my hope this tragic
incident will strengthen the
determination
stand firm for the right
which exists in this country
of peaceful dissent
This should remind us all once again that when dissent turns to violence, it invites tragedy.
It is my hope that this tragic and unfortunate incident will strengthen the determination of all the Nation’s campuses-
-administrators, faculty, and students alike-
-to stand firmly for the right which exists in this country of peaceful dissent and just as strongly against the resort to violence as a means of such expression.
President Richard Nixon in a Statement on the Deaths of Four Students at Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, on May 4, 1970.
A two stanza haiku.
I have questioned in the past whether such a thing exists and the answer I got from my brother who teaches poetry, which you can under the heading, What is a Haiku?, and he said I could name anything I wanted to a name a haiku … not that it made a haiku.
Which is good enough for me so today’s haiku has two stanzas.
Some time ago I was talking with another one of my brothers, I have 8 so I guess I am always talking to a brother about something, and I worried about the state of affairs impacting our country.
I felt the country was teetering on the edge of the abyss.
He countered that when he was in college, the prevailing discussion was pretty much the soon.
Protests, riots and dissension were tearing the county apart in the 70’s.
Leaders from the President to Civil Rights icons and Senators were being gun downed in city streets.
And students had been shot and killed by the National Guard.
At that time, he put forward that the county came through that period of history.
And I shut up and pondered.
I was 9 years old when on May 4, 1970 when a troop of the Ohio National Guard opened fire on a crowd of Kent State University Students who were protesting the expansion of the war in Vietnam by US forces moving into Cambodia, killing 4 people and wounding 9.
I don’t remember it.
Two of my brothers were off in Ann Arbor (someone in my family was always off in Ann Arbor) and I don’t remember my parents talking about it.
It took a long time for the news and the information and the images to filter out from Ohio.
I recently read that to slow down the spread of information, Kent State asked Bell Telephone to turn off the phones in student dorms.
There were photographs that appeared on the TV news.
There were stories on the radio news.
But it really wasn’t until Life Magazine arrived in mail boxes and news stands across the Nation that story hit home.
Not in the split seconds of today but 11 days later.
And it wasn’t in a message on a phone or email, but in a magazine that demanded that you stop and take time in absorb the images and the story.
A question was asked by the father of one the student who was killed, “Is this dissent a crime? It it a reason for killing?”
We are asking that question again.
Bernard Miller, the father of Jeff Miller, the student lying dead in the famous Pulitzer prize winning photo, said in the Life Magazine article, “But shooting into a crowd of kids – THAT is violence. They say it could happen again if the Guard is threatened. They consider stones threat enough to kill children. I think the violence comes from the government.”
What do I remember about Kent State from back then?
I must have heard stories and such that come down to a 9 year old and I was inquisitive and at sometime I came across the Reader Digest magazine with an article about the shooting.
I read it and tried to understand but what stuck in brain was the story related by a Kent State student.
The student told how Kent State shut down for 6 weeks and all the students were sent home.
Traveling with his friends on the Ohio Turnpike he told how a toll booth operater leaned out to take their money, noticed their Kent State parking sticker and held up four fingers.
They asked why the four fingers?
And the toll booth operator said something along the lines of, “We got 4 of you this time.”
No Haiku For You 