The Cost of Freedom: Voicing a Movement after Kent State 1970

The Cost of Freedom: Voicing a Movement after Kent State 1970 is a multi-genre collection describing the May 4, 1970, shootings at Kent State University, the aftermath, and the impact on wider calls for peace and justice. Fifty years after the National Guard killed four unarmed students, Susan J. Erenrich has gathered moving stories of violence, peace, and reflection, demonstrating the continued resonance of the events and the need for sustained discussion. This anthology includes personal narratives, photographs, songs, poetry, and testimonies—some written by eyewitnesses to the day of the shootings—as well as speeches from recent commemoration events and items related to the designation of the site on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016.

Erenrich, who came to Kent State in 1975 as a college freshman, became a member of the May 4 Task Force, a student organization that continues to the present as an organizing group for marking the anniversary each year. Her involvement with the task force led her to make the many connections with writers, artists, and memory-keepers that have built this collection of primary source material.

While a number of books and articles over the years have treated the Kent State shootings and aftermath, this collection is unique in its focus on justice issues and its call for the future. The movement to seek justice, as Erenrich notes, is an ongoing one. These voices call to us to continue to move forward even as we learn from the past.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Kent State University Press
• Release date: Apr 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9781631014130

Book preview

come.

PART I

Memories

Left to right: John Adams, Joan Baez, Sarah Scheuer, and Martin Scheuer (Source: John Rowe)

John Rowe attended Kent State University as an undergraduate and graduate student from 1970 to 1980. He was a founding member of the May 4 Task Force, and an active member of the May 4 Steering Committee and the Kent State May 4 Center. His pictures captured all the major May 4 events for decades. John died in 2018 at the age of sixty-eight.

Anniversary, May 4, 1988

ELAINE HOLSTEIN

Elaine Holstein’s son, Jeffrey Miller, was one of the students killed on May 4, 1970, on the Kent State University campus. She worked to preserve his memory and to memorialize his death until her passing on May 26, 2018. This piece was written in 1988.

At a few minutes past noon on May 4, I will once again observe an anniversary—an anniversary that marks not only the most tragic event of my life but also one of the most disgraceful episodes in American history. This May 4 will be the eighteenth anniversary of the shootings on the campus of Kent State University and the death of my son, Jeff Miller, by Ohio National Guard rifle fire.

Eighteen years! That’s almost as long a time as Jeff’s entire life. He had turned twenty just a month before he decided to attend the protest rally that ended in his death and the deaths of Allison Krause, Sandy Scheuer, and Bill Schroeder, and the wounding of nine of their fellow students. One of them, Dean Kahler, will spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the waist down.

That Jeff chose to attend that demonstration came as no surprise to me. Anyone who knew him in those days would have been shocked if he had decided to sit that one out. There were markers along the way that led him inexorably to that campus protest.

At the age of eight, Jeff wrote an article expressing his concern for the plight of black Americans. I learned of this only when I received a call from Ebony magazine, which assumed he was black and assured me he was bound to be a future leader of the black community.

Shortly before his sixteenth birthday, Jeff composed a poem he called Where Does It End? in which he expressed the horror he felt about the War Without a Purpose.

Was Jeff a radical? He told me, grinning, that though he might be taken for a hippie radical in the Middle West, back home on Long Island he’d probably be seen as a reactionary.

So when Jeff called me that morning and told me he planned to attend a rally to protest the incursion of U.S. military forces into Cambodia, I merely expressed my doubts as to the effectiveness of still another demonstration.

Don’t worry, Mom, he said. I may get arrested, but I won’t get my head busted. I laughed and assured him I wasn’t worried.

The bullet that ended Jeff’s life also destroyed the person I had been—a naïve, politically unaware woman. Until that spring of 1970, I would have stated with absolute assurance that Americans have the right to dissent, publicly, from the policies pursued by their Government. The Constitution says so. Isn’t that what makes this country—this democracy—different from those totalitarian states whose methods we deplore?

And even if the dissent got noisy and disruptive, was it conceivable that an arm of the Government would shoot at random into a crowd of unarmed students? With live ammunition? No way! Arrests? Perhaps. Tear gas? Probably. Antiwar protests had become a way of life, and on my television set I had seen them dealt with routinely in various nonlethal ways.

The myth of a benign America where dissent was broadly tolerated was one casualty of the shootings at Kent State. Another was my assumption that everyone shared my belief that we were engaged in a no-win situation in Vietnam and had to get out. As the body counts mounted and the footage of napalmed babies became a nightly television staple, I was certain that no one could want the war to go on. The hate mail that began arriving at my home after Jeff died showed me how wrong I was.

We were enmeshed in legal battles for nine years. The families of the slain students, along with the wounded boys and their parents, believed that once the facts were heard in a court of law, it would become clear that the governor of Ohio and the troops he called in had used inappropriate and excessive force to quell what had begun as a peaceful protest. We couldn’t undo what had been done, but we wanted to make sure it would never be done again.

Our 1975 trial ended in defeat after fifteen weeks in Federal Court. We won a retrial on appeal, and returned to Cleveland with high hopes of prevailing, but before the trial got under way we were urged by both the judge and our lawyers to accept an out-of-court settlement. The proposal angered us; the case wasn’t about money. We wanted to clear our children’s names and to win a judicial ruling that the governor and the National Guard were responsible for the deaths and injuries. The defendants offered to issue an apology. The wording was debated for days, and the final result was an innocuous document, stating that, in retrospect, the tragedy … should not have occurred and that better ways must be found to deal with such confrontations.

Reluctantly, we accepted the settlement when we were told this might be the only way that Dean would get at least some of the funds to meet his lifelong medical expenses. He was awarded $350,000, the parents of each of the dead students received $15,000, and the remainder, in varying amounts, was divided among the wounded. Lawyers’ fees amounted to $50,000, and $25,000 was allotted to expenses, for a total of $675,000.

Since then we have lived through Watergate and Richard Nixon’s resignation, crises in the Middle East and in Central America, and the Iran-contra affair. To most people, Kent State is just one of those traumatic events that occurred during a tumultuous time.

To me, it’s the one experience I will never recover from. It’s also the one gap in my communication with my older son, Russ: Neither of us dares to talk about what happened at Kent State for fear that we’ll open floodgates of emotion that we can’t deal with.

Whenever there is another death in the family, we mourn not only the elderly parent or grandparent or aunt who has passed away; we also experience again the loss of Jeff.

This piece appeared in Kent & Jackson State 1970–1990, edited by Susie Erenrich. It was reprinted by permission of The Progressive Inc. © 1988.

A Tribute to Arthur Krause

Delivered at Kent State University, May 4, 1989

KENDRA LEE HICKS PACIFICO

Kendra Lee Hicks Pacifico has been part of the extended May 4 Family since 1982. At that time, she played the role of Allison Krause in a production of Kent State: A Requiem at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and at the 30th annual May 4 Commemoration at Kent State. She moved to Kent in 1988 and has become instrumental in organizing the annual May 3 candlelight vigils. This piece was written in 1990.

I am here before you to pay tribute to a man—Arthur Krause, the father of Allison Beth Krause, a student slain in a parking lot on the Kent State University Campus on May 4, 1970.

Most of us here know him as the most prominent leader in the quest for justice for the murders that took place here in 1970, a man whose efforts enable us to gather here today.

When I questioned those who knew him well, I heard these descriptive words mentioned: strong, stubborn, vital, larger than life, warm and generous, fierce. I heard phrases like the iron man of the Kent State family, he was relentless in his quest for justice, I felt lucky that I had the benefit of his friendship, we are richer for having known him. I feel fortunate to have met him.

America first heard from Arthur the day after the shootings. When speaking with television newsmen, he expressed the sentiments of the horribly shocked citizens of this country: Have we come to such a state in this country that a young girl has to be shot because she disagrees with the action of her government?

We stopped and listened to him. And we heard from him again. For the next four years, Arthur continually asked for justice. He wanted someone held accountable for the death of his daughter. He called for congressional hearings and federal investigations into the shootings. He appealed for the right to a day in court. He pushed through the Ohio District Court, the US District Court, the US Court of Appeals, and finally to the US Supreme Court, all the while trying to break down the wall of Ohio’s sovereign immunity law—the law that said defendants could not be sued without first giving their consent to such an action. But he would never back down. As Martin Scheuer, the father of Sandy Scheuer, once told me, Arthur was a man of principle.

In the first year of the struggle, Arthur was joined by Peter Davies, an ordinary citizen from Staten Island, New York, who had been appalled at the shootings and he himself had spent months researching the shootings, looking for clues to explain why the National Guard had fired:

For almost a year … we tilted at windmills alone, but without his dynamic strength I could not have stayed the course. Arthur’s quest was never idealistic. He was always a realist in dealing with the Nixon administration, and despite his grief and anger, whenever we accomplished something that seemed to me a big step forward, he would laugh and say, that and ten cents’ll get us a cup of coffee. We had more cups of coffee than I care to remember.

Elaine Holstein, the mother of slain Jeff Miller, described Arthur as totally indispensable. She writes, Indispensable—because my life in those years after our children were killed and we struggled to find some semblance of justice—would have been far more hellish without the Rock of Gibraltar that was Art Krause.

In 1971, Arthur and Peter were joined by Rev. John Adams of the United Methodist Church. This addition to the team had a very positive effect. As Sanford Jay Rosen, attorney for the families in the final settlement, observes: Two people, Arthur Krause and John Adams, are most responsible for the measure of justice the Kent State victims and their families have received. Arthur brought anger and passion to the cause. John brought hope and compassion. Without these two, all would have been for naught.

Arthur’s passion was so deep due to the fact that he knew what lay at the root of the problem. As he recalled his life, he said, I was like everyone else, and then this happened to us. In recalling other episodes of extreme violence in our country before May of 1970, he said:

I feel a great sense of guilt because I realized what was going on but didn’t do a damn thing about it. Like most Americans these days, we sit on the fence and depend on the lawyer, the church, and the government to do whatever should be done, but if the government doesn’t have the right people on the job, nothing will be done … and we, the people, have to make the government good. Apathy will not be part of my make-up anymore. Apathy is what caused Kent State.

In 1975, Arthur’s four years of persistence paid off. The victims’ families were given their day in court. Vindication should have been forthcoming. It was not. Elaine Holstein recounts:

It turned out to be many, many days—some of the most painful days of my life. As we sat in the courtroom and heard our lovely children vilified by the defendants and their lawyers … I found myself increasingly seeking out Art, to become healed by his unshakeable determination and common sense and—most importantly—his humor. Even under the horrendous circumstances that brought us together … Art’s brilliant and sometimes bitter wit would break the tension and lift the oppressive burden we all carried and we would feel the blessed relief of laughter that enabled … all of us to survive those terrible months.

When the verdict was announced in favor of the National Guardsmen, it was Arthur who announced that the trial proved that the Constitution had been destroyed.

While the families waited during the appeal process, the Kent State administration once again showed its insensitivity to the history of May 4, 1970. After the construction of the gymnasium annex on Blanket Hill, which destroyed part of the site of the shootings, Arthur Krause vowed never to step foot on the Kent State campus again.

In 1979, when the other families and victims decided on an out-of-court settlement for the murder of their children, it was Arthur who held out on giving in to that decision the longest. While some may have attributed this to his usual stubbornness, others attributed it to the devoted love he had for his daughter Allison. As one of the lawyers put it, He doesn’t want to give in to a settlement because it means he’ll have to give up Allison.

Arthur Krause (Source: John Rowe)

Dean Kahler, shot on May 4, 1970, spoke truthfully when he told me the sense of loss Arthur felt for his daughter was very prevalent when you were around him. He never really fully recuperated from her death. It was the focal point of his life and he was determined to get justice. Tom Grace, also wounded in 1970, observes: Without Arthur’s drive, his fortitude, his unmovable presence, the drive for justice may well have stalled. Our quest is not finished. Yet, Arthur’s efforts have allowed us, in some small measure, to answer yes to the question that Doris Krause asked nineteen years ago: Do we say that there is justice, Allison?"

While Arthur’s years in the battlefield of the United States’ court system came to an end, the pain of the loss of his daughter did not. And his bitterness toward the Kent State administration did not fade either. Arthur told me this past summer that he was still waiting for an official notification of Allison’s death. I am sure that he was conscious of this when he told the Ravenna Record Courier in 1986 that the Kent State administration was a worthless organization.

Arthur’s last years were spent enduring the emotional roller coaster of the May 4 Memorial building process. And he did not keep his emotions to himself. Alan Canfora, another student wounded in 1970, told me of some of his last conversations with Arthur: As Arthur suffered the pain of his terminal illness, he poignantly described his continued frustrations as a result of the cover-up of his daughter’s murder and the continued failure of Kent State University to create a lasting memorial tribute in memory of his daughter Allison.

It’s a shame that Arthur could not have observed the final vindication of his daughter’s death. But, as pointed out earlier, he was very pragmatic. Arthur told me last July, Anybody that would believe that Kent State University would make any attempt to meet the desires of the Kent State families must also believe in the tooth fairy.

What does Arthur Krause’s death mean? It’s too soon to know the broader ramifications in the struggle to remember May 4, 1970. On a more personal level, Sandy Rosen says it best: He marked our lives, so that we are richer for having known him and much poorer now that he is gone. Speaking for myself and all the others who have fought against the whitewashing of the facts of May 4, I feel like I’ve lost my father.

So how do we really pay tribute to such a man as Arthur Krause? Words are not enough.

We could start by emulating his passion for justice. We can remove the apathy from our own lives. We can build a proper memorial to the memory of Allison, Bill, Jeff, and Sandy—one that is fitting to the magnitude of the event. We can heed Arthur’s own advice, If you don’t stand up for your own rights, they will be taken away from you just like they were from Allison. You can love your own children as Arthur loved his.

This piece originally appeared in Kent & Jackson State 1970–1990, edited by Susie Erenrich.

May 4, 2000, Commemorative

Program Speech

BARRY LEVINE

Barry Levine’s girlfriend, Allison Krause, was killed by the Ohio National Guard on the Kent State University campus on May 4, 1970. This piece was written in 2000.

Good afternoon. I don’t know how many of you are aware of this. Allison was planning on being here today. But, unfortunately, because of a prior engagement, she was unable to make it. So she sent me instead.

You see, thirty years ago on this very spot where we stand, Allison Krause was engaged in exercising her right of free speech. And apparently, something that was said that day was so threatening to some people that they decided … some even say conspired … to deny her the right to be here today and to deny us the pleasure of having her here today.

Now, I think we should make no mistake about it. What happened here thirty years ago had very little to do with rocks and bottles and snipers. It had everything to do with the right of free speech and the right of assembly and the suppression of those rights.

About a week after the shooting, Richard Nixon made a public statement in which he said, When dissent turns to violence it invites tragedy. And I would like to suggest today what he probably meant to say is that when a government interferes with the free flow of ideas and when a government suppresses the right of its citizens to speak freely and to assemble peacefully, that government invites tragedy and in so doing it takes responsibility for any violence that might ensue.

I didn’t come here today to lecture you about the politics of 1970. I’m sure that before the day is over, you are going to hear more on that subject than you care to hear, but you’re not going to hear it from me. Instead, I came here today to just take a few moments and share a few thoughts with you about this girl Allison Krause. I thought it would be appropriate on this day in particular and on this spot in particular to talk a little bit about what she was like when she was a student here and sat on this hill where you sit and walked these paths where you now stand.

And I was just told when I got here that this speaking schedule is a little bit tight and I should keep my comments brief. So the one or two stories that I had planned to tell you, I’m sorry to say, are going to have to wait for another time. [Shouts of NO! NO! NO! by the audience—Barry chuckles.]

What I would like to do is take a moment to let you know that if Allison were here today, she would thank all of you for being here, for sitting and for listening, those of you who organize for organizing, and those who are here just participating. She would thank you for just being here. Your very presence here makes a very important statement, a statement that needs to be made this year and in following years: That the world should never forget what happened here thirty years ago.

But I’ve got to tell you that if she was here, she would also be reminding us of something else. And that is that we should not become too smug about these ceremonies and about these memorials and about these markers that have been erected. They are all very nice and they’re very much appreciated.

But if we’re here to remember those things, we need to also remember a few other things and that’s the voice that I hear in my ear, of Allison telling me that Barry, Remember that there’s a man here today who hasn’t walked for thirty years and, as far as I know, thirty years later, no one has taken responsibility for that. And there are eight other men here today. [Applause] There are eight other men here today whose physical wounds may have healed, but clearly, they’ll be carrying emotional scars for the rest of their lives. And as far as I know, to this date, thirty years later, no one has been held accountable for that!

And then there’s Bill Schroeder and there’s Sandy Scheuer and Jeffrey Miller and Allison Krause. Four young people whose lives ended much, much, much too soon. And we all know that their tragic loss of life was unnecessary. It was unwarranted and it was inexcusable.

But the fact remains that thirty years later [a child wanders onto the stage and distracts Barry], the very men who took their lives actually have been excused. So if we’re going to stand here today and we’re going to ask the world to remember and never to forget the tragedy that occurred on May 4, 1970, I think we damn well better ask the world to remember and to never forget the tragedy that has occurred since that date. And the tragedy that has occurred since that date is the fact that nobody has been held accountable for what happened here thirty years ago.

They say that time heals all wounds and thirty years is a long time. Memories fade and wounds do heal. But this wound will never heal completely. Nor do I think that we should allow it to heal completely until somebody stands up and is held accountable for the blood that spilled on this campus.

If any of you are having difficulty who to nominate for that honor, I’d like to help you. In closing, I’d like to read you something that was written in honor of Allison and in her memory. It’s a poem. It’s based on a previous work by one of Allison’s favorite contemporary American poets, Robert Zimmerman. It’s called Who Killed Allison?, but when you hear it, you should know that it could have just as easily be called Who Killed Allison and Who Killed Bill and Who Killed Sandy and Who Killed Jeff? When you hear it, I’d like you to keep that in mind. I would like to read it for you now so that maybe you can hear her voice speaking out from this campus one last time.

Who Killed Allison? Why? What Had She Done?

Not us says the Kent Townsfolk.

Those rotten students thought this was some kind of joke

Marchin and yellin, and singing those songs,

Why wasn’t she in class where she belonged?

Her parents shoulda learned her better.

Those stinkin kids don’t appreciate what they’ve got

If it had been up to us, they would have all been shot.

You can say what you want, and say what you must

Just don’t point your fingers at us

We’re not the ones who made her fall

No, you can’t blame us at all.

Who Killed Allison? Why? What Had She Done?

Not us says the University

That girl was here to get a degree

To inquire, to learn, to reflect, and debate.

It wasn’t her place to demonstrate—against the State

If she had something to say,

She should have said it clear

In a paper, or in the classroom, where free speech is dear.

And no one can hear, and no one can hear.

Sure she was an honor student, but she should have known better

Than to stand up and speak out in public, where did that get her?

There is a time and a place for freedom of speech

She should have known that because that’s what we teach

Here at Kent State University.

But please, don’t point your finger at us

We are not the ones that made her fall,

No, you can’t blame us at all.

Who Killed Allison? Why? What Had She Done?

Not me says the Mayor of Kent

If only those kids knew what it had meant

To burn down ROTC—they left me no choice

They were all chanting End the war in one loud voice

I had to call the Guard—it was hard, it was hard,

But I tell you, we needed Law and Order

And anyway, she wasn’t my daughter

It’s a shame she had to die that day

But when you throw rocks, well, that’s just the American way.

I feel bad, I do, but I didn’t pull that trigger

It wasn’t me that made her fall

No, you can’t blame me at all.

Who Killed Allison? Why? What Had She Done?

Not me says Tricky Dick

I listened to my advisors, take your pick

Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell and Dean

Agnew, and Colson, they all knew the scene

Those college kids were bums—they needed a lesson

So I put out the word around this great land

To stop those damn hoodlums any way that you can

And Rhodes, he heard me, thank g-d for that

He knew exactly what to do with that group of brats

But you can’t pin it on me, don’t you see?

It wasn’t me that made her fall

No, you can’t blame me at all.

Who Killed Allison? Why? What Had She Done?

Not me says Governor Rhodes

The man who made this whole thing explode

Yes, I’m the son of a bitch who pounded the table

And ranted and raved until everyone was able

To hear me call those students Brown Shirts,

The worst element that we harbor in America today

But that was my job, to incite the Guard, and I did it OK

If those kids wanted a riot to create,

They picked the wrong town, they picked the wrong state.

There will be no riots in the State of Ohio, not on my watch, not on this date

Look, the Guard got my meaning, the Guard got my drift

They did what they had to—they laid ’em out stiff.

It’s a shame it had to be that way, but who’s to know and who’s to say

It might have been different had it not been Election Day.

So what are you going to do? Sue me?

I’m not the one that made the call

And I’m not the one that made her fall

So fuck you, you can’t blame me at all.

Who Killed Allison? Why? What Had She Done?

Not us says the National Guard

Who chased those kids across the yard,

And through the fields so thick with gas

With our bayonets fixed, it became certain, there was no doubt

We would teach those little bastards what Law and Order was all about

Yes, we’re the ones that climbed the hill and turned in our tracks

And aimed our rifles dead center in her back

But if we didn’t act, she would have overrun us for sure,

There were snipers, she had rocks, and those curses that we endured.

We had no choice, we had to act—it was her life or ours

Yes we shot her in cold blood, it’s true, it’s true,

But that is what we were told to do

Don’t say murder, don’t say kill

We Were Only Following Orders, It Was God’s Will.

PART II

Photographs of May 4, 1970

Chuck Ayers drew cartoons for the Daily Kent Stater and the Akron Beacon Journal while he was a KSU student. In 2000, Ayers and Tom Batiuk created a Crankshaft comic strip thirtieth-anniversary story arc about the KSU shootings, the originals of which are now part of the May 4 Collection.

Guardsmen beginning their advance on the Commons (Source: Chuck Ayers)

Guardsmen throwing tear gas (Source: Kent State University News Service)

Prentice Hall parking lot (Source: Kent State University News Service)

Four students killed by the Ohio National Guard (Source: Kent State University News Service)

PART III

Earlier Activism before

May 4, 1970

Thy Tears Might Cease

ANTHONY WALSH

A criminal defense attorney in private practice, Anthony Tony Walsh died unexpectedly on March 12, 2005. He worked with Legal Aid while in law school and was politically active all his life, including defending students who were arrested after the Kent State shootings, Ohio University students arrested for protesting, and inmates who were charged after the Attica riots of 1971. This piece was written in 2000.

Dear Susie,

Here at last is the article I promised you. What a beast it was to write! I had resisted for thirty years to write about what I went through. Being naturally depressive for an Irishman, I had a great deal of trouble and angst going through this.

One thing I rediscovered was the sheer volume of work and the things we were involved in through the sixties and the seventies. We never seemed to stop running. How I answered the academic demands of University life I will never know.

So here it is. The sheer emotion that went into writing this article cannot be expressed. A very persistent person will have to beat me repeatedly on the head with a heavy object to get me to expand it into a full book. I can, too.

All the best,

Tony Walsh

• • •

I have borne a crushing burden of rage and pain and grief for thirty years. It follows me like the furies, snarling and unrelenting. It is at its worst in the spring of every year when the searing memory returns. It is the unquenchable rage against the State of Ohio for the shootings of May 4, 1970, on the campus of the university about which I cared so much. It is the pain of seeing my life and the lives of so many others utterly changed by those hideous thirteen seconds of gunfire. It is the unspeakable grief I will always have as a graduate of Kent State who participated in so much of what happened on that campus in the 1960s, and who witnessed all that has happened since May 4, 1970. Even now, after thirty years, it is the central defining moment of my life as a lawyer.

Who among us could predict that the work we did during the 1960s would lead to the desecration that occurred on May 4, 1970? It was a sacrilege during which Ohio National Guardsmen, egged on by a contemptible governor and a bully of an adjutant general, killed four students and wounded nine others. By doing so they forever changed higher education in this state. Nothing in our experience on the campus of Kent State during the 1960s could prepare us for the savagery of May 4, 1970. Nothing!

Those of us who lived through those events fought for years to have a memorial erected on the site of the shootings. Instead, in 1977, seven years after the shootings, the trustees announced that they would build a new gymnasium on the site of the shootings. To do so would obliterate part of Blanket Hill. They knew that. The gymnasium was planned for a plot of land on the south side of Summit Street. They didn’t care. The new gymnasium was a brutish and unfeeling insult to the dead and wounded and their families.

In the early 1980s, the Mildred Andrews Fund of Cleveland donated $100,000 to place a George Segal sculpture of Abraham and Isaac on the site of the shootings. A craven and fearful board of trustees rejected it. A full twenty years after the shootings, they put a nice liberal memorial in place and planted a garden. It was to be a place of quiet contemplation. No noise, please! Just be sweet, quiet, and peaceful, my dears. Even so, thirty years later, the memorial does not diminish the rage, lessen the pain, and does not take away the grief.

In the 1960s we were motivated not so much by rage or pain or grief as by the altruism that was the heritage bequeathed to us by our immigrant, workingclass, Depression-shattered parents. We wanted simply to take four years in the springtime of our lives to go to college and learn about the meaning of history and science and art. We sought, most of all, to find the answers to the questions that have driven humankind since the dawn of time. What is good? What is true? And, most important of all, What is beautiful?

We attended the lectures, read the texts, and wrote down our triumphs of scholarship. We sought out the treasures of the libraries and bookstores and made them our own. We talked at, argued against, and disputed with our professors and companions. We laughed loudly with the joy of our discoveries. We wept with and loved one another without shame. We took our drink with enthusiasm and did our penance for it. We brawled with every passion of the day. We were big with the surprise of our awakening to the promise held out to those of our generation who were the first in history to attend college. We fought fiercely for enlightenment and meaning.

In all this, we knew we were young and young once only. We examined and came to understand those transcendent ideas that are the foundation of goodness, the strength that is born of truth, and the grace and compassion of beauty, all of which will be our legacy to our children.

I remember fondly those years before May 4, 1970. I long for the purity of experience that was the legacy of public higher education in those days. My special memory is for the Honors College Program, which began after my first year of commuting. In those years, I gloried in the struggle to add something to Kent State to replace what I took away with me. Kent State will be with me for a lifetime.

In August 1966, I left that golden heyday behind and carried with me the two things I wanted most in life—to hold Mary Walsh’s loving grace in one hand and, in the other, to hold the first college degree ever won by a member of my family.

In the years that followed, law school, work, and politics took up my time. There was plenty to do. The war in Southeast Asia was devouring the best and the