stories" series which has parallels to the aftermath of Kent State.   The documentary looks at the events of 15 April 1989 at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, England which led to the death of 96 football supporters, and the legacy of what is now known as the "Hillsborough Disaster".   The legacy in that case was decades of frustrations for the families of the victims as they sought justice from the government for the negligence that led to and then compounded the scale of that incident, and the defenders efforts to put the responsibility on those who were killed and injured.  It becomes clear as you watch it that justice is not about punishment but about acknowledgement of official blame and that denying that acknowledgement greatly prolongs the grieving process. 

27 Whites, Accused of Carolina School Riot, Lauded by Neighbors

To further put this in perspective,  two months earlier on March 3, 1970 the Lamar Riot in South Carolina took place. The violence occurred when an angry mob of white parents armed with axe handles, bricks, and chains overturned two school buses of black students going to Lamar elementary and high schools in Darlington County.  150 to 200 men and women clashed with about 150 South Carolina highway patrolmen and agents with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED). Demonstrators and police received minor injuries, and flying glass cut some students when the mob smashed the bus windows. One rioter fired a gunshot during the thirty-five-minute fight. Police responded by firing tear gas into the crowd.

https://www.carolinapanorama.com/news/south_carolina/south-carolina-1970-school-bus-assault-survivors-tell-their-story/article_0e5c6198-74bd-11ea-89b5-e337490332af.html

LAMAR, S. C., March 3—A mob of white men stormed three school buses carrying Negro children to a newly desegregated high school here to day and attempted to attack the pupils with ax handles, lengths of chain and stones before the state police dispersed. them with tear gas.

Before scattering, about 200 men overturned two empty school buses and pelted the helmeted police with rocks and sticks.

Several persons suffered mi nor injuries in the melee. Two children were cut in the face by glass when the men smashed bus windows with clubs while they were still aboard the vehicles.

Gov. Robert E. McNair, who last month counseled compliance with the Federal court orders that desegregated two South Carolina school districts, condemned the attack as “an act which defies all human reason and understanding.”