A Minnesota PBS Initiative
Serves 'em Right
“Serves ‘em right.” When my father-in-law said this, I became so livid I had to leave the room.
I was going to graduate school at Miami University in Oxford, OH. My first wife and I lived in an apartment building filled with other students about a block from the campus. It was Monday, May 4, 1970. My wife’s parents, Leon and Leslie (not their real names), were in town visiting us from St. Paul, MN. I’m not certain exactly when they arrived but it was probably during the weekend just prior to May 4.
We were all watching Walter Cronkite on the CBS Evening News and having a generally pleasant evening. I tolerated my wife’s parents and I think, for the most part, they liked me. Leon actually had a great sense of humor and I enjoyed being around him. Sure there were those moments of parental judgment whenever it came to finances or the length of my hair.
To be clear, I didn’t wear my hair very long at all but, it evidently was distasteful enough to them that one time Leslie even gave me money to get it cut. Go ahead. Ask me if I did. Nope! But I kept her money anyway.
Out of nowhere and without sirens came 28 police and state patrol vehicles, windows all taped up. The officers, all in riot gear and carrying billy clubs, ran from their squad cars.
So we’re sitting around the living room watching Walter report the news of the day when on comes this story about a shooting at Kent State University in Kent, OH.
Because of on-campus protests over the war in Vietnam, the National Guard was there to purportedly keep the peace.
During one of the demonstrations that day, some of the National Guard soldiers began firing their weapons at the students. Four students were killed and nine injured. I was stunned. Why would these soldiers who are there to maintain law and order start killing students? What kind of country are we living in where this is allowed to happen?
Before I could utter a single word, my father-in-law Leon says: “Serves ‘em right.” My jaw dropped. I felt as if I was going to explode. I froze for a couple of seconds, then got up and walked out of the room into my bedroom. I screamed a silent scream. I was so angry I could have put my fist through the wall. How dare he say that? How dare he even think it? I wanted him out of my apartment and I wanted him out now.
My wife came into the room sensing something was wrong. She said, “What’s going on?” I replied, “Your father’s a son of a bitch.” After that, I really don’t know what happened except that they eventually left and went back to St. Paul. But the story doesn’t end there.
Because Kent State is part of the Ohio State University system, we at Miami (also a state university) felt a particular kinship to those grieving students at Kent. Students at Miami staged peaceful and silent vigils in honor of the slain students. In the evenings, we would hold candles and walk around campus in silence. It was all very moving. Yes, there were some rabble-rousers who tried to stir us into a frenzy, but none of that came about. Everything remained quiet and peaceful.
The day after the shooting, the city of Oxford imposed a 9:00 pm curfew. Oxford is a university town. It exists more for the university than for any other reason. In fact, the university population is about 50% that of the city itself. Like any self-respecting college student, do you think I’d pay attention to this curfew? I certainly would not. I felt it was my duty to march uptown with my other classmates and show our strength and our resolve to protest this outrageous act of violence against some of our own.
Me (with a friend) in costume from that era.
And, so we did. We all started heading up the street towards downtown Oxford. We just walked. Nothing more. No shouting. No angry words. No rock throwing. Nothing. Just simple defiance. We arrived to a very quiet downtown. There were no cars in the streets, the shops were closed, and there wasn’t a police car in sight. Not a single one.
So we hung out there for a short while, got bored and decided to walk back home. No sense hanging out if no one’s going to notice. In retrospect, that was probably the best strategy the police could have carried out. Just ignore us. They did just that and absolutely nothing happened. Not there, anyway.
It was still a little bit light outside when I arrived back at my apartment. A man who lived across the street with his wife and two kids sat out on his front steps enjoying the early summer evening. I watched out the window as the occasional squad car drove by. Other than that, there was no traffic.
Students in the building next door would shout out “sooie, sooie”* from their apartment windows every time a squad car drove past. Still nothing happened.
Until suddenly, around 9:30 pm, a single squad car came by and, from a bullhorn, I could hear the policeman shout at the man across the street, “Get in the house.” I thought, how rude. He’s not hurting anyone and he’s just on his front step with his kid.
*Sooie is a hog call often used by anti-war activists when seeing police officers, who at the time, were sometimes disrespectfully referred to as “pigs."
Thirty minutes passed and now it was dark. Then, they came. Out of nowhere and without sirens came 28 police and state patrol vehicles, windows all taped up. All 28 cars arrived within seconds of each other. The officers, all in riot gear and carrying billy clubs, ran from their squad cars.
They converged on the apartment building next door where the boys were calling out “sooie.” I couldn’t see what was happening from my vantage point except that the police went into the building and presumably hauled away several students. They left as quickly as they arrived. And it was all over. No shots fired, no one injured and no one killed.
That night, law enforcement personnel demonstrated not only strength, but also restraint. That’s they way it should have happened at Kent State.
Biographical Details
Submitted From: Prior Lake, MN
Primary Location During Vietnam: Oxford, OH, United States 
Story Subject: Civilian
Story Themes: Bill Gurnon, Civilian, Death and Loss, Dissent, Kent State, Marriage, Miami University, News Coverage, Ohio, Oxford, Prior Lake, Protest, Relationships, Student Protest, Walter Cronkite
Show Comments