http://www.metrosantacruz.com/metro-santa-cruz/04.28.10/news-1017.html
On the 40th anniversary of Kent State, a Santa Cruz writer who was
there looks back on the military action that stunned the nation
By Lois Van Buren
4/28/10
"Everyone has a moment in history which belongs particularly to him.
It is the moment when his emotions achieve their most powerful sway
over him, and afterward when you say to this person, "the world
today" or "life" or "reality," he will assume that you meant this
moment, even if it is 50 years past." -- John Knowles, 'A Separate Peace'
--
A STRIKING feature of the natural world in Kent, Ohio, is its black
squirrels. Each fall, new students arriving at Kent State University
notice these uniquely colored little creatures within a day or two,
and inquiries soon follow. They're told that a dozen or so black
squirrels were conscripted from Canada by a university groundskeeper
in 1961. His reason for recruiting these rodents eludes the
inquisitive, since no one seems to know. What is known for sure is
that these lovable little varmints have proliferated to the point of
being ubiquitous, so much so that in 1981 an annual Black Squirrel
Festival was established as part of Kent State's welcoming
festivities for new students. That was long after my time at Kent
State. I was a new student at that Midwestern campus in the fall of
1969, and like everyone else I took note of the black squirrels.
Except for one prescient night, most of that year went merrily by, a
superbly orchestrated postponement of responsibility. That one night,
Dec. 1, a single serious moment peeking around the corner of all
those untroubled hours of university life, was the night the draft
lottery was held. I remember it clearly. All the girls in the dorm
huddled around a radio in the lobby to listen for our boyfriends'
birth dates to be called. Other than that, we displayed with casual
panache the blissful ignorance expected of college freshmen by taking
pleasure not only in the natural world but in the social and academic
worlds as well, all three fusing to make our one utopia. Then, a few
months later, I met up with my particular moment in history.
It was the evening of April 30, 1970, a Thursday. In the middle of a
film festival that had been going on all week, someone from the
projection room interrupted with the announcement, "We've just
learned that Nixon has sent troops into Cambodia." The atmosphere of
the auditorium had been quite the party, so the seriousness with
which the statement was made didn't register. We'd been acting like
kids, throwing popcorn and paper airplanes, applauding, hissing and
booing, and shouting out comments. The film we were watching, Bambi
Meets Godzilla, had sent our already high spirits over the top.
But when the projector was turned off and the statement was repeated,
my feelings changed from playful to shocked and hurt. I didn't know
it yet, but that announcement would fix the moment in my personal
history, much like the announcement of President Kennedy's
assassination had fixed the moment in many people's personal
histories seven years before, when I was 13. Following that incident,
I had seen stunned teachers and crying girls in the hall, but felt
nothing. Here, at 19, I did have feelings for my country, my
homeland. Something like Nixon going into Cambodia, a decision of
such magnitude, went straight to the heart.
The next morning I walked over to The Hub, a popular meeting place on
campus, to hear the latest news of the war. I ran into a young woman
professor. "What are we going to do?" I said. "Here. You can start
with these," she replied, handing me a stack of flyers. They were a
declaration by some of the professors who opposed entering Cambodia.
Included was an announcement that they were going to bury the U.S.
Constitution on the commons, near the Victory Bell, at noon that day,
Friday. As I walked away, already distributing the leaflets, she
called after me, "You know, something else you can do is play your
music loud. Jefferson Airplane. Loud." This I did. At noon I went
over to the commons. There was a speech or two, crowds of people, and
that was that.
I met up with friends in a third-floor apartment near town, in one of
those big old houses that get split up into rooms for students. We
were well into our usual Friday night revelries when a fellow
stumbled breathlessly up the stairs shouting, "The revolution's
started! The revolution's started!" Excited, we went down, all in a
bunch, to see what was going on.
A large group of students had gone into the town of Kent to stir the
pot of anti-war sentiment, it seemed. There was a lot of running and
yelling, and the police were out. For me, going into the streets,
observing the crowd, rekindled my desire to do something about the
war, but I had no bones to pick with the shopkeepers of Kent so I
went home and went to bed.
Very early Saturday morning, some friends who'd stayed up all night
shook me awake with the words, "You've got to see this." As we walked
across campus, we saw a soldier running with a cup of coffee. We
followed a short distance behind, like spies in a juicy novel. When
he mounted a small hill, we hid down low behind it. Then we crawled
over the rise and saw what looked like an encampment. We couldn't
believe our eyes. That was the first evidence of a military presence.
To my knowledge there hadn't been any outright rioting, but some
windows had been broken and the fear of what might happen had
obviously prompted a call for backup. Maybe the revolution is
starting, I thought.
On Saturday afternoon, the campus was in a state of nervous
anticipationof what, no one was sure. Rumors circulated that there
was going to be another gathering that evening. Rumor became reality.
As we stood on the commons, waiting for something to happen, someone
near me, looking over at the ROTC building, got the idea to burn it
down. That sounded like fun. There was a motorcycle parked nearby,
and a couple of us thought, "Gee, you know, we could siphon some gas
out of the tank and splatter it all over the building." There was a
dumpster next to the ROTC building. Someone else thought we could get
the trash in it going with a rag soaked in gasoline from the
motorcycle, and then push it into the building to see if that would
do the job. I had not been what you'd call a radicalized student, but
in less than 24 hours I was swept up in the political current,
concocting the burning of buildings.
While we were thinking, others were acting, and the fire department
was called out. The crowd tried hard to cut the fire hose they had
placed on the field next to the ROTC building. It was pretty tough
stuff, but we pulled off some slashes. There was a photographer
present. By the look of his camera, he was a professional. He was
trying to take pictures of what we were doing when some of the
students struggled with him for the camera, got him to the ground,
and took it. An older woman saw this and cried out, "Let's keep it
calm. Please, let's keep it calm." I was moved by the pain in her
face. I had never experienced such violence before, but it seemed
maybe she had.
A line of people, the length of the field, held onto the fire hose,
trying to keep it from the firefighters as we continued trying to cut
it. It was heavy and we were clumsy, so our efforts were ineffectual.
The crowd, by now a mob, decided to march downtown, and by "decided"
I mean that they followed whoever had the loudest voice and the most
aggressive manner. A fellow I knew, who had literally starved himself
to get out of the draft, was leading the crowd downtown, creating a
path of destruction as he went. Some looted parking meters. Others
threatened cars that were in the wrong place at the wrong time. One,
with a family inside, was close enough for me to catch the mom's eye.
She hurriedly locked her door and had her children do the same. The
fear on her face startled me.
That night I returned to campus and saw that the ROTC building was
now in full blaze. Somehow, somebody had had success in the effort.
For several hours, everyone there stared, mesmerized by the fire.
When it was nothing more than a pile of burnt rubble, we were herded
back to the dorms. A group of us got caught in The Pit, the central
area of one of the dorm complexes. Jammed together and fearful of
more of the tear gas that had been directed our way that afternoon,
we could have succumbed to paranoia. Instead, guitars and drums
appeared and we partied. All night long helicopters flew by. They
were loud, and their searchlights in the dorm windows kept us awake.
We thought we were under siege, but it seemed more like a siege in a
toy war. Cowboys and Indiansthis is how we spoke of it.
Sunday morning a convoy of trucks and army tankstanks!moved slowly
down the main street of Kent. Now we were calling it the Boy Scout
Jamboree, but it was nothing of the sort. It was the National Guard,
our citizen soldiers, the ones we call to action during national
emergencies. But we were just America's kids. How could this be a
national emergency? In fact, while we waited outside of Kent Hall to
hear the outcome of the negotiations taking place that afternoon,
some of us girls flirted with the Guardsmen. They were from Akron,
only 10 miles from Kent. One of them was cute. As I put flowers in
the muzzle of his rifle, I looked into his eyes and realized that he
was as young as I.
In the evening, a group of us conducted a sit-in at an intersection
near the entrance to campus. For what seemed like hours, we waited
for an official who, we had been told, would come and talk to us.
Then I noticed Guardsmen at the back edges of the crowd, quietly
surrounding us. Others noticed it, too. Mayhem again. We'd run so
much over the weekend that the feeling of being chased became a
feeling of being hunted. At one point, we'd actually stampeded a
Cyclone fence down because it blocked the only way out. Unarmed, the
thought of fighting never arose.
A rally had been scheduled for Monday, and despite an injunction, it
took place. I don't know what we expected to come out of it or how we
were planning to resolve the situation. I went down to the commons
when all of a sudden we were running again, presumably just ahead of
the next barrage of gas vapors. But then I heard pinging and
something whoosh by my head. I looked to my left and saw a car window
shatter. I looked to my right and saw a student fall. I heard someone
yell, "They're shooting! Get down!" I felt something hit my leg. I
dove under a bush.
Panic was in the air. Though everyone was crying and calling out to
their friends, a strange silence had settled on the whole area. It
was then that I wanted to shoot whoever was behind me because that's
where the National Guard was, where Nixon was, where my country was,
and I hated them. I wanted to kill and I knew I could. If I'd had a
gun in my hand, I would have been shooting blindly, I'm certain of
it, and that moment stands by itself, separate from all else.
Turning, I stared in the direction of the onslaught, but the only
thing I could see was the movie screen of my mind. On it was footage
of me in third or fourth grade, standing with all of my classmates,
reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. But now, suddenly, I had been
stripped of everything, of all those beliefs that had protected me.
I watched one of the four die. Some people were stooping over her. A
guy wiped out her mouth, flinging pink and white matter from his
hand. Maybe she had vomited, or maybe it was flesh and guts, I wasn't
sure. He tried to give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. I watched,
but it was not a person I was watching. It was a biological organism.
It was a body straining hard to breathe, or maybe that was the futile
breaths of her rescuer, I wasn't sure. He lifted his head and said,
"She's gone." My first thought was that she'd fainted. Then I
understood she was dead.
In a daze, I also watched as a friend of mine, Scott, was taken away
on a stretcher. He had been shot in the neck.
Those of us left behind after the ambulances drove off tried to have
some kind of civil discussion about what to do next, but it was no
use. We disbanded. A bulletin went out over a loudspeaker telling
everyone to leave. We were to take only as many belongings as we
could carry and go home. No one wanted to get shot at again, so
orders were peacefully followed. Cars were packed. My friend Wendy
and I got a ride together. Once we got out of town, we hitchhiked the
rest of the way to our parents' homes in New Jersey. That was it for
the year at Kent. Campus closed. Exams were sent through the mail.
By 1998 I had become a respectable wife, mother, and small business
owner. That year my son Austin and I took a road trip across the
country, which included a visit to Kent so that I could see the May 4
Memorial and he could see the place so significant in his mom's life.
It had been almost 30 years since I'd been there, and at first
nothing looked the same. Then, as my mind adjusted, I began to
recognize many of my old haunts. After a nostalgic lunch at Jerry's
Diner, where I'd worked the graveyard shift, we drove up to campus.
I had been a part of what happened there, yet I felt a stranger to
its memorial. Uncertain of the way, I led my son tentatively along
the path leading to the plaza. There were granite tributes to the
dead here in Ohio, and daffodils had been planted in remembrance of
those lost in Vietnam, one for each of the fallen. The unyielding
rock, the yellow blossoms that came to life each springthese
symbols, together here, linked the student and the soldier in the
ideals of their youth.
I caught sight of some pamphlets and took one. It included a
recounting of the weekend's events so similar to my own recollection
that I felt I'd been consulted on its writing. Suddenly, studying the
pamphlet's map of the site, I did not feel so alone in my pilgrimage.
As I arrived at the spot where I stood when the shooting stopped, I
looked at the map's 13 circled letters, A through M, denoting the
locations where the nine wounded and four dead had fallen. How close
I had been!
Now, at the 40-year mark, am I the only one who wonders if black
squirrels romp among the 58,175 daffodils on a hill in Kent, Ohio?
Can my memories be woven with others' into a cohesive story of
innocence, rage, sorrow, and healing? Or are they a heart-shaped
balloon, cut loose, drifting, lifting, floating higher and higher
into the atmosphere? Someone sees it. She points. The day goes on.
--
Lois Van Buren, a resident of Santa Cruz County since 1977, is a
first-time author. Read a longer version of this piece, an excerpt
from her novel 'Distraction,' online at http://news.santacruz.com/.
.
