40 years ago today

[EStreetJoe]

National Guard shoots kills 4 at Kent State. (Thanks to those that pointed out my mistake in rushing to add that one line above the links)

http://www.ohio.com/news/may4th/91726924.html

http://www.ohio.com/news/92678894.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/36921404#36921404

 

[forever_town]

Which was, of course, the impetus for .

 

[part-timer]

A professor I had in college was there and was roommates with one of the four killed. Ironically, the roommate was actually ROTC.

 

[NoOneLikesUs]

This is still a very touchy subject in the region to put it lightly.

 

[TheSportsPredictor]

They shot more than four.

 

[Steak Snabler]

They shot more than four.

Yeah, it was four KILLED.

Gary Pinkel and Nick Saban were both football players at Kent State back then. Here's a couple of stories about their memories of that day:

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/sports/stories.nsf/mizzou/story/9C3ED95E527B614E862577190009514C?OpenDocument

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/columnist/lopresti/2010-05-03-kent-state-shooting-anniversary_N.htm

And Joe, thanks for the links, especially the first one. I love reading first-day news accounts of big events like that.

Also FT, I remember seeing an interview with David Crosby on the 30th anniversary of Kent State. He said that a couple of days after the shooting, one of the CSNY guys came by the place they all hung out back in those days and brought the Newsweek featuring the famous Kent State photo on the cover.

Crosby said Young grabbed the magazine and his guitar, walked outside toward the woods, and came back a half-hour later with "Ohio" written.

 

[Bob Cook]

This is still a very touchy subject in the region to put it lightly.

I'll take a wild guess and say it'll be a touchy subject here, too.

Also among the students on the Kent State campus that day: Jack Lambert and the members of Devo.

 

[Steak Snabler]

I wanna say Chrissy Hynde was also a KSU student at the time.

 

[Bob Cook]

I wanna say Chrissy Hynde was also a KSU student at the time.

Joe Walsh wasn't going to Kent State, but I believe he was living in Kent at the time.

 

[Steak Snabler]

Slight correction --- Pinkel was a high school senior living in nearby Akron at the time, but he had already committed to play football at Kent State at the time of the shooting.

 

[forever_town]

I wanna say Chrissy Hynde was also a KSU student at the time.

As I remember it, she was talking about being on campus during half term when the shootings happened.

 

[spnited]

One of the most powerful images of my (long) lifetime.

I heard CSNY perform "Ohio" live for the first time about a month later at the Fillmore East.

 

[Bubbler]

I lived in Akron for a while during the 90s on summers away from Ball State. I worked with a lot of KSU students/grads.

It was sad how blase they were about the incident. They treated it with disrespect, a kind of whiny, "Why is this the way our campus is defined? It happened (then) 25 years ago" kind of vibe.

 

[I Should Coco]

I lived in Akron for a while during the 90s on summers away from Ball State. I worked with a lot of KSU students/grads.

It was sad how blase they were about the incident. They treated it with disrespect, a kind of whiny, "Why is this the way our campus is defined? It happened (then) 25 years ago" kind of vibe.

That's interesting, Bubs, and kind of depressing.

It's true that Kent State was far from the only campus that saw protests -- there were huge protests in Madison, Berkeley, the East Coast, etc. But the tragedy of National Guardsmen shooting and killing protesters at Kent State was shocking, even for the "silent majority."

 

[JR]

Like Spinited, I was around when this happened. It galvanzied almost every university across the country and moved a lot of people off the fence into the anti-war side.

Someone at the time said something like "You know the country is in deep trouble when we start shooting our children."

 

[novelist_wannabe]

Reading that reminds me a lot of the coverage of 9/11. Utter chaos.

 

[shockey]

Like Spinited, I was around when this happened. It galvanzied almost every university across the country and moved a lot of people off the fence into the anti-war side.

Someone at the time said something like "You know the country is in deep trouble when we start shooting our children."

i almost 13, a month shy of my bar mitzah. i would not get a pre-mitzvah haircut and did not cut my hair again until was 16. there's a connection in there.

chilling to realize it's been 40 years. what an unreal time.

 

[dooley_womack1]

I wonder if any of the shooters are alive. The Nuremberg defense is likely a constant thought if so

 

[spnited]

Reading that reminds me a lot of the coverage of 9/11. Utter chaos.

Not quite sure, novelist, how you equate a terrorist attack on this country with the National Guard murdering student demonstrators who posed no physical threat to them.

 

[finishthehat]

The girl in the photograph, with the photog.