^dispatch.com

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming, we're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming, four dead in Ohio. *

My father was standing in the kitchen, dialing the rotary phone.  His eyes were intense and his face was dark with fury.

“Western Union?  I’d like to send a telegram.”  A telegram!  The very word smelled of stagecoaches and rogue cowboys.  “President Richard Nixon.  1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”

My father was sending a telegram to the President of the United States!  I stood in the kitchen, transfixed.   It was May 4, 1970, and the news of the Kent State shootings had just entered our living room through our black and white television.  I was ten years old.

My father was a university professor.  Although he taught at a traditionally conservative institution, his own liberal bias made him the “go-to prof” for young “radicals” wanting to stage sit-ins to protest the Vietnam War.  He taught unusually large classes, and over one quarter of the university’s students matriculated through his classes.  Recently he had been negotiating with students who were incensed by Nixon’s escalation of the war into Cambodia and wanted to burn down the university’s ROTC building.

Over that year our dinner table conversations had been fraught with talk of Vietnam.  My parents knew my brother, who was fifteen, would eventually receive his draft lottery number, and they were making plans of what to do when that time came.  We chewed dry chicken and talked of moving to Canada.  Could my father find a job there?  My mother didn’t work—my father had to be able to support us on his own.  I can’t remember how my brother reacted to these planning sessions.  I was transfixed.   I knew I was swept up in a situation over which I had no control.  I was vaguely aware that the stakes were high—I had seen the CBS evening news; its grainy images of sweaty young men in camouflage, hacking through the jungle with their rifles slung over their backs.  I was so afraid of air raids that when the pilots from Gresham Air Force base flew over my town, I would cower in fear of being bombed.

Gotta get down to it, soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago.

What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know? *

Years later I spent a summer in Kent.  When the parking lot still had giant “x’s” on the spots where the slain students fell.  Where a campus sculpture had visible bullet holes.  Where Allison Krause (age 19), William Schroeder (age 19), Jeffrey Miller (age 20) and Sandra Scheuer (age 20) were gunned down by the Ohio National Guard during 13 seconds that changed history.  Nine others were wounded.  I was in Kent in the late 80’s and the shootings were ancient history to the students at that time.  The spot is now a National Historic Site. Today commemorates   the 40^th anniversary of those infamous moments.

Back in the kitchen, my ten-year-old self as witness, my father was ready to give his message to President Nixon.

He said it slowly and clearly, so the Western Union staff member would get it right.

“Mr. President, you will not have my son for your war.” 

 Those words sear me still.

 *Lyrics from Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, “Ohio”

text copyright 2010 voicegal