I can't talk about Kent State and Jackson State in a vacuum, like I can history that I have only read about. I have a context in which those events are viewed that is never captured on paper - either in words or pictures. Hearing the music helps, but even songs like "Ohio" and the "Fish Cheer" (by Country Joe) lose so much without the memories playing behind them.

"How can you run when you know?" The words mean a lot to me. In my mind's eye that's what happened after Kent State. So many students (many from fraternities and sororities, it seemed to me)who had joined the war protests as if they were pep rallies or extra-curricular activities disappeared after Kent State. The gentle folk were in shock. The hard core - SDS'ers and com-symps and the like - kept rallying the troops, but the message of Kent State, underlined at Jackson State, was clear: this is not a game. "They" are willing to kill us - right here on campus, if need necessitates. The revolution is over.

If that seems harsh and melodramatic, that's tough. That's the way it was where I was going to school. That's not to say that I believe that Kent State was planned or anything. It was bound to happen somewhere. Everyone was wound too tight that spring. There were too many drugs, too many chances being taken, too much mindless violence, too many people way too polarized for it to go any other way.

I was one of the long-hairs who refused to march when I knew it would turn to violence; and you could usually tell which way the crowd would go. It seemed to be a violation of our principles to trash the administration building or the ROTC offices. We wanted to put and end to war! Where was the LUV? But there were too many people who were outraged that the vox populi could not be heard in the "halls of power". Violence was one way to turn up the volume. And until Kent State there were always enough willing, milling bodies around to make the point.

Kent State was the real watershed. In my mind it was the event that started the process that turned hippies into yuppies. It woke up some. It scared the shit out of others. I think every kid on every campus saw those four dead students and thought "that's me". And the parents of all the boomers saw this as one of their worst nightmares (along with having a son who was a modern dance major) and they began to wonder who the villains really were. Some began to think maybe that the real nightmare was to have a son or daughter in Viet Nam. For the times they are a changin'

No, there aren't too many memorial places around. We have to remember these things that have happened. And if we don't all remember them the same way, that's the way life is. As I remember it, there were a lot of people, some very young, who felt they had something important to say. And they were tired of being ignored. And some of them refused to do what they were told was their duty, while others did. And many of them were killed. Most in Viet Nam. Some here.