May 4, 1970 Four Dead in Ohio
On May 4, 1970 I was a skinny 15 year old who, like many kids my age, thought he knew everything. I was living with my Mom and Dad and our West Highland White Terrier Tammy. We lived in a beautiful home that they had built a year earlier. It was right across from the Transcona Golf Course and what was then the 12th hole, a dogleg to the right. That damn dogleg. I hit more than one golf ball into those bushes. Life was good. At 15, I didn't really pay much attention to what was going on outside of my little circle. The outside world didn't really touch my insulated little world of playing football or my crush on the girl down the street. I was growing up in the generation of the greatest music of all time. A buddy of mine and I were huge Beatles fans and, in 1970, we were saddened by the fact that they were breaking up but not before they gave me my favorite song of all time - The Long and Winding Road. The music of that generation provided the soundtrack to my youth. Yes, life was very good but something changed a little on May 4, 1970.
The war in Vietnam had been raging for years. Students had protested the war before but now those protests became louder when President Nixon escalated the war. One of his campaign promises of the 1968 election had been to end the war. Now it was getting bigger and in 1970 the US were planning to invade Cambodia. The student protests continued. One of the hotspots was at Kent State University in Ohio. Governor Rhodes made the decision to call in the National Guard and on May 4, 1970 tragedy struck.
An iconic image from May 4, 1970
A crowd of about 2,000 had gathered at a protest rally at the university on Monday morning. The National Guard attempted to disperse the crowd which, up to that point, had been peaceful. When ordered to disperse or face arrest, the students began throwing rocks. The guardsmen were forced to retreat but came back around noon. This time they were armed with tear gas. The students continued to throw rocks and threw back the tear gas canisters to the guardsmen who were wearing gas masks. At 12:24pm a number of guardsmen fired at the students. A total of 67 rounds were fired in a 13 second span. No one knew exactly why the guardsmen had fired. Everyone, however, knew the result. Four students had been killed. Allison Krause and Jeffrey Miller had participated peacefully in the protest. Sandra Scheuer and William Schroeder had simply been on their way to their next class. The guardsmen later said that they had feared for their lives. Of the four who had died, Jeffrey Miller was the closest to the guardsmen - he was 225 feet away and unarmed. Hardly a threat.
Neil Young wrote a song about that terrible day. It was later recorded by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and was simply called Ohio. It pulled no punches and is one of the quintessential protest songs of its generation.
Tin soldiers and Nixon coming, We're finally on our own. This summer I hear the drumming, Four dead in Ohio. Gotta get down to it Soldiers are cutting us down Should have been done long ago. What if you knew her And found her dead on the ground How can you run when you know?
For that skinny 15 year old kid in Transcona, Manitoba, Canada - the Kent State killings changed things ever so slightly. I no longer changed the channel when the news showed daily images of death and destruction in that country that I couldn't even place on a map. After May 4, 1970 I learned exactly where Vietnam was on the map. After May 4, 1970 I began following what was going on in the US and the rest of the world a little more closely. As I sit here exactly 45 years later, I admit to having a tear in my eye. It came when I looked at that picture that you see above. I'll admit that I'm not sure why. Is it for the students that died on that terrible day 45 years ago? Or is it something closer to home? Lost youth perhaps? The end of the innocence? Yes, something really did change on May 4, 1970.
