Kent State: An American Tragedy

by Brian VanDeMark

When the 107th Armored Cavalry chaplain Major John Simons visited guard headquarters in Columbus the morning after the shooting, a guardsman told him “a lot of callers are telling us to go ahead and kill four more kids today.” That afternoon (it was primary election day in Ohio), Simons was leaving a voting booth in his fatigues when a big, beefy Teamster came up, slapped him on the back, and said, “As far as I’m concerned, you guys can go back to Kent and kill some more students, that’s what the country needs.” A week later, Simons spoke to a Kiwanis Club luncheon in the conservative Cleveland suburb of Parma (where 1968 right-wing populist presidential candidate George Wallace had gotten his largest vote in the state). Simons did not mince his words. They resonate powerfully across the years: I am sure that some of you in this room wanted us to kill more. . . . The younger generation is naïve, life is not that simple, but [their] elders run from change by placing the responsibility for every rocky event on some Communist conspiracy. The older generation that wields power now has sold out to its fear of Communism. Perhaps the middle generation can gain the power and achieve the maturity which is not afraid of criticism or change. If we do not, life will go on as usual—there will be more Kents and Jacksons and Vietnams and Cambodias and with each new horror the solid middle America will become smaller and smaller until there is nothing left but two unspeaking and unspeakab...