Larry L. Rose

Thursday, May 4, 2000

Kent State shootings shocked Viet vet

  It was 1969. Student anti-war demonstrators were shutting buildings on American campuses. I didn't have plans beyond finishing my tour of duty in Vietnam, but I did want a college education.

Photo by Larry Rose

Officer in a Jeep tells students they are an unlawful assembly and they must disperse. After rocks were thrown at the officer, the Jeep returned to the guard area, and troops were ordered into a line of march.

  I grew up in Florida. I went to 10 schools in 12 years because my salesman father moved frequently. I worked full time to take courses at a few Florida universities but could see that I couldn't manage both the job and the coursework.
  So there I was in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, reading one of the infrequent Stars & Stripes to come along.
  A news brief caught my eye. The student body of Kent State University voted never to shut down any buildings in protest.
  I'd never been to Ohio, but I thought it might be nice to attend a small college populated by earnest students.
  In time, I returned to Florida, packed up and headed for Kent, Ohio.

Photo by Larry Rose

Ohio National Guardsmen fire tear gas toward students at Kent State as the troops begin their march across the University Commons.

  The university was not small. It had more than 20,000 students in 1970.
  The surrounding population was highly conservative; the student body was mainly conservative. But, surprisingly, the university was the stopping off point between coasts for Yippie Jerry Rubin and other radical anti-war leaders.
  I listened to one Rubin speech. He said that if you weren't ready to kill your parents, you weren't ready for the revolution. Various speeches, on the outer grounds of the university, drew 50 to a couple of hundred people. The crowds were more docile than some government meetings in Corpus Christi.
  There was a protest called one day to bury the Constitution. I photographed the 10 to 12 people, mostly journalists, who showed up for the event. I wondered if many skipped it because they realized that what was being buried was what allowed them their freedom to bury the Constitution, their freedom to burn the flag, their freedom to speak their minds, no matter how much others disagreed. America gave them that opportunity, and here they were demonstrating against the very principles that made our country free, vibrant and special.

Photo by John Filo

Mary Vecchio kneels over the body of student Jeffrey Miller at Kent State on May 4, 1970.

  The speeches and anti-war activities, in the overall scheme of life at the university, seemed minor. The confrontations were happening elsewhere, not at Kent State University.
  During a small group discussion in philosophy class, the subject of protests came up. I asked a student who attended the meetings why there was any unrest on the campus. What would keep students happy, I asked.
  Nothing, he said, taken aback by my naivete. "It's all about action. We want action."
  Soon after that, some students poured out of bars in downtown Kent, set fires in the street and ran through town breaking windows. The next night, a wooden ROTC building on campus was burned. A unit of the Ohio National Guard, called out to protect overpasses during a trucking strike, was sent to the campus.
  May 4, 1970, was a warm, sunny spring Monday in Kent, Ohio. At midday, classes broke for lunch. The layout of the campus, as well as the attraction of the rolling green Commons, brought many students to this central location.
  At the top of the Commons, called Blanket Hill, looking down and across its slope, a viewer's gaze ended at the other side, about 150 yards away. National Guard troops were stationed around the charred remains of the ROTC building. This was the first view for many students of the uniformed, rifle-carrying soldiers on campus. The sight stopped people in their tracks. Some wanted to go to the cafeteria, but that way went toward the Guardsmen. Some students laid down on the grass to get some sun. Others just gawked.
  As more and more students heading for the Commons stopped, the crowd grew. But not many tried to cross.
  Some Guardsmen hopped into a jeep, drove across the Commons and told the students they were an unlawful assembly and had to disperse. Students looked at one another. An unlawful assembly at lunch hour on the Commons? At that point, aside from the Guardsmen on campus, students were going about their business as usual.
  Then a few people showed up carrying dry-cleaning bags. The jeep came around with the same command and a few people threw rocks. The jeep headed back, an order was given, a line of Guardsmen advanced onto the Commons and fired tear gas. The wind was blowing in the soldiers' faces, so a few daredevil students ran to the canisters and threw them back. More people arrived and they began taunting the Guard.
  From the Taylor Hall porch overlooking the Commons, the non-threatening events looked like a Fellini movie. A crowd of students were where they normally were at that time of day, now standing as observers, some young antagonists, a couple with clear dry-cleaner bags over their heads, and others yelling at and harassing the soldiers. And the military unit, not trained for civil disturbances, firing teargas that blew back on them.
  Then the Guardsmen advanced to disperse the crowd. They came up Blanket Hill on a hot day in gas masks, past Taylor Hall, out onto the rugby field and blocked by a chain link fence. So they stopped and stood there, on the flat, low ground of the field. Fewer than a dozen people started throwing rocks at their flank. The throwers were 50 yards away.
  Finally, the unit headed back the way it came and stopped on a knoll next to Taylor Hall, where some Guardsmen turned and opened fire.
  Four students were killed and nine were wounded.
  May 4, 1970. It was a day some news reports mistakenly called an anti-war protest. At Kent State, that day wasn't, but like highly charged events, there's disagreement on that. After all, how could students have been shot if there wasn't a violent demonstration?
  There were newspaper photographers and there were student photographers there that day, but after the shooting, word spread not to take film to the local newspaper, that police were there confiscating film. I called the Akron Beacon Journal. They said they had all the film they needed. So I processed the film in my bathtub. Another student, John Filo, drove to a small newspaper in western Pennsylvania to process his film. The little paper kept trying to get Filo's photos onto the AP photo wire but big newspapers were sending their own material. Finally, Filo's pictures got onto the wire. The bigger papers were told to wait. Filo's shot of Mary Vecchio kneeling in horror over a shot and bleeding student later was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.
  Vecchio wasn't a Kent student; she was just a 14-year-old child of the late '60s, early '70s, and passing through. I didn't see Mary Vecchio after that photo until about four years later, at our home in South Florida. She wondered if someone would be interested in doing a book about her. I thought not. Four years later, she was still searching, for something. Maybe someone did a book, I don't know. I was one of four Kent students selected to work for James Michener for his book, "Kent State: What Happened and Why."
  In general, when people are interviewed, they often hold back, not telling all, or trying to shade the truth to their own advantage. Sometimes it's deliberate; sometimes it's their inhibitions. But it's part of what makes a reporter's job so difficult, trying to get past inhibitions, trying to get to the truth. But that's the way life is, except at Kent State after the shootings.
  I found that those of us on our team often were the first journalists to get to people, and they poured their hearts out, saying amazing things. They wanted to talk and talk and talk. They told about who was downtown starting fires and provided other unexpected information. But later when I returned for followup interviews, almost every one had changed. The walls were up, the early statements denied. I've never seen a similar situation in my career.
  I have not talked about or written about my Vietnam experience. Neither have I felt like reliving that May 4, 1970, day in Ohio when four students were killed and nine wounded. Kent State University scheduled major events this week and asked former students to return. I just couldn't.
  I haven't played the record that was included in our school yearbook that year; it's a recording of the sounds of the gunfire. And I haven't even been able to look for my small contributions in Michener's book. I just haven't been able to read it.
  May 4, 1970, 11 days before two young men were killed and 12 students wounded by police gunfire at Jackson State University.
  

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