<p>I was a foreign exchange student in West Berlin, fresh from a little town in Connecticut, before heading off to college. You can imagine the slant of the German press on Kent State and other events of that tumultuous academic year; it all seemed so distant to me sandwiched between high school and college in the artificial bubble of the politically orchestrated island on which I was marooned. By the time I started my sojourn through Ithaca, Cambridge and Morningside Heights, the horror of Kent State had chilled the student revolution and I already felt a part of the post-Vietnam generation. The starkness of the Wall, being strip-searched by the Volkspolizei, and other more personal events drove me to appreciate the freedoms we enjoy as Americans, including the right peaceably to assemble.</p>
<p>I was a college senior at UVM. Classes were ending and we were preparing for exams and graduation. Exams were cancelled and graduation activities were modified. We were all shocked by what had happened at Kent State.</p>
<p>I was a senior in high school, attending moratoria on Boston Common, and trying to decide whether or not to cross the picket line of teachers who were on strike (salary disputes) or skip school. In addition, I was also spending a lot of time visiting my father who had suffered a massive stroke three months previously. That was a bittersweet time only to be compounded by the tragedy at Kent State.</p>
<p>I was a junior in a college in Ohio. Very sad, scary times. </p>
<p>Joev, protesters heads were “busted open” then.(btw, Kent State was always considered to be a great place-don’t sell it short)
Friends went to Chicago to join the protest there. They were dragged out of a church they were given asylum in. They were sleeping in the middle of the night…dragged outside, the boys were beaten, then thrown in the paddy wagon and taken to jail. The girls were dragged by their hair, some were groped, and left outside in the cold. </p>
<p>I hope we never return to times like that.</p>
<p>Sixth grade. Just starting to become politically aware…this was a catalyst.</p>
<p>I was a high school senior with the day off for teachers’ meetings. I had spent the entire day running around in the park with my girl friend, enjoying the exceptionally beautiful spring day in northeastern Ohio. I came home at around 4:30 to find our home phone ringing. It was my best friend Bruce who was a freshman at Kent State. He exclaimed: “I can’t reach my parents or my sister, Sandy’s dead, can you please come get me?” The Sandy in question was Sandy Scheuer, a friend of both of ours who had gone to school with Bruce for many years and who had been struck by a stray bullet as she walked to classes far from the rally.</p>
<p>I had not heard anything about what had happened and Bruce filled me in as quickly as he could given his state of mind and the fact that open phone lines were at a premium with people waiting in line to call for rides. He gave me the instructions they had been given as to where to pick up students, I couldn’t come to his dorm because the campus was off limits to outsiders, and I told him I’d be there as soon as I could.</p>
<p>I jumped in my car, drove the 39 miles to Kent and waited in a long line of cars being scrutinized by the National Guard before allowing us to pick up friends and family. After we located each other in the ensuing mayhem we were ordered to immediately turn around and leave Kent. That day is as fresh in my memory as yesterday.</p>
<p>Several weeks later in early June of that year, I was lucky enough to be in attendance at the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young concert in the old Cleveland Arena to hear the debut performance of “Ohio”…just thinking about it still brings goosebumps.</p>
<p>I was twelve at the time and had a few friends who had lost brothers in the war. My older brother, while nominally stationed in the Phillipines, was flying support missions over Vietnam and surrounding areas. My father (WW2 Army Airforce and, in 1970, a firefighter) thought the Guard had done the right thing. He took a very dim view of anyone who hindered firefighters, and probably lumped all the protesters in with those who had slit hoses at the ROTC building. I was probably more absorbed with the seventh grade than with national and international events at the time, although I do remember following the draft lotteries with more than casual interest.</p>
<p>I was a sophomore in college in Washington, DC. I lived four blocks from the White House. I was cynically inciting riots in the hope finals would be canceled and thus have my college career extended another semester. It worked.</p>
<p>I have no doubt the lessons of Vietnam have been learned - probably to well. It’s not the things we don’t know that hurt us but the things we do know that aren’t true.</p>
<p>I was eight years old in the 3rd or 4th grade. We lived in Puyallup, WA. My Army father was stationed at Ft. Lewis. He was either home or wrapping up his second tour in Vietnam. It was a tough year for my mother, parenting alone with 5 kids and a husband at war.</p>
<p>Yes it could happen again. I don’t think we have learned a lot about accommodation and tolerance in the intervening years. Although there is now better training of police in crowd control and containmment, I’m not sure we have a lot better sense of what to do when we call in the national guard to a disorganized scene and the “fog of war” takes over.</p>
<p>I’ll stake my claim to the geezer title, so far. I was in grad school, anti-war like almost all my fellow students and most of my professors. But I didn’t personally know anyone killed in the war. I’m afraid I thought of the war protests I casually participated in as a bit of a lark. That was the day I woke up to the terrible consequences of the war, but, looking back, it was only years later, standing for the first and only time in front of the inspired war monument in DC, with tears streaming down my face, that I was fully awake.</p>
<p>idler, while not wanting to contest your claim to the geezer title, I suspect I am a bit older than you, since I was in my last year of grad school when the Kent State event happened; indeed, when the Sterling Hall bombing at UWisc happened in August 1970, I was within a few months of defending my dissertation. I heard the explosion from a distance of two miles.</p>
<p>I, too, was moved by my visit to the Vietnam War memorial, the first time and the last time. You walk along the wall, and you feel like you’re getting mired deeper and deeper into the swamps and jungles. And you see those names, a trickle at first, then a flood, and finally a trickle again at the end.</p>
<p>I was 7 and in the 2nd grade. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>idler…you nailed it here. I did the same exact thing. I bawled like a child, and to be more than honest, I don’t remember much about that time, but the memorial…words don’t describe it.</p>
<p>I was a few hours away at another college campus attending a political rally…the world had turned upside down again as it had been doing since 7th grade when Kennedy was shot.</p>
<p>The particular memory of that year that haunts me further happened a few months earlier. It was the night of the draft lottery. I was just a freshman and joined some friends for cokes at the campus Rathskellar. When I arrived, I saw in the dark, tavern-like setting scores of male students with red numbers drawn on their foreheads. Many were already drunk. Some stoned. Some were crying. Others sat quietly, dully. The worst ones were those with low numbers – the "2"s and "6"es and "20"s… for they knew they would be shipped to Viet Name as soon as they graduated. Some of them had inadvertently rubbed their foreheads, smearing the red paint or lipstick – like blood --down across their faces.</p>
<p>i was a freshman in college. There were huge, and sometimes violent protests at my college. I remember tear gas wafting into my open window. One small group of people took a unique stand. They bravely stood between the violent protesters and the police, calling for an end to violence from both sides.</p>
<p>A few days later my RA, one of the nonviolent group, invited me to a meeting of those opposed to the war, but who believed in nonviolent protest. Columbae, the nonviolence house, was born in the meetings that followed. The university gave us the use of a defunct frat house, and 50 people moved in come September. We cooked our own vegetarian food, held endless house meetings due to our agreed policy of talking until we reached consensus, and, of course, participated in many forms of protest against the war–from sit-ins to blocking draft boards.</p>
<p>My years in Columbae had a profound effect upon my life. When I visited the campus last time–my son is a senior there now–I was happy to see that Columbae still exists, changed no doubt, but still a force for nonviolence.</p>
<p>Yes, it could happen again. :-(</p>
<p>I was 9 years old and in 4th grade. My dad was a professor at UCSB in the graduate school if education. I really wasn’t aware of the war and protests but often students of my dad’s would be spending the night at our house as they did not want to go home to their apartments in Isla Vista where a lot of turmoil was going on. I do remember asking my parents what “tear gas” was.</p>
<p>I shudder to think of the response on campuses around the country if they reinstitute the draft…</p>
<p>The news indicated recently that the Army has not met its recruitment goals by a long shot this year so I fear its just a matter of time…</p>
<p>crash et all- </p>
<p>This is seriously scary! As a mom of one son, I can’t imagine this coming to fruition! </p>
<p>And, the FAFSA makes everyone sign up. How do non-college-bound young men become identified? I hope our sons aren’t disadvantaged!</p>
<p>
The recruiters descend on them like vultures … and with the “volunteer” army, they are the ones who have been filling the ranks and filling the graves so far. So as a class, they’ve done their part… even though with a draft, a few might be able to slip by without being caught.</p>