THE DAY AFTER KENT STATE-CIRCA 1970

I'll finish off my memories of Kent State on a personal note. I was attending Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville, Ill. The day after the killings, a group of us took over the Presidents office. There were not a lot of radical students at Edwardsville. Probably less than a 100 of us. We walked up to his office, and asked him to leave. It really was no big deal. He was cooperative. I remember us all taking turns sitting in his seat and putting our feet up on the desk. There was a photographer from the school paper taking pictures, but I never saw one. It seems trivial at the moment, but was a big deal then. While it wasn't much, it was something. For Edwardsville, it was big. That was the start of three years of continuous protesting for me. Ann and I married and moved to Chicago in 1971, where I went to seminary. Most of the protesting against the war I did was in Chicago. I don't regret any of it. In fact, I am proud that I was on the right side of the issue. History is a bitch.