You know how people ask if you remember where you where when a major news story breaks? This is a day I have been wanting to let slide and forget about it. Almost worked. But Tuesday is when my son, who works for his college newspaper, always posts his weekly story and I always go to read it. He goes to Kent State, and writes for
http://kentwired.com/.
Our local paper wanted people to tell their story so they could print them today. My wife wanted me to tell mine, she thought mine would be better then the rest. She was right. But I wanted to forget it and not acknowledge the date. Something about it really bothers me. When I went to the Kent site to read my sons article (not published yet) I saw all the stories and pictures and I broke down.
I was at Kent that day. The sights are still vivid and I remember all the details. I was not around the shooting, but remember hearing one shot, wait 5 seconds and then hearing a volley of shots. But we thought is was firecrackers at the time.
A good friend of mine through high school (different school) was wounded. He was the one who has spent the rest of his life in a wheel chair. Now for some irony. In the '90's when I was managing a trucking operation, one of the drivers I hired came to me and handed me a newspaper article. He thought I should know about him. He was one of the "Chicago 7", the guardsmen on trial for shooting students. He had endured a lot of hate, including family for what he did, and became a long distant truck driver to get away from everything, and would understand if I decided to let him go. (of course I kept him). But there is no way I wanted to ask him which student he shot.
My son sent me some pictures of that day:
http://picasaweb.google.com/hruffner/KentStateUniversityMay141970# . Pictures 188-189-190 might have me in there somewhere; but I can't tell, I was skinny and had a full head of hair then.
Few people know my story. I feel my wife was right and I needed to tell someone my story today.