Interview with Howard Means

McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Howard Means
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: Oral History Lab
Date of interview: 17 March 2023
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(Start of Interview)

SM: 00:02
All right, can you hear me? Yep. All right, on speakerphone. Today's interview is with Howard Means author of 67 Shots: Kent State and the End of American Innocence. Howard, thank you very much for agreeing to do this interview with me. And the first question I want to ask you is about your background. Your growing up years where you grew up, your family background, your schooling background, how you got into journalism and writing as a career.

HM: 00:36
Sure-sure. Glad to tell you all that. Born and raised in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, right in the middle of Amish country, not Amish by background, but my mother's family had been in Lancaster since the early 1800s. Went to public schools there, JP McCaskey High School I am a proud graduate of 1962 to give you some sense of how old I am.

SM: 00:59
Mm-Hmm.

HM: 01:00
Went from there to University of Virginia, and state through Virginia for a Master's I was a Ford Foundation program that had identified a critical shortage of PhDs in the humanities in the late (19)60s.

SM: 01:16
Hmm.

HM: 01:16
And so they gave us it was it was a hurry up thing. You get a master's in a year and then you rush out and get your doctorate and we plug the gap and then of course, the Vietnam War came along. And nobody left school. A lot of people did not leave school who might have left school they stayed on for doctorates to avoid the draft. I left after my got my masters in 1967, I became a school teacher. I spent one year teaching at Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts, and then seven years at St. Albans school in Washington, DC, part of the National Cathedral schools. There are three schools in the grounds the national-national cathedral is at all the all-boys school. And it was a very interesting time to be there because there were a lot of you know, there was a one of the Bush sons was there more Percy son was there. Kim Agnew was blinded a girl school across the way.

SM: 01:16
Hmm.

HM: 01:19
National Cathedral School, HR Bob Halderman’s son Hank was in my class. So it was a school that had you heavily involved in events of the time [inaudible] right. And I was on the well, I will come back to that a second- went from there; I did that until 1975. Then I segwayed into journalism because I could not figure out how to make a living as a school teacher. My wife was also a school teacher and teaching in Washington DC, teaching in that in a housing market like that gave you absolutely no chance of buying housing anywhere nearby. So I segwayed into journalism. spent a couple years with the Chronicle of Higher Education. spent time with Washingtonian Magazine in two [inaudible] interrupted by eight years, seven years with the Orlando Sentinel newspaper, where I was something called critic at large and an op ed columnist. And I wrote op eds I wrote, my God, I wrote about a million words worth in seven years, three a week. You had to have evergreens in the bank when you went on vacation. And then I ran out of opinions. So I accepted the magazine journalism, and did that until I started, I started in 1992. Somebody contacted me asked me if I wanted to do a biography of this young man who was making a great name for himself in the first Gulf War, Colin Powell. And I said, Sure, I would love to do that. And Colin Powell was not going to talk to me, reasonably enough. Why should he talk to punk like me? But I had a we knew some people and we knew somebody in common. And I just interviewed I think I interviewed 125 people who knew him.

SM: 04:07
Wow.

HM: 04:08
And a lot of them being good military people would call and report that, that they talked to me. So finally, he called my friend a guy named Ken Edelman and said, you can tell the son of a bitch, he has got me surrounded, I will talk to him. [laughter] And I did and we had a great time, I got to talk to Alma, his wife. And it was sad, And the book, the book did quite well, I was very happy with it. And then so from there started segwaying into doing my own books, over the course of and I have been self-employed since 2000. And I have written a bunch of books during those 20 years since- I let me see 20 no, I have to say 30, 30 here, [inaudible] book. And so I have just been a freelance book person for the last 25 years or so.

SM: 05:00
How do you pick the subject for your books? That leads me right into the rest of part of this question is, why did you pick a book on Ken State and in the title? Why did you pick Kent State in the End of American Innocence?

HM: 05:13
Well, I will tell you subtitles are hard to come up with. So I will break that down in a couple of different ways. But basically, what-what-what captures my interest? The just- books are books are hard things to write. They take a lot of time, they take low energy, and it has to be something that really grabs me and fascinates me. And I have been lucky to find subjects that have done that. The one-one of the more recent ones, the one before Kent State was an adult market biography of Johnny Appleseed, John Chapman.

SM: 05:56
Mm-Hmm.

HM: 05:57
I have always been interested in who the real John Appleseed John Johnny Appleseed was, and how myth, I got very interested in how people get trapped in their own myths. And events get trapped in the myths that build up around them. And I think that is part of why I was interested in Kent State too there was sort of the sort of, you know, for the people who were there for people like Alan Canfora and so on. There is, there is one explanation and that explanation is everything. The guard was all wrong, the students role right. And that is, that is too simplified for people on the other side, you know, the students deserve what they got, etc., etc. And it is so much more nuanced a story than that. And so, I would like trying to I like going into the nuances and trying to get behind the miss. The book I did before Johnny Appleseed was a book about Andrew Johnson, that called the Avenger Takes His Place, non-malign from Melville poem after Abraham Lincoln's assassination.

SM: 06:33
Mm-Hmm. Mm-Hmm.

HM: 06:38
And a lot of a lot of myths accrued around Johnson. Johnson is not a likable person. He is an unsuccessful president. But-but they sort of 45 days after Lincoln's death before Johnson announced the terms of peace, were a fascinating time in American history where things could have gone in any one of a number of directions. And that is, I think, often been way too simplified in terms of Johnson's character and how it did, but back to Kent State, in this case, just funny. I do not know what got me thinking about Kent State, it might have been, I cannot remember what it was. But I had written a poem that I was I was teaching in St. Albans school in Washington, DC, I was teaching as I said, a lot of kids are good connections to this world, into the political world. And I remember going into the faculty lounge after-after work that day, about maybe about 2:30. There was a TV on and there was the story of this shooting at Kent State University. And it just given and riveted me for all sorts of reasons. One, the kids who were shot, and the kids who shot them were many of them just a couple years older than the kids I was teaching. Two, I had been active to some extent and anti-war protests, I thought, I thought and still think that it was a war that never should have been fought for, for reasons that I think Robert McNamara is, has stated-

SM: 08:30
Yeah, well, one of the things I want to ask you even before you thought about writing a book on Kent State and or-

HM: 08:30
It was a we got ourselves caught in the middle of a civil war that we had no business being in the middle of it. But all that said, so I was thinking about this. I went home that that evening, I was not yet married, I was about to married about a month later. And I wrote a poem about the whole thing I always thought it was-was perfect poem I ever wrote. And so when I started thinking about this, I went hunting for the poem. And I have a collection of things upstairs in the attic above my office. And I could not find the poem. And everything else from that time was there. And somehow, I taken that poem out and put it somewhere and could not find it. And so I said to myself, "Oh, heck, I will just write a book about it." [laughter], [crosstalk] And so I just started looking into it. And so for one of a poem, I wrote this book, I think, and I have since found the poem, and it is not anywhere near as good as I remembered it. [laughter] But, but I am grateful to it because I got the book out of it. And then and then the book was just, I mean, the book was a fascinating experience for me in all sorts of ways. We can talk about that further. Go ahead. What is- what else is in your mind?

SM: 09:44
Just doing research on it, when you-you said 1960 until you graduated?

HM: 09:52
From high school.

SM: 09:53
Yeah, you are, you are either just in the, just the-the with the silent generation or you are a boomer. It depends, you know, but-

HM: 10:01
Yep.

SM: 10:01
-they are all in that activist era, because the beats were in that the silent generation here, before discussing you know Kent State and the link to the (19)60s, what were the events in your young life that impacted you?

HM: 10:18
Mm-Hmm.

SM: 10:19
Do another one words, a lot of people I have interviewed that whole era of growing up in the (19)50s. And the (19)60s in the (19)70s was, man, it was so different. And the it is all a unique experience. What were the events that started to-

HM: 10:34
Right- Yeah, sure-

SM: 10:34
-shape your thinking about how you think politically how you think about social issues and justice and things.

HM: 10:40
Right. I wish I could say that it was John Kennedy's assassination, but I cannot. I was certainly affected by it. But I do not remember it. I remember as being something horrible in, in the world. But it just it did not impact me anywhere near as much as Martin Luther King's assassination. And there is a story behind that. I was teaching again at Deerfield academy that year, this is what 18- I am sorry 1968, April 1968. And I was, I had a I have a dorm master party was like it was a terrible job and all sorts of ways. But I had 35 high school seniors that I was in charge of an L shaped dormitory, including one Black student named Raj McKenney in watch, did not speak a lot. He was very bright guy from Boston area, became a lawyer eventually. But I was in my room that in my [inaudible], there was there was no television, you know, there was no TV lounge or anything like that. In those days. It was pretty Spartan living accommodations.

SM: 10:40
Like that? Mm-Hmm.

HM: 11:13
And it was about 9:30-10 o'clock at night. I think that kids were supposed to, you know, I think there was a lights out at 10 o'clock. And it might have been 9:30-10 o'clock and his knock on my door and I go and Raj McKenney standing there; tears rolling down his face. And he said he has just heard the Martin Luther King had been assassinated, and [inaudible] on the television, on my television. And we sat there for about an hour and 20 minutes or something like that watching. He just sat there quietly and cried the entire time. And that was a powerful, powerful experience for me. And I think that politicized me more than anything else has ever happened. To me, that one event. And I have not been a particularly political person up until that moment. Although I would have to say I was also kind of a clean Gene McCarthy guy as the as the (19)68 campaign went on. That was that whole year was my political awakening, I guess. And so the way the (19)60s there was all these forces moving through the Civil Rights and the, you know, the anti-war, everything. And they were, to some extent, toxic waters, they were just flowing through society. And I think I said in the Kent State book, all of those toxic waters flowed together in Kent, Ohio, on the week of the first weekend in May 1970. And it was hard not to bluff. Another example. This is this would have been, gosh, it was a weatherman demonstrate who is was it was an anti-war demonstration in Washington. And it had to have been in 1969, I think the spring of (19)69. The night before the weathermen had been done some, you know, trashing some stores and buildings along Massachusetts Avenue. And there was a- the next day, there was a demonstration done in the mall. And I walked down to it from where I was living, so walk down Massachusetts Avenue all the way to Dupont Circle. And when you get to the circles at every error race, at every radio office circles, and there are about six radios off of all those circles in Washington. There were military jeeps with four guards and four of my soldiers , army soldiers in them, each cradling a semi-automatic and they just, you know, stared at you and you walk down. And you know, you did not want to turn your eyes one way or the other, walked on down. And all that sort of stuff was just hard to be sentient in 1968, 1969. And not to one way or another, feel the spill these currents moving through American society. Especially if you were teaching school, you were teaching kids who are picking up on this stuff.

SM: 12:46
Right. Mm-Hmm.

HM: 12:51
So-so that was that was a powerful force, and the (19)68 presidential campaign to some extent, too that-

SM: 14:46
Oh yeah, the conventions and everything.

HM: 14:49
Yes.

SM: 14:50
It is interesting that we have forgotten to Kent State, Dr. McPherson, the great historian on the Civil War, and you wrote a book on Johnson and when he was a young person working on his PhD, it was during the (19)60s and in the late 50s, and (19)60s, and he kept seeing the comparisons between the civil war in the (19)60s and the terms of the divisions that were happening. What would since you say, the Civil War, and then in the (19)60s, what were the commonalities there, in those two wars?

HM: 15:25
Between the, between the, between the civil war in the (19)60s?

SM: 15:28
Yes.

HM: 15:30
Well, that is an interesting question. It was a deeply divided America. I think it was. Actually, our own time is very much the same today. And I see a lot of this today, too.

SM: 15:41
Mm-Hmm.

HM: 15:41
It was it was a deeply divided America was divided by- the difference between the civil war in the (19)60s and today, I guess, is the prevalence of mass media, and how mass media shapes public opinion.

SM: 15:58
Mm-Hmm.

HM: 15:59
And especially now how social media save ships public opinion. I think that is a huge difference, actually. The I mean, I think in the Civil War, people were sort of locked into their, their assumptions. Because they did not have a lot of interaction. I mean, guys in Massachusetts, were not going down to the party in Fort Lauderdale, and driving through, you know, slaveholding states.

SM: 16:23
Right.

HM: 16:24
When I was a kid growing up going my father's from Alabama, and we went back to Alabama with some regularity to see relatives. And I became quite conscious of, of, you know, colors only fountains and colors only entrances-

SM: 16:39
Mm-Hmm.

HM: 16:39
-and all that sort of stuff. And this is really strange. The so you became you are more, you know, intimately connected to those divisions in American-American society. The um, hmm. I do not know. It is interesting, certainly. [sighs] And I guess, I mean, I guess it was, in some ways, I mean, the South always claimed it was an illegitimate war.

SM: 16:39
Mm-Hmm.

HM: 16:39
It was a war of Northern aggression. This is still called in some, some quarters down there. I happen to feel the Vietnam was sent was an-

SM: 17:18
Right. Yeah.

HM: 17:18
-illegitimate war. So I guess, to some extent, and God knows what-what people are, you know, I do not understand how the party of Reagan has become the party of Vladimir Putin. But that is another matter altogether. But it certainly has happened in you know, in-in the last 40 years. That and less than that, I mean, if you get to figure that George W. Bush was-was of that Reagan era, that Reagan sort of sensibility, and all of a sudden, we are, we are. So you know, these are bitterly divided times in American society. And when that happens, toxic water starts flowing. And, and, you know, bad things can happen has happened to Kent State-

SM: 17:59
When you one of the things about Kent State, and I have written, read a lot of books and done other interviews on it in the past, is that it always comes up, why cannot state you have a single section in your book, you know, people saying why did that happen here? You know, you could be Berkeley or University Wisconsin or Ohio State here, but Kent State [crosstalk]

HM: 18:21
-places, it have-have been happened. Yeah.

SM: 18:23
And in your own way, could you save? Why Kent State?

HM: 18:30
Well, yeah, I mean, I will try to, I think there were a number of factors involved. And, number one, the college administration was not prepared for anything like this. They were they were not up to the moment in any way whatsoever. I think the President had a reputation as a very nice guy, white, but-but he had he was way over his head, this administration was way over its head. So that is factor number one. Ken Hammond, who was one of the student leaders this time made a really interesting point to me said also, the student demonstrators, he had been head of SDS [Students for a Democratic Society] when SDS was still in the Kent State campus. It was kicked off in 1969 because of some fight with fraternity boys and the attorney. Attorney. I know it was not kicked off. I just SDS was kicked off. And he said the problem there was that SDS gay protesters and infrastructure. You know, we had bullhorns, we had mimeograph machines we could get people organize in a way.

SM: 19:15
Mm-Hmm. Mm-Hmm.

HM: 19:32
And what you had was what you had in the once the guardsman got there. And once the garden became the principal subject of this all you had, you had no infrastructure among the protesters no sort of coordination among the protesters. Everybody just kept repeating the same action expecting a different outcome. You had Jim Rhodes, who was the perfect tender for this for this sort of thing to happen. Jim Rhodes was a governor. Remember Rhodes was running. He could not succeed himself. He was running for the Senate seat. He was running for the Republican nomination for the Senate against Robert Taft Jr. and Rhodes saw this as I- when-when, when, first when his office was called early in the morning of Saturday-Saturday morning, and asked to send National Guard's Rhodes was man from heaven, because it could excite his base especially as Republican base especially in southern Ohio. A Friday poll had him trail and Bob Taft by 75,000 votes, I think it was your 69,000 votes.

SM: 20:35
Mm-Hmm.

HM: 20:35
Tuesday after the shootings was the primary election, he lost by 5000 votes. That almost put them over the top astoundingly enough. So you had that you had the guardsmen in this particular case, who were terribly led, who had no leadership whatsoever. So it was it was a perfect storm waiting to happen. At Columbia, people were used to this kind of thing, that at Berkeley, they might not have liked it any more than they do anywhere else. But they were used to this kind of thing. And, and also, I think part of it too, and I think I mentioned this in the book was tend to say it was it was a was a feeder school for the classrooms for teachers for north, northeast Ohio.

SM: 21:22
Mm-Hmm.

HM: 21:23
And teachers and I was one and I know a lot of them still tend to be naive. They tend to actually believe that we think they know everything they read in the Constitution and everything I say, Oh yeah, this is the way society works. I think they were I think they were simply naive about how you know what the guard was capable of. It is notable that that virtually no Black students participate in those demonstrations. In fact, they stake consciously away because Black students in Ohio as elsewhere know what police can do and-

SM: 21:55
Yes.

HM: 21:55
-what we will do-

SM: 21:56
Yes.

HM: 21:57
-if you get an adequately pissed off, they know what they will do. And in fact, when the ROTC building when the ROTC building got caught on fire on Saturday night the whole group of students from so called Black United students bus a clever acronym for the day boss and-and all that-

SM: 22:15
Mm-Hmm.

HM: 22:16
-these kids as soon as that started just-just as it caught on fire they showed up in the student union to have something eat you know or something like that. So they would be notably seen nowhere near this event.

SM: 22:27
Wow.

HM: 22:28
And they scared that they scared I think they the workers in the in the in the in the cafeteria, you know, the food, the food court area by all showing up at the same time. But so-so they were not naive the students were in lots of cases, I think naive. And then there was the fact that Jerry Rubin had been there to [inaudible] two weeks before-

SM: 22:52
Mm-Hmm.

HM: 22:54
-and had spoken and he had inflamed not only students but the townspeople of Kent. His talk was reported on and-and-and he had one of his famous lines which he always said was and you will your listeners will pardon me it goes something like "Just say fuck everywhere." [laughs] And you know, the townspeople cannot we are not quite ready for this.

SM: 23:18
No.

HM: 23:19
America was not quite ready for it is Jerry Rubin well, no Jerry Rubin was on the great self-promoters of all time. As was Abbie Hoffman for that matter? So that played a role too, because on Friday when the students [inaudible] I remember-remember the timing on this, the Thursday before the shootings. Richard Nixon goes on TV he gives a speech the war is being expanded into Cambodia. The 100,000 troops he was going to bring home or being you know are not going to be bought home and inflame students everywhere. Friday night, it is the first one of the first warm nights of spring. These are kids there is three to beer for sale to 18-year-old in that part of Ohio. I do not know if it is true. It was true then, all of Ohio there were bars downtown the kids go down. They start drinking they get a little rowdy. Somebody close to that with somebody orders the mayor orders the bars closed. So now you have got kids who has been the bands have not yet started that does not have the-the lead bands and [inaudible] that headliners not started. There is a, there is the New York Knicks and Lakers game is playing Wilt Chamberlain versus Willis Reed etc. For the NBA championship. All those people are watching out in the bars are thrown on the street now you got people who are just sore out on the street and they start to misbehave on the street. And that is with about within about an hour of that LeRoy Satrom, the mayor calls the governor's office and so that guards be sent in and that starts this thing on an inevitable- given the characters involved, it starts with on an inevitable march almost a tragedy.

SM: 24:25
Yep. You bring up in this unit and you are discussing this, the-the massive lack of leadership in every group that you talked about the fact that the-the years of SDS are no longer there because they had been kicked off campus than they did the organization's for many of the planning for protests. And of course, they would have weekly meetings on campus and his organization-

HM: 25:28
Right.

SM: 25:28
-there. And then the mayor in I have worked in university for years and the mayor of any city is in deep contacts with the president of the university in their own town. First person-

HM: 25:43
Yep.

SM: 25:43
-to be called and he ends up calm the-the governor.

HM: 25:47
Yep.

SM: 25:47
So there was lack of leadership their lack of leadership in the guard. When you bring that up beautifully describe it was some of the people who were in the guard, did not know who to take orders from and you did not know anyone who was in charge. And I think you had a line in there and I do not know who said it. It was like two people walking in the middle of the night just been passing each other and that would be the mayor and the leader of the guard. [laughs]

HM: 25:51
Yep. Yeah, and a perfect example of the lack of leadership. Okay, comes on Monday, comes on Monday at noon, everybody knows there is going to be a demonstration on you know, everybody knows what is going to happen. There is going to their students are going to gather, the guard will rebill, Ohio Riot Act in order to disperse, they will not disperse. They will fire tear gas and then we will see what happens. Well, so it is obviously an everybody knows what is going to happen on the students know what is going to happen the teachers are talking about in your classes that morning. There are signs posted in bulletin boards and all the academic halls. And “Where is the government," said “Where is the president of the university? Where all his top administrators?” At noon that day when it has been called for, they were having lunch at the Brown Derby restaurant a half a mile from the restaurant and from the from the scene of action. There is a command center that is been set up for-for crisis command center. And in charge of the command center is a 25-year-old graduate student named Ray Bae who I had a really great long interview with. Ray Bae is sitting up there. He does not have any windows in this command center. So good windowless command center with a crackly walkie talkie that you can you can periodically talk to people on a periodic cannot hear a darn thing that said, and this is when the whole thing started. You know, that is, that is, that is, it is, it is beyond, you are responsible. It is a way it is criminal irresponsibility, I think on the part of the university.

SM: 27:46
I heard in an interview, I will not mention the name. But in one of my interviews, the person said that they knew all about President White and whenever there was a crisis, he would that be seen, he would send one of his administrators to the crisis and had that person report back to him so that he would be free from the controversy or whatever.

HM: 28:05
I think he was also just a laissez faire kind of guy-

SM: 28:08
Right.

HM: 28:08
-to say that things will take care of themselves. He was apparently much loved. He was a good guy. But if-if, and we can talk another time, but yesterday, Glen Frank had finally not finally not acted after the shooting was when there was no worse could have been worse could have happened. Somebody had to take charge. Glen Frank finally took charge. But that is another story for later on.

SM: 28:31
But yeah-yeah. What a hero. He was, you know, and the tears in his eyes. When students saw the tears in his eyes. He knew he meant business and [crosstalk]

HM: 28:42
-broke them. I do not know if anybody has ever talked about that. He was never the same after that.

SM: 28:50
You talk to-

HM: 28:50
-his son, his son mentioned that to me.

SM: 28:53
You talk about you talked to the student activities director. He has listened. He was in your book here of canceling universal. Yeah, he said there was a plan. There was a plan. If there was a crisis, we had a plan. And they talked about all this business about the plan, then why did not you do it?

HM: 29:10
Because, well, the plan involves the Ohio patrol and the Highway Patrol. That was the plan. [laughter] Highway Patrol one had nothing to do with it. And then of course, there were the extraneous factors to that guardsmen that were brought over to Kent from Akron, where they had been on a teamsters strike, they had been sort of, you know, policing the roads over there, because, you know, people like teachers were firing at scabs and the trucks that were there, were taking the trucks out. So these guys retire. They, you know, they have done they have done fairly hard duty, they were sleeping on, you know, a gym floor and, and so, all those all those sorts of factors are part of that are part of the volatile putting that is being created on these three days that go along and as they go along.

SM: 30:00
I know when you talked about Richard [inaudible], he taught he talked about the importance of community.

HM: 30:00
Yeah.

SM: 30:00
-that whole concept that I we think we know our community. And then he looked at the videos after the after the tragedy and the killings.

HM: 30:06
Yeah.

SM: 30:06
And he said, I did not know any of those students. I mean, talk about administration. That was as Jerry, I think, Jerry Lewis, the professor said the-

HM: 30:27
Jerry Leis, yeah.

SM: 30:29
-wrong man at the wrong time. And that was so true. The people that are going to be listened to this interview are going to be hearing this 5-10-15-20 years from now, could you just briefly describe again, the four days leading up to the tragedy?

HM: 30:46
Sure-sure.

SM: 30:47
Yeah.

HM: 30:49
Thursday. Now that pick-up count backwards third, second, first, Thursday, April 30th, Richard Nixon gives a nationally televised speech, explaining why instead of bringing troops home from Vietnam, 100,000 troops home, he is expanding the war to interdict-interdict North Vietnamese and Vietcong soldiers in Cambodia. So this is everybody thought, "Oh, gee," you find these bringing people home, the war is winding down." It produced a pretty violent reaction on campuses generally around the country. So that is Thursday. Friday, there is a demonstration on the Kent State campus by a bunch of nerdy looking graduates who photograph is wonderful, who call themselves WHORE for an acronym for World historians opposed to racial something. I cannot think of what the EU would be right now. Racial exploitation, I think it was-

SM: 31:55
Right.

HM: 31:56
-supposed to, and they bury a copy of the Constitution at the at the bell, the victory bill, which was a big part of the campus of the of the commons area where the where the later events will begin. And then on Saturday, the things are fairly calm in the morning. There is some talk about ROTC building, going and attacking the ROTC building. It should have been it should have been anticipated. I am sure it was not just ready because ROTC buildings were being attacked nationwide and set on fire and in some cases bombed nationwide. So the evening comes, the guard has the guards, the guard is over in Akron, but they have been they have been put an alert they might have to come to campus. And students begin to attack to begin to surround the ROTC building and make some you know halfhearted attempts to set it on fire. The- Kent fire department is called they show up. They begin to try to put out the fire but there gets some flak things just people are throwing some things that somebody might have taken a machete to one of the fire hose it is hard to say. But the so they leave meanwhile, meanwhile on a ridge overlooking this that I think it is the vice president a guy whose name is going escapes me right now. Matson, I think it is standing up there with the Kent State Security Force. They are looking down at this at from this sort of height because the-the ROTC buildings at the end of this commons area, it is surrounded by some hills. And they do not do a thing. They just stand there. They- the fire department goes away, the students move in, they set the building on fire. And about that time the guard has been the guard has been summoned. And as the guard is driving into Kent, they see this. They see this sky lit up by flame and they say oh my god, what am I getting into with that was the ROTC building burning. And it burned it burned to the ground that night. I think the fire department returned and put some of the flames out or something I cannot remember that. The guard, the guard hits the ground running. They order people in the dormitories to do all sorts of things. There is a bunch of you know, back and forth hit and run sort of stuff the students are trying, the guard take control the situation. In some cases, they have been at a number of kids in the butt, or they were trying to climb in the windows. It was various other things. So the campus is- the campuses is tempestuous at this point. So that is Saturday night. Yes. Oh-oh, I forgot. I forgot okay. I had to go back on Friday night. I am sorry on Saturday morning after he calls him to guard LeRoy, LeRoy Satrum, the mayor of Kent also declares a curfew downtown Kent from I think it is from eight at night till six in the morning, something like that. So the students are now confined to the campus. They cannot leave the campus. The guard has showed up there some sort of major confrontation. So that night, Sunday comes and things are eerily calm in the morning. I remember who was in which was it Jerry Lewis, I think it was Jerry Lewis. One of the professors that teachers at Kent, told me about taking his kids down -

SM: 34:06
Mm-Hmm. him. That was him. Yes.

HM: 35:36
Yeah. To see the ROTC building it is surrounded by guards and the guards when the guardsmen by the way are carrying M M1 Garand rifles, which were sniper rifle their world war two combat rifles is what they are. It is an actually insane thing to be doing crowd control with, you do crowd control with bird shot.

SM: 35:55
Mm-Hmm.

HM: 35:56
And it just about the same time Israel started using rubber bullets for crowd control. These guys are using guns that are lethal, up to a half up to more than a half a mile out.

SM: 36:07
Wow.

HM: 36:08
Guns that can pick a 200-pound person up off the ground and throw them backwards through the air. That is how powerful they are. So Jerry Lewis said he was walking around with his kids. He said, I have been I have been in the army. I have been at Fort Knox guard in Fort Knox. I carry a gun. We never had any ammunition. And I never thought to ask these guys so they had live ammunition and their rifles who just did not seem to be possible. But there is a kind of a- it is kind of a carnival festival quality to Sunday afternoon. You know, the whole thing, you lovely young woman with-with-with buckskin fringe coats on, you know, put rifle put flowers in their rifles and the guards. There is some guards smiling back at the girls and all this sort of stuff that had a set of a playful quality.

SM: 36:55
Mm-Hmm.

HM: 36:55
That nights things go to hell in a handbasket. Huge confrontation of by the main gate, apprentice gates, and back and forth, back and forth. Helicopters are coming in and doing tear gas from the air. The places that some people who want one or two people came back to campus that that night, because classes started the next day they had been now a lot of kids. I have started commuted to Kansas State it was good and there were a lot of commuters from Cleveland and elsewhere going down there was not they did not live there. They were not residents students talk about these are a couple of people who have come who had been-been in Vietnam. They said they came over the hills coming down towards Kent State. They said it looked like-like-like Da Nang you know, helicopters, there was tear gas all over the place, there were people running every direction, etc., etc. So it is a- it is a- it is a fraught situation. They finally break that up sometime after midnight, the campus quiets down overnight. And there is a- now it is Monday, May 4, there is a demonstration has been called for-for noon that day. Same place other demonstrations has taken place and it is down on the on the commons area. Surrounded it is a kind of a natural bull. And so the students are on the hillside looking down in this natural bowl. The guards 600-700, some of them 792 or something like that. Their main the main encampment is down at the far end of the of the Commons. So they-they are down there. The guy who is in charge of the guards a gun in Canterbury, General Canterbury. He is sort of late to the party to a 10 o'clock meeting and he-he has a suit on. So he is not even in uniform. He is wearing a suit with-with a gas mask over his over his head on top of his head and communication, presumably a communication system. So it is now noon. The-the one of the one of the guys from the guards, or yeah, no, it is maybe the camera who it was. Gets his bullhorn tells the students they had to disperse. Under the Ohio Riot Act the students have no intention of dispersing of meanwhile, should add to they have not canceled classes, people are still walking to classes all around this scene. And it will be fatal for two of them. And within the next 22 minutes. The- so the students you know refuse to move Canterbury lines as his troops up, he marches him forward towards the hill where all these people are sitting. There is tear gas being fired. The students take off up the hill and down the other side of it. The guardsmen split into two camps going on one side of Taylor Hall and a large group on the other side of Taylor Hall. The main group of guardsmen end up down because nobody has this guy Canterbury has not tested, has no sense of the battlefield. He has, he has marched his troops down into a cul de sac, basically a football field on practice football field that has, you know, has a fence around it. And there is construction down there, which gives people you know, pieces of wood to throw at the garden, everything there, the other groups are disappears the other side, they do not become a factor. And so they are down there. This is now about, let us say, 12:15 around in there, 12:20-12:00-12:14, something like that. And so he is well, they start to march and back up the hill, they just came down. They get to the Pagoda, which is a campus, sort of little sculpture, it is a- it is a metal Pagoda kind of thing. They got their-their students thinking the guards, because they want to have the guards in the run are coming up the hill after them. The guards who in turn 19 of them, turn fire 67 shots into the crowd, they fire 67 shots, I should say. Some of them go in the air, some of them go in the ground. But there was an air of intentionality by that point. And, and nobody has ever been held responsible for this, I should say. You mentioned Joe Lewis earlier, Joe Lewis, in a what he called a colossal, colossal piece of bad timing. chooses just at the moment when the guards have turned to stand up and give him the finger. He gets shot in the ankle. Alan Canfora has shot in the wrist. He has been waving a flag, Black Flag during this this, this part of the demonstration he got shot on the wrist. Alison Krauss, who was very visible, it was very striking looking woman very much in the forefront of the protest is-is shot. Basically, bullet fragments insider and destroys virtually all of her viscera. And Jeffrey Miller, who has been again very active, short guy kind of buzzing around like a [inaudible] thing is just, it is just shouting out one of the basic chants. I suspect it was 1234 We do not want your fucking more when he shot in the mouth. Jerry Miller, Miller, Jeff Miller bleeds out on the ground. He is the one in the famous photo bleaching out as Marianas Accio stands with their arms up in there looking like a character from Edvard Munch painting. Screaming to just screaming basically. But I mean, those are what they are on. They are horrible, but they are the collateral damage, the incidental damage. So there is intentionality and all those cases I am sure that they ran at those people. There is no question about that. But then there were the shots that were just randomly fired, that were-were not fired up in the air, though. There is a parking lot behind where all these people have been. And that is where Sandy Shore is walking from one class to another. She is not even looking at what is going on. She is walking along, and an M1 bullet- service or jugular vein. And that is also where Bill Schroeder, who was he will just stop his books are in his arm and he has just stopped and you know, to ask people what is going on something like that. And he was number two in his ROTC class. He was a college basketball player 6-6 feet 1 or something 180 odd pounds. He is the one that no one bullet just picks up off the ground and throws back his arms and legs akimbo. A guy named Henry Mankiewicz was standing next to him and he describes it in something that will haunt me for my dying day, that description. And then there were other people who shot incidentally two or maybe not it is hard to hard tell some of those cases. So the guardsmen, then the guardsmen then reassemble. This This puts us off to everything you know what is going on nobody else the guardsmen are marched around to where they began. They have reassembled now at the far end of this Commons. And this is going on getting towards one o'clock on-on Monday, May 4th. The students are back over the hill and they were back where they were when this whole thing began. And there are a bunch of them who have stripped off their shirts and painted X's on their chest [coughs] excuse me and are getting ready to charge the guard. The guard has reloaded I mean it would have been able to my shooting ducks in a barrel. And this is when teacher named Glenn Frank, crew cut guy who had been a military guy himself and World War Two, just a complete straight shooter. He sees he sees the potential and he had another idea and one person start pleading with the students to not do this, do not do this do not do this and, and he does not know it but his son Alan is one of those people in the crowd. Who was who says he said[inaudible] house fraternity kid? I had no you know, I was against all this protest. And after seeing this, I was ready to strip my shirt off and charged with them. And Glen Frank cannot know this. But Glenn Frank, please and please, you can hear his voice is to tape recording. He is crying with tears in his voice. It is an incredibly passionate moment. And he finally convinces them to turn and-and disperse, which they do. And that is that is basically the end of the action although that night things intent, there been a lot of rumors flying around cat. Among the rumors was that the students are going to lace the water supply with-with LSD, which one I love that they were coming through underground tunnels, the sewer tunnels or something like that to set fire to a shopping center, strip mall and various other things.

SM: 46:08
Mm-Hmm.

HM: 46:09
And go and people store owners were spending the night with our deer rifles on top of your stores. The it was it was a very fraught place. And that night, there are a lot of people driving around sort of vigilante cars looking for students that because the initial report was students-students killed two guardsmen. That was the first report I think that went out. And of course, then that got corrected went along for the 11 wounded. So and then the story is kind of plays itself out eventually that day, they ordered the campus closed and-and that is sort of the end of it, at least at that level of action. Is that clear enough?

SM: 46:56
Yes, it is very good description, because-

HM: 46:58
Okay.

SM: 46:59
-it is a very good description. What is interesting is what is going on in Washington DC at this very same time. You know, I think you do-do a tremendous job in your book about making the context it is going on not only in Kent, but other places. The one thing that is very true, it happened to me, but it happened to so many other people at that time. Is the-the talk that I wish they had killed all those students, you know, people-

HM: 46:59
Yeah.

SM: 47:01
-going home to their families and-

HM: 47:08
Oh, my God, yeah-yeah.

SM: 47:13
-the whole community of Canton people. I mean, I mean to say something I was at Binghamton University, I am senior year and I am going to be graduating in two weeks. And, and I was in an accident. I was in the operating room in Johnson City, the night of Nixon speech, and, and I was in the hospital for about a week or so. But I am-

HM: 47:51
Yeah-yeah.

SM: 47:51
-in that magazine. My parents brought the magazine in with Mary Vecchio over Jeff Miller-

HM: 47:57
Life magazine. Yeah-yeah.

SM: 47:58
-but you know, my doctor who saved my arm, they were going to amputate it.

HM: 48:02
Oh no.

SM: 48:03
They were. Yeah, it was a very bad injury at my house back. And then near Ithaca. He came in and said, I was looking at the magazine. He said I wish to kill those damn kids.

HM: 48:15
Oh yeah-yeah-

SM: 48:15
I did not respond to him by saying I am one of those damn kids. But that was that that was a surgeon that saved my arm.

HM: 48:22
Yeah-yeah-yeah.

SM: 48:22
And he knew I was abandoned student. So that that is so important. [crosstalk] And also the late kneeling labeling of all people who happen to be in Kent as communists and all this.

HM: 48:34
Oh, yeah-yeah-yeah, exactly. Oh, no. And there was Brinsley Tyrrell who is I do not know when she is still alive. And he was an art teacher there. He was still alive when? Back in 2015, when I interviewed him, but he remember he was a young art teacher there. And he and his wife. Well, first of all, he told me two stories, three stories. Actually, I will tell you all three, because they are all they all relate to this.

SM: 48:56
Mm-Hmm.

HM: 48:57
The first one was, he and his wife were home. That I think it was late that night or the next day, when one of his students who had you know they had been thrown off the campus, they could not go out. He came and knocked on the door. And ft come in, and he said was sure come in. And he sat down and cried. He said he had gone home. And wherever home was, you know, a couple hours away-

SM: 49:22
Wow.

HM: 49:23
-and that he found the door locked. So he said, Hey, it is me. And his parents shouted through the through the mail slot. We do not ever want to see you again. And so he came to Brinsley's house, that that same day is two daughters. So they had tired a Black, Black ribbon around a tree in front of their house. Being good academic liberals and their daughters the next day were going out to school was closed the next day still, they are going to play with some friends and the kids in the neighborhood pelting them with tones, which just to me is just horrible beyond description.

SM: 49:25
Mm-Hmm.

HM: 49:27
And then the third thing is he remembers he remembered a day later even walking downtown from his house, and a neighbor, about half a block down. Sitting on his front porch with a shotgun. He said, he just trained it on me the entire way down in front of his house.

SM: 50:23
Wow.

HM: 50:23
I just walked down with this guy swinging, swinging as is aim along with me. And that and those stories are just beyond Dean Kahler, you know, got Dean Kahler, who has been paralyzed for life. He was, he was he was, he was nowhere near the action. He would take. He meant he was such a, he was such a polite and farm Ohio farm boy, that he called all his teachers that morning, Monday morning to tell them, he was afraid he had missed their class because he wanted to, you know, see what this is all about.

SM: 50:24
Mm-Hmm.

HM: 50:27
And he would just he just went a shooting star, he lay down on the ground and was shot in the back. And since he lost his feet because of lack of circulation.

SM: 51:04
Mm-Hmm.

HM: 51:04
He is our heroic person, and they are very decent person. I got to say. So yeah, those stories and that story was magnified nationally, but that was going on nationally. I mean, I can remember in Washington, DC, you know, having slightly long hair as I did, but not you know, not sort of not hippy length hair and like walking into barber shops and having you know, World War Two that just sitting there just glower at me as I, as I walked in waiting for my chair to say I never said that kind of thing. We were just going on nationally and all sorts of. And another example that after the week, that weekend, after the Kent State shooting, there was a pro there was a there was a demonstration in the financial district in New York.

SM: 51:47


HM: 51:47
For you know, in, in honor of the anti-war demonstration honoring the Kent State dead, wounded. And you will remember this, the construction workers showed up with their hard hats and crowbars and beat the crap out of some of the people who were doing demonstrating and that Gordon Brennan, the head of a construction union workers, job is Richard Nixon's labor secretary, if I remember correctly. [laughter]

SM: 52:17
You talked-

HM: 52:18
Richard Nixon, Richard Nixon. I mean, they will go ahead, go down.

SM: 52:21
Yeah, we are going to talk about Nixon. The-the context of this at that particular time was over the issue of law and order.

HM: 52:28
Yeah-yeah.

SM: 52:28
And you do a tremendous job here by explaining what Ronald Reagan did about a couple of weeks before Kent State-

HM: 52:36
Yep.

SM: 52:37
-with the students in California and then the governor of Ohio doing the very same thing with-

HM: 52:43
Yep-yep.

SM: 52:43
-the way he was acting. And then you go into what Nixon was doing in Washington and Haldeman's notes. Could you kind of go into all this? It is really good and-and I think the silent majority how the silent majority came about.

HM: 52:57
Yeah, right. [laughs] it is, it is an interesting, isn't that?

SM: 52:59
Yeah.

HM: 53:00
Well, just-just quickly on that, or the stretch my memory a little bit here. So well, Nixon, Nixon's first. Nixon's first instinct was, well, it was it was it was out of out of it was professional rabble rousers basically. it was outsiders. And he told J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI, to find those outside rabble rousers, the you know, the-the agitators, the outside agitators who would cause this because the party line was that there was a group of people, SDS, leaders, yippies, like Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, etc., who were causing all this trouble. It was not. It was not a, you know, an endemic American problem. It was this this sort of small group. And so J. Edgar Hoover has spent his people spent a lot of time in Kent trying to, you know, collecting, you know, information, none of which were out. And we just we talked about that [inaudible] would later say that you know, they I believe this to be the case too and when we looked at the photographs, they were all our own people we just did not know them they were not the kind of people we focused on these if we just did not know your work so-so-so Hoover was trying to collect all this stuff. Actually. There is a that is a good story too. I will get to that. So and Nixon meanwhile, so hold him is the one who goes in and wakes up Nixon. He is taking a nap on Monday afternoon he tells him about the shootings. And Nixon was apparently initially you know, very concerned about a horrible, horrible thing. Bob just horrible thing. And then of course, he begins to try to figure out how I can play this politically.

SM: 54:42
Mm-Hmm.

HM: 54:43
So he orders Hoover to find out who the outside agitators are. Meanwhile, Spiro Agnew, his Vice President, this is just red meat for Agnew who-who-who goes every who starts talking everywhere he can about-about the nattering nabobs of negativism that he used to call the people in the press and everybody else.

SM: 55:06
Sapphire was his writer. [laughter]

HM: 55:07
You have sapphire-sapphire, I hope I hope got into heaven nonetheless. It turns out that guidance that Gould who was what was-was spear lag news press secretary. And I knew that died a couple years ago. He is a great guy. I knew him pretty well. And so we talked about, he told me he actually told me he said that the horrible the real tragedy that the real tragedy said the thing about that Jim Rhodes said he was not he was not running for the Senate because he because he wanted to be a senator. He just could not think anything else to do with his time to do so he loses he loses the National Guard on Kent State. Because what the hell else am I going to do right? It is just natural become a senator. Rhodes is a horrible person and lots of money. Right. Okay. So-so-so Nixon was trying to figure out how to play this. And he does. He orders Agnew to just pike, turn it, turn it down a notch, turn it down several notches. Then he gives us a Thursday or Friday, Thursday. Thursday night? Yes, right. Thur- Friday night, he gives a speech to the American people, which starts out, you know, fairly conciliatory, but then gets a little rougher as it goes along. And meanwhile, hundreds of 1000s of people are preparing to gather in the mall the next day, the National Mall, Nixon was giving this speech in a White House, it was surrounded by DC transit buses, human barricade, and the middle it was literally surrounded, ringed by them all the way around the entire bus fleet, practically a DC transit buses. There are the 82nd airborne is overnighting in executive, the old Executive Office Building sleeping on the floor over there. And I know this because I was out in the mall the next day. And there are snipers on top of all the Smithsonian buildings and all the government buildings along the people high powered rifles. That is the sort of state things were in at that point. So, it was it was just it was a horribly-horribly fraught time. But I think you can make an argument that it was in fact, almost the end of the anti-war movement, the in any sort of in any sort of collective meaningful, high impact way that was happening at any rate, because the draft had ended in the December of 1969. So, the there was less incentive because it was now going to be an all-volunteer army. But I do think I do think they response. Oh, do you think I think I can safely say that was the beginning of the end of, and I think it was the beginning of the end of radicalism in America for many decades.

SM: 58:24
Mm-Hmm.

HM: 58:25
Really, I do not think we have ever seen it. We have not seen anything like that in my in my, you know, my, what is my really adult lifetime, as opposed to my 20s? So yeah, I think I think I say that in the book, and I think I feel that is still the case.

SM: 58:42
But what is interesting when-when you were talking about the Reagan, then the Rhodes and the Nixon is the words they used. And Reagan said, if it takes a bloodbath to end campus violence, let us get it over with no more appeasement. And then Rhodes comes back at you know, after Kent State or during Kent State. And about, you know, let us get rid of the law. It is a law no, deal with the symptoms. Let us deal with.[crosstalk]

HM: 59:15
Yeah, we are going to root-root out the problem. Yes. Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. Real tough talk. You said that at the press conference, when he first came to Canada. Yeah, he was. He was a take no prisoners. The guy wrote. The not the right man for the moment. I do not think.

SM: 59:32
Yeah, certainly Nixon gone down in the middle of the night to the memorial.

HM: 59:36
That is what I was trying to remember.

SM: 59:37
Yes.

HM: 59:38
That is one of the weirdest moments in American presidential history. The Nixon this is after he has given the speech. He thinks it is a wonderful speech. He is feeling you know, really, he had said he would take no calls after the speech because he thought there might be you know, would not be, but he was he was he was had to completely opt out after the speech. And he made something like “God Oh,” I wish I had the numbers in front of simulate 50 calls in three hours. I mean, any maxed number them to Henry Kissinger as I remember correctly. For some reason Henry Kissinger I am not sure why. And then about three o'clock he wakes 3:15 wakes up is his valet what is his name Mano [Manolo] Sanchez, something like that. And says, "Have you ever been to the mall? " "No, sir, I have not." "So Oh, good, get dressed." They have got a skeleton crew, they go down, they wake up a couple of protesters who are in sleeping bags, have a chat with them. And you look at this, there is a famous photograph of Nixon there. And one guy who had a guy and a woman or you know, long haired-

SM: 1:00:46
Right.

HM: 1:00:46
-and they looked and they looked like my God, how much dope that I have last night? Why am I, why am I having this vision? [laughs]

SM: 1:00:55
Also, I guess he Nixon was upset because he did not hear favoritism from his cabinet. You had mentioned that.

HM: 1:01:01
Oh yes of course [crosstalk]

SM: 1:01:02
He was very upset. Yeah.

HM: 1:01:06
[inaudible]got in big trouble for that. Nixon-Nixon-Nixon had no capacity for it for small talk. I mean, he was- his-his staff wrote out small talk on index cards for him. So he starts talking to people and he says, you know, and then he started to tries to make small talk with them. And one person had gone to Syracuse University, as I remember. So we started talking about Jim Brown and you know, this area and Ben Schwartzwald are the old Syracuse football stars. That is what-what did this guy wake me up to talk about Syracuse football for? And then he goes from there. He orders that he says the Mantra he says the sen- of Mano if I am in credit. "Have you ever seen the House of Representatives," said "No, no." So they go tooling off to the House of Representatives. And they have to get secrets or people open the door. Somebody opened the place up and then they could enter the well the house and Mono has a nice look around. They go have breakfast somewhere and by then everybody's on alert to get him back inside. And take the phone away for a while I think.

SM: 1:02:13
Well, there was also the scene where he brought students from Kent State University to the White House.

HM: 1:02:18
Yes.

SM: 1:02:19
And-and he said that was a great meeting. And they were a bunch of nice kids. [laughter] [inaudible] radicals.

HM: 1:02:28
Yeah, carefully chosen if we can [crosstalk]

SM: 1:02:30
I think so.

HM: 1:02:32
Yeah, yeah. [crosstalk]

SM: 1:02:33
Could you-

HM: 1:02:35
He was capable of such strangeness?

SM: 1:02:37
Yeah, of course. Agnew. The guy had nothing to do so go out and go after the protesters. He, he put some words to you. You brought it up in the book. All they do is proclaim. [laughter] Why do not[crosstalk] they go and become educated? And you also mean, you said something very important that about the silent majority. Could you talk a little bit about that too.

HM: 1:03:05
Oh sure. Well, yeah, there was a guy who were the people that was it. Oh, I cannot think of the name of the people involved. Was it Ben Wattenberg?

SM: 1:03:06
Because that was happening at that time? Who were the silent majority. They were the on- the one they were the on Black on? Go ahead. And- Yes. Ben Wattenberg.

HM: 1:03:24
Yeah. [inaudible] and Wattenberg was one of them and so they set out to find out who the silent majority work. And they did all this determination. And they-they finally decided that the-the prototypical sat member of the sound majority was not going to have this exactly right. Was a 48-year-old housewife in Dayton, Ohio. And there was something else in that description that made me think oh, yes, a perfect candidate mother who was exactly the kind of person they were talking about. Kent State was a school you know, was-was a middle-class school. It was not it was not an Amherst or a Princeton or anyplace like that. But the-the person that the middle-class person they wanted was, in fact, the person who had been most dramatically affected in some ways by Kent State. So I find that fascinating. I wish I had the detail work in front of me, but I do not right now.

SM: 1:04:21
I think they were on young, on Black and on something else.

HM: 1:04:26
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

SM: 1:04:28
What is an important thing to talk about here again, as a little more description of the of the guard?

HM: 1:04:34
Yes, okay.

SM: 1:04:35
And who they were, what-what kind of people were they? And again, you know, their role. You talk also about the number of guard that actually went and served in Vietnam, which is very small, like 1.5 percent or something like that. Very few. Yeah-yeah-yeah. but could you talk about what made up the guard and why they were there?

HM: 1:04:55
Let me do one thing first. Before I do that, I found that by Um, this is uh, this is Ben Wattenberg and Richard Scammon. And from their book, The Real Majority published nearly 1970. The average voter the two argued was on young and poor and, and Black and less interested in progressive causes than law and order issues. That is what it was. That is what Yeah. Okay. And then I am sorry, what was the question you just asked me?

SM: 1:05:24
It was about the guard itself. Who were they? I mean, I know,

HM: 1:05:27
Oh yeah-yeah.

SM: 1:05:28
They were young. They may even a couple years older than the students. But what who were they?

HM: 1:05:33
Well, the guard were. The guards were in by then a lot of the guard were people who were in the guards did not go to Vietnam. I mean, they joined the Guard to get out of Vietnam. The most famous person to join the guard to get out to go into Vietnam, I guess was George W. Bush, who join the Alabama Air National Guard, if I remember correctly. The- they were, they were mostly just there, but some of them were college students. They were they were in their early 20s, early to mid-20s. They-they did not sign up for anything like this at all. I do not think they were. They were not particularly political. I mean, I think they are more Republican and Democrat, probably. But they were there. A lot of them were people who were just doing guard duty because they did not have to go to Vietnam. And they signed up before the all they would have signed up before the all-volunteer army before the draft ended in the end of December of 1969. And the guardsmen, to me, it is really, I had I ended up having sympathy for the guard that I never expected to have for the guardsmen. One because they were so poorly lit. They were asked to they were put in impossible situations by people that who-who-who, you know, who had no bloody idea what they were doing. And two they have been living inside. Another thing that another contributing factor, I forgot to mention this on what happened on the fourth is that somebody forgot to check and see how many tear gas canisters they had before they started this whole operation on that noon that day. And they ran out of tear gas halfway through, when they got down the hill on the other side, and they were getting trapped down there in the in the, in the construction site, the football field, they had no they had no tear gas left. So you know, it was just when you think of all the things they did wrong, they certainly were horribly led. But then I have read the guardsmen were deposed in many cases 2,3,4 or 5 times. And the first time they were deposed was right afterwards. And they just said what they were told to say. But then, and then and later deposition, you can see they have sort of thought through this experience they had. And you begin to see what it must have looked like to them through a gas mask, they were tired, a gas masks are hard. They were lousy things that view the world through, you get a narrow lens through the gas mask, they were sweaty, they were hot. And they saw people and I think they honestly thought these people were 20 feet from them, and they were 20 yards from them. I mean, I got a sense of the suffering they had gone through in the later deposition. So I never saw in the first depositions, and much more honesty, and I thought I thought these people were put in a horrible situation impossible situation. And somebody owes them an apology.

SM: 1:08:28
Do you feel- do you feel at the question I have here with all the things that we have discussed here?

HM: 1:08:37
Right.

SM: 1:08:37
Everybody kind of failed in the area of leadership? Is there one person or one group that stands out above all? The reason why this happened?

HM: 1:08:48
That is a good question. Nobody had a plan B, that was really the problem.

SM: 1:08:55
Yeah.

HM: 1:08:55
And that that old definition of insanity, you keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result? I would say? [sighs] Well, it is a toss-up between the guard leadership and university leadership.

SM: 1:09:14
Right.

HM: 1:09:15
I would say I would say the Guard leadership is the single greatest factor in this.

SM: 1:09:23
Okay.

HM: 1:09:23
The- it is what they did was inexcusable. The university leadership you can at least you know, give them credit for being naive and not getting credit. You can excuse me a bit-bit for being naive. Or at least, but I think they are willfully blind in themselves in the possibilities. But the- yeah, I would say the card I would say the guard I would say Robert Canterbury is the- is the- is that if I had to have a lead villain in this, I probably wrote with the second and president of White would be third-

SM: 1:09:57
-press if the President had been a real press And then he, the may or may not may or may have contacted him and the garden we never been called. And-and if the- if the President had gone out to the gate and talked, it is so many, the President is never there.

HM: 1:10:15
Yeah.

SM: 1:10:16
He is a miserable-

HM: 1:10:18
He was- he had- he had an appointment that that weekend in what is that called the American College test day.

SM: 1:10:26
Right.

HM: 1:10:27
He was on the board of the AC T on a high in Iowa. So he was out there, he did come back slightly early. But he never should have gone. I mean, he should have seen that now thought the situation was not gone. And once he was out there, he should have come back right away when this happened. Yes. Before I forget, let me say something also talking about Nixon back to Nixon. Bob Haldeman had a set of facts in the observation in his memoir. And that was he thought that Watergate began with Kent State. And his argument was that because that because J. Edgar Hoover could not deliver the outside agitators. Nixon lost faith in him. And that is why he assembled the plumbers to do this do his dirty work for him. And I hold them and says that I have to give it some credence. The, but it is sort of an interesting. It is a bit of a stretch, but kind of interesting observation.

SM: 1:11:30
I have a lot. I have a little pair of paragraph here. I want to read because it is so well written. And I know you have said some of these things already. But I think it needs to be in the interview. It is on page 210. You have your book with you.

HM: 1:11:42
I got it right in front of me. Yeah-yeah. [crosstalk]

SM: 1:11:44
Could you go to page 10? And if you could read that last paragraph at the bottom there the stairs to Kent State shootings, I would rather have your voice in mind. I think it is, it is beautifully written.

HM: 1:11:56
Thank you, okay. The Kent State shootings also occurred at one of the most turbulent cross currents and unnatural in our national history. A gaping generational divide opposing interpretations of patriotism, the democratization of higher education, the tail end of a decade of assassinations, Kennedy, King Kennedy and race riots, Detroit watch DC, the general collapse of comity, and not least of all, but maybe most not most important, the most divisive war in modern American times. We are all in play that Monday noon, when the guard moved out across the commons and students brace for whatever lay ahead.

SM: 1:12:34
And then and the last one I have here is on page 213. If you could go to it as well. It is the section here it is the paragraph where it says Kent State was not just Kent State. that was yeah, this is- this is Bill Arthrell speaking and then you responding to what Bill says. Could you just read that paragraph?

HM: 1:12:48
Oh, yeah-yeah-yeah. Sure-sure. Yeah. That begins with a quote. Kent State was not just Kent State, said Bill Arthrell, he of the napalmed dog stunt that had so engaged locals, and even alarmed, KSU faculty members, "Kent State was a symbol of everything and indicative of everything." And he might have added a distillation of everything as well, because Kent State on that early afternoon of May 4 is where all the raging waters in the (19)60s. bad and good, evil and sublime. flowed together for one brief, horrible moment.

SM: 1:13:28
Yes, that is another really well written.

HM: 1:13:32
Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, the paragraph is kind of a paragraph above that is close. Ellis Berns, who was one of my, one of the people who fascinated me from all this.

SM: 1:13:44
You want to read that one as well?

HM: 1:13:46
Well, I do not know that.

SM: 1:13:49
I see him and well.

HM: 1:13:50
Yeah, I guess I could. Yeah. Ellis Berns was a friend of Sandy Scheuer [Sandra Scheuer]. And was happened to be walking beside her when she was shot. And he later he just wandered around afterwards, he-he tried to stick his fist in the hole in her neck. It just horrifies me to think about and then he later on, he was so mad, he walked around, he took off his jacket will just cover her blood and throw to a Guardsman. So, this is what else for instead of getting a quote, "I always believed that Kent State was the period at the end of the sentence for the (19)60s." said Ellis Berns, who would punctuate his own May 4 and maybe the (19)60s by throwing his army fatigue shirt, caked with Sandy Scheuer's blood at a Guardsman. "It was at that point when things became quite real. I know there was Jackson State and students killed, but Kent was like the exclamation mark. It was the point where things started to change." He was, he was, he was a really interesting guy. I talked to him a lot. He is out in California and he- if I were going to make a movie about this, I would make him one of the stars. But I think because I just find it fascinating.

SM: 1:15:05
You also talk you also mentioned several times, very some excellent thoughts from Jerry Casals.

HM: 1:15:12
Oh yeah. Right.

SM: 1:15:13
There is two places in the book where you his commentary is excellent. I mean-

HM: 1:15:19
Yeah, no, I was I was really lucky to get him to talk to me. He is the devo guy. Yes, yeah. quite famous guy. But I have a cousin who is a- who is- who deals with wine vineyards. And Gary Jerry Casals has a has a wind vineyard. And he knew him. So he got me connected. You never know when a customer is going to come in useful. Yeah.

SM: 1:15:41
Could you give? [crosstalk] Could you briefly just, you know, people probably wondering what happened when you do not have to go through all the trials and everything. But there were certainly trials. I know. Mr. Kraus got involved in this a lot. And certainly the all the families did are the four that were killed and all the ones that were wounded. There was some financial reward. But it was not very much for all that happened. But could you get-

HM: 1:16:08
A decade really litigation. And it finally ends when the state of Ohio agrees to pay? I think I have this number correctly. 375-350,000 dollars to the families of the dead, the four dead and to the wounded, but almost everything that for the wounded went to Dean Keller, who is I think what was left over the head, if memory serves me was about $75,000 or less, I forget the exact figures, but it was really just about funeral costs for that for the dead. Where the house where the heck after the place [crosstalk]

SM: 1:16:46
Yeah. I think that the people that were wanting to get 15,000 or something like that. I know, I think a long gap.

HM: 1:16:52
Yeah, the minimum amount. Yeah.

SM: 1:16:53
You know, I do not think I just do not think there was justice done to anybody who looks into this deeply and all of what the families went through and oh, my golly, and the whole thing that they can only sue the state as opposed to the individuals is that-

HM: 1:17:09
Yeah-yeah. Isn't that interesting? Yeah. They did all this. They did all this and nobody paid anything. I am just the taxpayers of Ohio are the ones that paid the paid the price on this. It is sort of like what happens to major banks, when they when they when they go to bed. They find that they find the shareholders. They do not. They do not-

SM: 1:17:33
Could you say a few words about the four who died, who was Alison Krauss.

HM: 1:17:40
Alison Krauss was a- had been an honor student and from Pittsburgh. And she was a she was a very, very- How would I put it? She was striking looking in a very late (19)50s kind of a Joan Baez late (19)60s way. And by all accounts, a really nice person. And she was she was active in the protests and against the war. She was often up front carrying a banner because she was tall, and she was striking looking. And she you know, what do you say? The- she had, there has never been somebody that had to targeted or I cannot I cannot think of anything else. Because when you turned around and you saw it and she was killed who was murdered. The you can call it something else. But we are intentionality is concerned. I think you have to say the least voluntary manslaughter. The-

SM: 1:18:46
Jeff Miller.

HM: 1:18:46
Jeffrey Miller, the Jeff Miller. It is funny the picture that you were talking about that Life magazine, the picture that went out of Jeff Miller around the country was that it was a high school photo and it just looks like it looks like a 14-year-old and the same. He had gone to I think it was Michigan State and transferred it goes to Michigan State. And he has become obviously somewhat radicalized. He was at longest hair. He is, he is, he is very easy to pick out in the photos. Even in the photo used in the cover of the book. You can see him at the front of whatnot. And that is a different photo. You can see him in the front line of people and he was he was in the front line all the way through. A- he got I remember there is a photograph in the New York Times of his funeral Cortes. He was from New York, from Long Island. And I think it was and his-his hearse going through the streets of Manhattan because his father his father learned about Jeffrey Miller's death. Because he was typesetting the story for The New York Times who was a lithograph for-for the New York Times. He was in the composing room when you learned about this, which is just beyond description Sandy Scheuer was a one to be a music educator she was she was in music education major, an absolute sweetheart of a girl. And, and the again she was just oh my god, you were just walking between classes what a college students supposed to do on a sunny day in May and-and absolutely senseless. I think her father was one of the people who just whose hard part was broken by listening to him afterwards, or, you know, reading about what he had to say. Bill Schroeder had transferred from Colorado College. I think it was one of the Colorado schools was a sophomore ROTC as I said basketball player. Stand-up guy in every regard. And the what was I thinking something I was going to mention about him to do to do to do ROTC? ROTC. Yes, fled my mind though some lovely fact about oh, well, this is interesting. I did just as an aside, so a friend of mine named John Pekkanen, guy worked with later years was a Life magazine stringer. And in Chicago, as soon as he had been assigned to go to scan because they knew this thing was going to take place. And he was supposed to, you know, cover it for further. Who was he who is a stringer for AP is a stringer for Associated Press? And so he was he had gotten there. And he arrived about 20 minutes after the shootings. So he, he took on Bill Schroeder as his subject. And he finally found his roommates, they are all gathered in his room. And, and so he tried to talk to them and ask them, you know, who what was, what was he like? And what do you think about this? And the kids would not say anything. Because I think what he what he understood from them from what they told him was that, you know, they were going to have to go out and find jobs when they were through his college, and they did not want this to be a stain on their record did not want to be associated with all this, which kind of breaks your heart-heart in some way too.

SM: 1:22:17
Right.

HM: 1:22:19
Speaking of that, of the end of the (19)60s. So, again, he was he was doing nothing. I mean, he was simply standing down there looking out and seeing what the heck was going on when, what-

SM: 1:22:34
You mentioned. You mentioned one of the other changes that took place, politically was the-the Democratic Party became much more radical. And, of course, George McGovern was picked as the candidate and he was destroyed in the election. But you know, if you know anything about Senator McGovern, he is one of the kindest gentlemen you will ever meet. I have met him several times. I have interviewed him. And everybody say, Oh, my golly, I know he got clobbered in the election. But boy, he was a better man than the man who won.

HM: 1:23:04
So he was a complete sweetheart. I interviewed him too. Yeah, the memory telling me that. He said, Oh, he said, he said, I see I did not mind losing the election, he said, but what really made me angry was when they booed my wife at a Redskins game. He was [inaudible] [laughter]

SM: 1:23:26
Yeah, well, he was a really good guy. We put them there on campus to talk about the death of his daughter he wrote, you know, she died of alcoholism.

HM: 1:23:33
Right. Yeah.

SM: 1:23:35
I have got about five more questions here.

HM: 1:23:37
Sure [inaudible]

SM: 1:23:39
One thing I did not want to say is that someplace toward the end of the book, you said "Finally the grown-ups are in charge now because now the-the students and the radicals are going inward and they are not going to be involved in activism anymore." So that was something that was true.

HM: 1:23:54
Oh, absolutely. Did the permissive (19)60s ,the permissive (19)60s- It ended with Kent State and they might have ended before they certainly ended with Kent State. And I can recall just a quick aside the-the that December that January before January (19)69. A year and a half before going to the counter Inaugural Ball in Washington DC. It was an attempt set up on the mall. And this was you know; Nixon protest and it was filled with a bunch of anti-war people. And a friend of mine was the treasurer of the thing so I thought I could and I walked in that tent the tent practically levitated from all the marijuana [laughter] in there and it was surrounded by policemen are just looking the other way but they could they could not have they could not have failed to notice Park policemen that there was a fair amount of illegal weed being consumed inside this and all that was all that-

SM: 1:24:47
Was Wavy Gravy there? This is just some quick questions here and what role did them murders at Kent State. And again I in honor of Alan I now say murders. Alan was very I mean, I really miss Alan-Alan was the force to keep this alive from the West Chester University students knew nothing about it had on our campus twice. And he just wished that we would all say it is not the tragedy at Kent State. It is the murders at Kent State. So I always say that now, what role did the murders that can state play in ending the war in Vietnam?

HM: 1:24:55
[inaudible] [laughter] That is a really good question. I that is a really good question. I think that the momentum, I think Vietnam war was ending. So I would I wish I could credit them with, you know, at least say that happened. But I think the forces were in play by then. So I think millennium was going it might have accelerated it somewhat. But I do not think you can say that for short. In the war, particularly. The-the war was on an inevitable downward trend. winding down trend. I wish I could give it more credit.

SM: 1:26:09
Because I am some historians will say that because this happened in the Midwest, and young Americans died in the Midwest to send a message to those that were so supportive of the war that maybe this war was wrong. And you have a-an interview with a young lady in your book, which is fantastic. She-she was not an active or not politically involved. And she goes home and her parents say, well, you know, they were very upset that she was, you know, they well- they thought she was communist.

HM: 1:26:40
Exactly. I know, I know. You know, remember, we threw those words around. So yeah, those days, too. Yeah. We just pigeonhole people by a couple of words. They were commies or they were whatever they were. And the words mean, no more than-than the words we throw around. Now do the- yeah-yeah. No, I remember that. That went-

SM: 1:26:44
Yes. when did it-

HM: 1:27:02
So, she went there guilt by so talking about guilt by association.

SM: 1:27:04
Yeah. When did the (19)60s began in your view? And when did it end? If it end?

HM: 1:27:12
Yeah. I think the (19)60s ended at Kent State. And I think the (19)60s began with Jack Kennedy's election. So, I would say (19)62 to June to May of (19)70.

SM: 1:27:26
Have you? Have we healed as a nation from the Vietnam War? And if so, why? And if no way?

HM: 1:27:35
That is a, that is a really interesting question. Well, you know, I think we have more so than we more so than we have. And I do not think we you could not say it is complete healing. It is interesting, one of the effects of the Vietnam War was to end the draft and the end the idea of national service. And I think that is been a big mistake in American society, I think we need to have national service. I just do not think it has to be everybody, you know, putting on a battle Hillman going off to wherever you would go. But I think that idea of national service was the man. That is what that is what the war, the war brought, the draft brought people together of all sorts of shapes and categories and sizes. And I think that is been a big loss not to have not to have some kind of national service, mandatory national service.

SM: 1:28:39
Now, the-the Vietnam Memorial was opened in 1982, which many people believe it is the first time that Vietnam vets were recognized for their service. The only time in American history when our veterans when they came home from war were treated pretty poorly. And-

HM: 1:28:57
Oh yeah, absolutely.

SM: 1:28:58
-and so, and I know Jan Scruggs and-and Jack Wheeler in the group and vowed Mr. Dewback that created this have done a tremendous job for their nation and for our veterans, but it has done a tremendous job in terms of Vietnam vets and their families and in terms of remembrance, it is not supposed to be a political entity. It is about remembrance, but has not healed our nation at all.

HM: 1:29:20
I think it has healed the vets to some extent. And I want to say here too, I think that one of the greatest continuing ed inequities in in in America today is-is the unwillingness to treat Agent Orange. Everybody in Vietnam, who was exposed to Agent Orange for-for them they should be they should be compensated for all sorts of diseases. That was a horrible thing to do is a horrible thing to rain down. paraquat on your on your own troops. And that was an inexcusable act to the people of Vietnam and the people And then the soldiers serving in that country, I think, I think that is one of the greatest injustice is. That is that is almost a war crime. As far as I am concerned.

SM: 1:30:11
I am going to get about three more questions here. One of them is just a general question regarding those people who served in Vietnam and the anti-war movement, those activists who genuinely wanted to end the war. I personally consider both of them heroes, both groups. And I know that a lot of VNFs do not like those anti-war people. But many times they will put in there unless they were seriously against the war, and not against us. That is that is your thoughts on that on the concept of heroes for both the true activists who were against the war and not the vets and the soldiers themselves who served?

HM: 1:30:54
So sure, no, I mean, I think I think nobody should have had to have been heroic. I mean, I do not divorce should not have been fought. But the fact that people went there and fought bravely and protected their-their not only their country, but their but their, you know, they were there. They were selling their fellow soldiers. That is, of course heroic to do. And I think people and I, I think that, you know, the people who risked a lot of, you know, a lot to protest the war are heroic in my mind, too. Because I think it was, in fact, in a legal war, and it should not have been fought. So yeah, I think there is room for heroism in both camps.

SM: 1:31:39
Yeah. And I think those Fulbright hearings with John Kerry and all the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, man, they played a major role and-and-

HM: 1:31:48
-that I would agree with absolutely, yeah-yeah. Yep.

SM: 1:31:51
And I got one last, I just want to say something Dean Kahler is an unbelievable person. I have met him a couple times. And he is on my Facebook, I do not talk to him at all. But he is, what a great human being, oh my God. And he is so sensible in everything he states and when he talks about any subject, and I, when he when he talked about the-the guns that were in Kent State, and again, it was you again, it is a tremendous context that you put in with him and his words, that, you know, I am a hunter. I knew, I knew they had bullets and those guns if you see a weapon, you know, they have bullets, but I thought they protect me.

HM: 1:32:34
Yes, I know. Isn't that something? Oh, my God. Yeah, no. Yeah, yeah. [crosstalk] That overwhelmed me when you said that. I agree.

SM: 1:32:42
Every time you have Dean in the book, it is you better be listening.

HM: 1:32:49
And to go through what he has gone through and not be bitter, I think is a triumph of the human spirit.

SM: 1:32:54
My last question is always something like this, I want you to go to the very last page to 228. And I just had one thing to add after you if you could read that last paragraph where it says here.

HM: 1:33:14
Let me get my glasses on. Okay, here we are here. Here are those of final thought the best thing that could happen for those who still carry the Kent State shootings, or the Vietnam War, gratingly close to their hearts is to get beyond who did what, when. In an interview during the 20, 20th anniversary commemoration in 1990, Janice Murray Wesco talked about an earlier speaker who had vowed she would never forgive, forgive, quote, “It tore my heart out, I will never forget. And I think there are real important lessons with this. But if there is no forgiveness, there is no healing, and the murder goes on forever.” Then I added on then at the end-

SM: 1:33:52
That is very [inaudible]

HM: 1:33:54
-that she blew me away that interview and then I talked to her. And she just, she was quite something. She is a she is a real person.

SM: 1:34:03
My last question is this.

HM: 1:34:04
Yeah.

SM: 1:34:06
People that are going to be listening to this tape could be 50 years from now.

HM: 1:34:10
Yes.

SM: 1:34:10
What message would you like to deliver to young people, high school students, college students, and even all Americans and people around the world? What lesson would you like to pass on to them for them not to forget?

HM: 1:34:28
Do not be afraid to stand up for what you know is right.

SM: 1:34:32
Now, that is good.

HM: 1:34:35
Okay. I want to have to think about that. Yeah. Yeah. Good. Okay.

SM: 1:34:41
We are done. I want to thank you very much of I have been interviewing Howard Means the book is 67 Shots Kent State and the End of American Innocence. And thank you very much.

HM: 1:34:56
Okay, thanks. See, this is a lot of fun.

SM: 1:34:57
And we will be emailing you with the video as soon as possible.

HM: 1:35:02
Okay.

SM: 1:35:02
Okay thank you for taking the time have a great day, bye now.

HM: 1:35:06
Thank you. You do the same, bye.

(End of Interview)

17 March 2023

Stephen McKiernan

Howard Means

Howard Means, a native of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, is an award winning author, editor and collaborator. He is the author/co author of several books, including The 500 Year Delta; The Visionary's Handbook; Colin Powell: A Biography; The Banana Sculptor, the Purple Lady, and the All-Night Swimmer; and the novel C.S.A. Means now lives in rural Virginia with his wife.

1:35:12

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Kent state; Students, Nixon, Guardsmen, Anti-war movement, Sixties; Book, War, Talk, Campus, Shootings, Students, Activisim, People.