| May 4, 2010 |
Forty years ago on May 4, 1970, 4 students were killed and 11 injured when the Ohio National Guard opened fire on a students protesting the Vietnam war on the campus of Kent State Univerisy. The shootings divided the USA. Some wondered how a nation could treat its own children in this manner. Others unconditionally accepted whatever decisions were made by the National Guard. College campuses exploded with demonstrations and within a week 100,000 marched on the US capital to protest.
That day four families lost a child.
- Doris and Arthur lost their daughter Allison Krause. Laurel lost her older sister. On her tomb they wrote “flowers are better than bullets” because only a few days before she had placed a lillac in a friendly soldier’s gun barrel using those words.
- Louis and Florence Schroeder lost their son, Bill. Bill Schroeder was an ROTC student who had committed himself to 10 years in his countries service: 4 as a ROTC student, 4 as a full-time officier, and 2 in reserve.
- On the day of the shootings, Elaine Holstein, Jeff Miller’s mother, was listening to the car radio as she drove home. She heard that four had been killed, never dreaming that one would be her own son. They had both been concerned about the tensions, and she decided to ask him to come home. When she got home, she called his fraternity and asked for her son. A boy answered “He’s dead”.
- Sandy Scheuer was simply passing through on her way to class when the bullets began to fly. Her parents were Holocaust refugees who had come to the US expecting to live in a state that would protect them.
Dean Kahler survived the attack but the bullet in his spine put him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. In the years immediately following his parents struggled with overprotectiveness and he worked to overcome his anger at the loss of the use of his legs. Even with the anger, the shooting only served to strengthen his conviction that there must always be an alternative to violence and war. To work through his anger he became active in wheelchair sports and helped out with his school’s disability office.
The political allegiances that split the nation also fed the blame-the-victim mentality that so often affects the survivors of violent crimes. Along side many, many letters of support, Dean Kahler received hate mail. Some letters even wished he had died. Joseph Lewis, Jim Russell, and Robert Stamps, belonged to families that were certain that the National Guard was in the right. Their families responded to their injuries with anger and judgment rather than support.
But loss is only the beginning of the story. Kent State has turned into a historic event because the survivors found ways to turn their loss into both personal and social healing. (more…)
