May 4 1970 I was a senior in HS about 30 miles east of Kent State. At 10:30 I was sitting in study hall with three friends deciding to skip school the rest of the day and drive to KSU to see what was going on. Two of the guys I was talking to were enrolled there for the fall semester. Around noon we got on the road in my very spacious '57 Plymouth and headed west. At about 12:45 we got to exit 33 Hartville/Kent and were stopped told to cross the hwy 43 bridge and head back to Youngstown to cause trouble there. The shootings had already occurred but we had no idea.
When I got home that night my father was watching the news and we were talking about it when news footage flashed on the screen and there was the old "57 Plymouth at the top of the off ramp getting told by a Summit county Sheriff to get my azz home. There was a lot of WTF were you thinking? Couldn't tell the truth because back then if I wasn't thinking with my Johnson, I probably wasn't thinking at all. Side note. My cousin dated one of the girls that was shot,when they both attended Boardman HS, in a Youngstown suburb.
Fast forward- I graduate, got a job in a garage and went about my business until 1972 when I was convinced by a friend to become a deputy sheriff.
May 1975 brought about talk of an anniversary march at KSU. Several Sheriff's departments sent deputies to assist the locals in case things got ugly. We were grouped with a local LEO and we patrolled the campus perimeter. At one point he said let me show you something and headed away from campus to a farm where we met with a group of Ohio NG. As we were leaving the local guy said "don't worry about them shooting anyone today, they weren't issued any live ammo."
This past May, fifty years later I look back and think about all of it and how these shootings may have had some impact on the duration of the war that ended the lives of many of my friends. I also wonder today what history will say fifty years from now. I doubt anything good will come of this years events.
