Author Stephen R. Donaldson — on the Kent State Massacre

From an August 30, 2004 email exchange on his website

Image Source: The U.S. National Archive. This photograph was used as evidence in the criminal case The United States of America v. Shafer et. al., heard in the U.S. District Court for the Northern (Cleveland) District of the Eastern Division of Ohio.

NOTE: The Kent State Shootings occurred 54 years ago, today. Author Stephen R. Donaldson lived on campus at the time. The following exchange with the author (from his website’s Gradual Interview) is reproduced, without comment.

Question: Were you at Kent State during the fatal riot. If so, what are your recollections about that event?

Donaldson: I usually try to avoid answering such questions because the memories disturb me.

The facts are simple enough. I was attending Kent State during the shootings as a graduate student taking evening classes while I worked in Akron City Hospital as a conscientious objector. I was not on campus during the actual shootings (which took place around noon) because I was at work ten miles away. However, my apartment was a block and a half from the campus, so I lived under martial law for three days after the shootings (virtually the entire study body and faculty — well over 20,000 people — were evacuated within four hours of the shootings, so they were spared that aspect of the experience, while I was spared the experience of being evacuated under threat of lethal force).

I have many recollections, all painful, some horrific. I’ll only mention four. 1) Living under martial law meant that a helicopter shone its searchlight into the windows of my up-stairs apartment every 90 seconds for three nights in a row. 2) Within half an hour of the shootings, virtually everyone I worked with in the hospital believed that the National Guard had fired on the students because the students were urinating on the Guardsmen (quite a trick from a distance of nearly 50 yards). 3) Within four hours of the shootings, every gun shop in a 75 mile radius was completely sold out; and for the next week I never left my apartment without at least one of my neighbors aiming a firearm at me as long as I was in sight. 4) Three days after the shootings, a Kent citizen was quoted by the local newspaper as saying, “If my son had long hair, I’d want him shot too.”

I’ll spare you the other 20 or 30 things I’ll never forget.