On the Periphery of History at Kent State University May 4, 1970

I never have trouble remembering where and what I was doing on the morning of May 4, 1970 in Kent, Ohio. A day when I and several thousand Kent State University students learned a bitter lesson: when people are pointing a gun at you, they aren't your friends. Moreover, the guns are loaded.

While eating lunch at a downtown Kent restaurant with business associates that day, I heard several sirens wailing at about 12:30. Ohio National Guard troopers, called to campus for crowd control by Kent Mayor Leroy Satrom, had fired a thirteen second volley into a crowd of anti-war demonstrators and students who were on their way to and from classes killing, four students and wounding 9 others.

When I heard the sirens, I knew something really bad had happened; I just didn't know what. These springtime demonstrations had been going on for years, each one bigger and uglier than the last. An explosion of violence seemed inevitable. It looked like this was the day. But I didn't expect what happened next.

I immediately left the restaurant and returned to my downtown office, located a mile from where the incident occurred. The office was in a strip mall, next door to the city court. By the time I got there, there was a busload of people parked behind the building, guarded by Ohio National Guardsmen with fixed bayonets. (At the time I assumed the bus contained students placed under arrest. I now believe they were "professional" demonstrators bussed in from Columbus, Ohio, where they had "demonstrated" the week before.)

I wasn't at my desk five minutes when two National Guardsmen appeared at my office door. As they pointed their weapons at me, I slowly raised my hands into the air as the officer said: "We'll give you fifteen minutes to get out of town." They walked away, but a minute or so later one of them returned and said: "I take that back, you have five minutes to get the _____ out of town."

"We didn't know the guns were loaded." Words of an unknown hitchhiker on his way out of Kent.