Today is the 35th anniversary of the massacre at Kent State.
My father was a senior in high school on May 4th, 1970. He attended Lorain Catholic High School, which is about an hour from Kent. His older brother, my uncle, was a senior at Kent that year, though he was at work that day and thankfully (or, narratively, "sadly") missed the massacre.
Several of my father's friends would end up being drafted a year and a half later, though the 1971 draft lottery did not end up taking anywhere near as many men as the previous years'. Many more of my father's friends were high school seniors enrolled to attend Kent State that fall. (My father was not one of them; he attended a small college in NW Ohio).
Imagine, for a minute, that you are one of those seniors. For thirteen years, you've suffered through a Catholic education that has seared memories and scars into your psyche. For thirteen years, you've navigated the series of nuns whom have sworn their lives to helping you learn, by whatever means necessary. In one month, you graduate. In one month, you escape this world to enter the drunken lovefest that is university.
Except you're headed to the place where four students, kids like you, were just killed by a volley of 65 bullets fired from a distance of over 250 feet.
Only one of the four students killed were actually participating in the protest. In fact, one of the four was a member of the campus ROTC. With the passage of time, we forget that this wasn't a "kill or be killed" scenario. The protesters weren't a danger to the Guardsmen, nor were they assembling illegally. (Yes, a handful of the protesters did throw rocks at the Guardsmen, but remember the distance: 265 feet.)
I know it's a bit different for me because it seems "closer." I know it's a bit different for me because I've been to the space where the shooting occurred. I'm not a doomsayer who says "beware as the neocon imperialists will bring back the draft and we'll all be sent to war" like many of my friends, but I do think that the events of 35 years ago and the four who died as a result are worth reflecting on for just a minute or two:
* Allison Krause
* Jeffrey Glen Miller
* Sandra Lee Scheuer
* William Knox Schroeder
Yeah, this was a blog-ish post and not a journal-y one, but my blog isn't up and running yet (WordPress is fuckin' complicated, man)
