Truth remains elusive for survivors, families of Kent State victims
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Barry Levine, who was slain student Allison Krause's boyfriend when she was shot and killed by Ohio National Guard bullets on the Kent State University campus on May 4, 1970, answers questions following a ceremony placing the May 4 site on the National Register of Historic Places. -
Laurel Krause (left foreground) checks the live feed from the Kent State Truth Tribunal, a series of taped interviews she organized in a final search for details about the May 4, 1970, shooting that killed four students, including her older sister, Allison. At far right is Doris Krause, the mother of the two women. -
Cathleen Matuzak, left, a freshman architecture student from Mars, and Kayla Perkins, a Spanish translation freshman from Bellville, Ohio, look at the area that has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places to mark the May 4, 1970, killings of four students on the Kent State University campus by the Ohio National Guard. -
Russell Miller, left, the brother of Jeffrey Miller, and Florence Schroeder, the mother of William Schroeder, look at pieces of ribbon from the Monday ceremony on the Kent State campus, which named the site where William Schroeder, Jeffrey Miller, Allison Krause and Sandra Scheuer were killed by the Ohio National Guard on May 4, 1970, to the National Register of Historic Places. At right is David Tuttle, William Schroeder's nephew. -
Ohio National Guardsmen patrol the empty Kent State Universitycampus after a three-day riot with students in this May 6, 1970, file photo. On May 4, 1970, Ohio National Guardsmen fired on a crowd of anti-Vietnam War demonstrators, killing four and wounding 10. This year marks the 40-year anniversary of those shootings.
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KENT, Ohio -- Forty years after her daughter became a milepost in America's journey through anger and chaos, Doris Krause sat in a second-floor room in this college town and waited for truth to climb the stairs.
"I wonder if anyone will ever own up to anything," she said.
It was 40 years ago today that Allison Krause, 19, a freshman at Kent State, was one of four students killed in a 13-second volley of gunfire by National Guard troops sent to quell antiwar protests on campus.
They killed Jeffrey Miller, who had been throwing rocks and insults. They killed Allison Krause, who, a day earlier, slid a blossom into a guardsman's rifle barrel and told him, "flowers are better than bullets." They killed Sandra Lee Scheuer, a speech therapy student crossing campus after classes were canceled. They killed William Knox Schroeder, a former Eagle Scout and ROTC member.
In a sense, they killed William Perkins' youth, and he was among the guardsmen, holding a rifle on the hillside, his innocence lost in a crackle of gunfire and a haze of smoke.
"Those were just kids our age, and we were forced to be there," he said from his home near Akron.
The shooting sparked student strikes around the nation, closed colleges, flooded Washington with protesters. Kent's students finished the academic year by mail. Some, like Lois Silverman Bernstein, never returned. She transferred to Pitt.
"We all felt so violated -- just thinking about the lives that were lost, what those people could have done, what they could have been," she said. Ms. Bernstein's brother was married to Ms. Scheuer's sister. Sandy was a regular guest at the Silverman home in Wilkins.
Like more than 1,000 other Kent State students, Ms. Bernstein was on the commons May 4, 1970, when the shooting broke out. After the deadly volley, she left for home, but first called Sandra Scheuer to see if she needed a ride as far as her home near Youngstown.
"No answer," she said.
At the bus station her father picked her up, put an arm around her, and asked her not to scream. That's how she found out a friend was dead.
First Published May 4, 2010 12:00 am
