May 4,1970

Kent State University

4 dead in Ohio

Followed by the riots in Athens, on the College Green, followed by the closure of the school.

One memory I have, which though funny on one level, is also profoundly sad, involves some kids who I observed. My wife and I were living in the married student apartments on Mill Street as they were known then. One evening I was coming back to our apartment and saw a group of young children playing in the green space in front of the apartment complex. There were maybe about eight kids. One of the kids divided them into two groups and said, "You guys will be the National Guard, and we'll be the rioters."

I'm not trying to make light of what was a very tragic series of events, but somehow to me this observation of innocent little kids at play shows the depth to which those events of May 1970 permeated our society. At this point in time I was a young Navy vet who had returned to campus in the fall of 1966. I had just come back to OHIO after a year at the Big Farm in Columbus, where aa a master's degree student, I was called a baby killer and war monger by some students, even though I had never actually been deployed to Vietnam. I was personally very torn up emotionally by all that was happening on college campuses at that time. I still have very mixed emotions when I recall those years. I came, later, to oppose the Vietnam War, but in a peaceful way. I never condoned the violence on campus, and I still don't.

When reminded of this day I always think about a paralyzed survivor, someone I never met but he was pointed out to me at a basketball game in the Convo 30 or so years ago. I would then notice him at every game for a number of years. I haven't noticed him in the Convo for some time and was wondering where he is, how he's doing. I think he lived in Athens, an OU prof perhaps.

I'll bet we have a poster on here who can tell us his name and what he's up to.

Dean Kahler, good person, and active in speaking about the event and era, he moved several years ago.

https://www.kent.edu/magazine/where-nine-wounded-are-now

Interesting that former U.S. Secretary of Defense Mike Esper this week divulged that The Former Guy asked why police and soldiers didn't just shoot the BLM protesters in front of the White House. Richard Nixon was Thomas Jefferson compared to the orange genius.

Esper is also sharing the Cheddar Boy's thoughts on launching missiles at our neighboring country to the south.

Sadly, little of that matters, the Cheddar guy very well may be the next Grover Cleveland.