Personal | Kent State Shootings

May 4, 2011

Growing up, I had heard numerous stories about my Dad’s somewhat wild youth. He grew up in St. Clairsville, Ohio and was quite ornery. For his 8th grade science fair project he made a distillery to make moonshine. He would tell me tales of how he and his friends would sneak into nearby strip mines and steal dynamite and blow things up later. When he reached his teenage years, he grew even more rebellious but one thing remained the same – he was always dedicated to what he believed in. He was a 3 year letterman in the pole valut – a prior unheard of achievement at St. Clairsville since most Freshmen at the time weren’t on the varsity track team. During his senior year, the school opted for “school” rings rather than class rings and all of the seniors protested by not joining any sports. He may not have got a 4 year letter in the pole vault but he did get a class ring for the following year of students. The summer before he started college, he roamed around the country with his friends and wound up in a field in New York and attended Woodstock. They didn’t have tickets and ended up being able to park and pitch their tent at the farmers house in trade for my Dad milking their cows. I always loved hearing all of the stories about my Dad and where he was during this historic time in our nation. However no story would really be more wow-worthy to my younger self than the story of the Kent State Shootings (although, the Woodstock stuff was a close second).

On May 4th, 1970 my Dad was wandering around Kent State with some friends. They attended the protests that had been going on all morning but around noon decided they were hungry and headed off to a local bar for some beer and food. During this time, the infamous shootings occurred killing four and wounding nine others. People started racing into the bar, screaming and crying over what had happened and my Dad – along with his friends – were all stunned to hear what they had missed. At the time, they were typical teenagers and more upset they missed something than realizing that it may have been pure luck that they missed it.

I had heard this story many times in my youth – usually every time the anniversary came around. However, it wasn’t until this past winter that it all really hit home. My father had recently purchased his Canon FT SLR camera and had brought it along that day loaded with color Kodachrome. I had no idea until recently I was scanning slides that I had found intermingled with other images of his childhood that I had received after his mother’s death. There are 6 images in total from that fateful day in Kent and even though it has been 3 months since I found these images, I’m still stunned that my father snapped images of that historical day. I just got all of the copyrights back so today seemed like the perfect day to showcase my Dad’s images.

student protesting at kent state university in 1970