400 Set Aside Bitterness, Hail Plans for Memorial : Rites Recall Kent State Shootings in 1970

About 400 persons turned out Saturday to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the National Guard shootings on a grassy hillside at Kent State University that became a focus for the nation’s bitter division over the war in Southeast Asia.

On May 4, 1970, after a weekend of demonstrations that saw a building burned and other vandalism, Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire on Kent State students who were protesting the U.S. invasion of Cambodia, killing four anti-war protesters and wounding nine others.

Dean Kahler, a former Kent State student left paralyzed by National Guard gunfire that day, praised plans for a campus memorial. He rode his wheelchair over the site of the shootings Saturday and stirred up some old memories.

“You remember Richard Nixon calling students names, and you remember Spiro Agnew making wild accusations,” Kahler said. “You remember the speech by (former Ohio Gov.) Jim Rhodes calling us all kinds of nasty names. So it’s a real emotional situation.”

But neither Kahler, who is now an Athens County commissioner, nor others directly affected by the shootings focused on any bitterness left over from the incident.

Instead, they praised the university’s recent decision to design and build a memorial at the site of the shootings.

“I was very bitter,” said Elaine Holstein of Glen Oaks, N.Y., the mother of slain student Jeffrey Miller. “It’s been nine years since I’ve been on this campus, and I didn’t ever think I’d set foot on it again. I think what brought me back was the word that there will finally be a memorial.”

Sen. Howard M. Metzenbaum (D-Ohio), the featured speaker at the ceremony, also praised the decision to build the memorial.

“What I think we cannot forget is that students were exercising their basic right of dissent,” Metzenbaum said. “That right . . . so totally separates democracy from totalitarianism. Those who dissent are quite often the heroes. It takes guts to dissent.”

He said that dissent is woven through America’s history, and he compared the Kent State protests to the Boston Tea Party, the women’s rights movement and the civil rights movement.

“It is not enough to allow dissent. We must demand it,” he said.

Metzenbaum noted that the war in Cambodia is still going on.

“People are still dying in Cambodia. How many of us here and in Congress are paying attention to that suffering?” he said. “I plead with this generation of students to make a special effort to understand what happened at Kent State.”

Another speaker read a brief history of the shootings, a 13-second spray of gunfire into a crowd that had begun to disperse at the end of a protest rally.

The ceremony began Friday night with a candlelight vigil at the site of the killings. Eight of the nine wounded students attended the service and were given a standing ovation at the end of Saturday’s program.

One of the wounded students, Alan Canfora, 36, said there has been more interest in the Kent State shootings this year than there was for the 10th anniversary.

“This year, there is a link between this event and the 10th anniversary of the fall of Saigon,” Canfora said.