Musings - on the editor's mind

We all have touchstone moments in our lives, events that affect and shape us and that we carry from our youthful past till the day we die. That defines the term epoch, even if the tragic circumstance occurred at a distance. The shootings at Kent State University on May 4, 1970, “four dead in Ohio” and another nine wounded, is one of my moments.

Monday was the 50th anniversary. For years I had planned to be there. I was there on the 25th anniversary in 1995.

In May 1970 I was 15 and very unaware, wrapped up in basketball and uncertain about girls. The Vietnam War had been a constant nightly news companion for years, but the draft, demonstrations, the invasion of Cambodia, even Richard Nixon was not on my radar screen.

The news came into our house on a black and white portable television, on a metal, wheeled stand. In those days, local TV stations had local reporters covering the local news. Helicopters chasing kids – college students not much older than me, though they were infinitely more aware – through the back allies of Kent, Ohio were caught on newsfeeds beamed across the state to our Toledo home. We watched through the weekend, because May 1, the day of the Cambodian invasion, was a Friday and May 4 a Monday, just like this year.

I remember a post-mortem interview, with a reporter asking a military officer about the shootings and the response: “They were throwing rocks. What were we to do, throw rocks back?” Yes, I thought, throw rocks back.

A very political and calculating Ohio governor, James Rhodes, running scared in a primary election for U.S. Senate, sent in the National Guard, a get tough response to the “bums” that Nixon had called demonstrating students. The one thing the students were smart enough about was staying out of the draft by going to college.

All the students, and the National Guardsmen, too, are forever caught and frozen in black and white photographs.

They were just kids, the killed and wounded. Two killed, William Schraeder and Sandra Lee Scheuer, were on their way to class. The other two killed: Allison Krause and Jeffrey Miller.

No one ever thought that American soldiers would shoot white people. But that time they did.

Afterwards, law and order won the day. Student demonstrations lessened and petered out. The lesson lasted a generation.