4 Dead in Ohio

“Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?”

    Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young

Fifty years ago, Ohio National Guardsmen fired on unarmed demonstrators at Kent State University who were protesting President Richard Nixon’s decision to escalate the war in Vietnam by invading Cambodia, killing four and wounding nine others.  Shortly before, “Tricky Dick” had labeled students “bums.”  Early that day, Mississippi police killed two students and wounded 12 at Jackson State. 

Millions of college and high school students all over the country boycotted classes in protest over the more widely publicized event at Kent State.  At the University of Maryland, demonstrators blocked Route 1 adjacent to campus; state troopers invaded campus and beat up many peaceful protestors. When I received my PhD degree weeks later, the university was still under martial law. I went through the ceremony wearing a peace sign.

IUN colleague Patricia Hicks was a student at Kent State at the time of the massacre.  At the time her mother was a Math professor. She recalled:

    On May 4, 1970, I lived in Tri-Towers where all of the action was at Kent State. Bullets literally came through my residence hall to the extent that we had to hide under our beds!! This was on Beloved Mother's birthday!! Seeing this on TV, she drove to Kent State that day. They refused to let the parents on campus; HOWEVER, my Mother, being the Taurus that she was, they HAD to either let her on campus or kill her!! So she made it on campus to see for herself that the campus had been evacuated!!!

Vicki Wakoczeski wrote: “I was at Valpo.  Demonstrators on campus.  Administration building (Kinsey Hall) was torched; destroyed half of the music school.”  University historian Richard Baepler recalled students sitting-in at Kinsey Hall; he was vice president of academic affairs at the time and attempted to calm the situation by various means, including playing the piano.  He told the Vidette-Messenger: “The fire was ruled an arson. Eventually officials learned a couple of students who were under the influence of drugs, had set the fire, never intending it to get out of control, he said. While they were never prosecuted, they were expelled from the university.”

Rick Scott remembered:

  We were only 300 miles away in West Lafayette, Indiana, when this happened. I remember rallies at Purdue, a place that had been normally a sedate and conservative campus, protesting Nixon’s April 30th announcement about expanding the Vietnam War into Cambodia. All hell broke loose that weekend beginning, Friday, May 1st, with a protest outside the ROTC building. After the Kent State killings a few days later, I seem to recall a strong National Guard presence at Purdue and the spring semester ending early (as it did at many schools). I read James Michener’s Kent State: What Happened and Why, a thorough and devastating account. He concluded the fatal shootings were an accident, and has been criticized by those who’ve concluded it was manslaughter or even murder. Intentionality of the young soldiers or their leaders is a difficulty aspect of that tragedy to discern. Regardless, 50 years ago the politicized culture war hardened.

Finished the HBO series on the Atlanta child murders of 40 years. In all likelihood a KKK member was responsible for several of the killings, but Georgia law enforcement authorities covered it up and let all the blame fall on Wayne Williams, convicted of killing two older young men, for fear, unlikely though it was, of setting off a race war.

Miranda appeared in a YouTube video made in a Nashville bar by boyfriend Will Kramer’s band SWT Justice, performing a rollicking rock number, “Last Call.”  It’s an interesting side of Will not apparent on first meeting him. Becca will be a freshman in the fall at Belmont College in Nashville, which hosts an annual country music conference.

Like me, Indiana Historical Society historian and Traces editor Ray Boomhower often posts about Hoosier events and people of historical significance.  Recent entries, which I suspect get mentioned in Boomhower’s new book “To Be Hoosiers” have dealt with astronaut Virgil Grissom, Civil War hero and Ben-Her author Lew Wallace, and President Benjamin Harrison (1889-1893) as responsible for preserving Yellowstone and Sequoia national parks and Grand Canyon Forest Preserve. Like Theodore Roosevelt, whose preservation efforts are better known, Harrison was an avid hunter who enjoyed shooting waterfowl on the Kankakee River, including once on Lew Wallace’s houseboat.

Tom Streit of Indiana Humanities posted this interesting experience:

This past weekend, I launched my kayak from the Hazel Dell Park landing heading downstream the White River toward Broad Ripple. Although I’ve taken this trek regularly, I noticed something I’d never seen before, just north of Oliver’s Woods. At the very top of a sycamore tree sat two eagles and their family of eaglets. Each eagle would swoop down, grab something and bring it back up to its family. I think I watched them for what seemed like an hour before trying to film them for our INSlowMoments campaign. I pulled out my phone from its waterproof bag to capture the footage when some iconic guitar chords rang out.      “Little ditty ’bout Jack and Diane, two American kids doing the best they can.”      Three kayaks came cruising around the corner. One had a boombox strapped to the front, on full blast, as if the sounds of nature was the problem and Johnny Cougar was the solution. My moment of quiet reflection had passed.     My kayak had been idle so long that it felt wrong disturbing the shore as I pushed away. My noisy neighbors gave me a hat tip and kept on their good time. As I paddled away, the Coug started to fade around the bend and my station tuned back into a chorus of sparrows, cardinals and the snare of a woodpecker.     I might not have been able to capture it on video, but that Slow Moment will stick with me for a long time. I hope you find your own Slow Moment somewhere near you—maybe even in your own backyard.

Father's Day

“He adopted a role called being a father so that his child would have something mythical and infinitely important: a protector,” Tom Wolfe

I’ve always regarded Father’s Day as a “Hallmark” holiday promoted as a gimmick to merchandize cards and gifts.  The idea was first proposed by Sonora Dodd of Spokane, Washington, in 1910 to honor her father, a Civil war veteran, and as a complement to Mother’s Day.  In 1972 Richard Nixon signed a bill proclaiming Father’s Day to be a national holiday.  I discourage cards but welcome phone calls.  Phil checked in after his kids took him to brunch.  Dave called en route to the University of Cincinnati's College Conservatory of Music, where Becca will participate in its summer program.  Granddaughter Alissa, who lived with us for seven years, telephoned in the evening. Unlike Mother’s Day, I don’t recall celebrating Father’s Day growing up.

 below, Barb and Steve at Lincoln Park gig

At Miller Beach Farmers Market the duo Silver Rose, featuring Barb Silverman and Steve Rose, performed a variety of popular songs.  Barb’s late father lived in Miller, and she teaches at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago.  Ron Cohen, who knows her, attended with Nancy, primarily interested in the antiques on display at the old Miller School nearby.  Nancy recently completed my latest Steel Shavings and said she particularly liked Ray Smock’s essays on the state of the Union under Trump. A big NBA fan, Nancy was disappointed that Seth Curry and Golden State lost in the championship round to Toronto.  I admitted rooting for the Raptors, mainly because they had defeated the 76ers on a miracle shot by Kawhi Leonard and had never gone all the way before.

In the final round of the U.S. Open Tiger Woods, already out of contention, bogeyed four of the first six holes and seemed headed for an ignoble 80. Then he birdied six of the last 12 for a 69, wowing the crowds and demonstrating some of that old Tiger magic.

The “young people edition” of Michael Bronski’s “A Queer History of the United States” consists mainly of short biographies of activists who were often in civil rights, antiwar, environmental, and labor movements, as well as the arts.  I learned, for instance, that “Queen of Disco” Sylvester, who recorded the dance classic “Do You Wanna Funk?” was in a San Francisco theatrical group called the Cockettes.  I particularly enjoyed profiles on Mattachine Society co-founder Harry Hay, Daughters of Bilitis founders Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, and Kiyoshi Kuramiya, born in 1943 in Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Wyoming during World War II.  From my days as a teaching assistant at University of Hawaii, I learned to pronounce Japanese names, which are phonetic and much easier than Eastern European ones encountered in Northwest Indiana.  Our friend Sheila Hamanaka had a son named Kiyoshi, whom everyone called Kiyo. While a student at the University of Pennsylvania, Kuramiya was beaten and hospitalized participating in civil rights activities in Montgomery. He joined SDS and took part in the 1967 March on the Pentagon, providing the FBI an excuse to scrutinize his activities. He belonged to ECHO (East Coast Hemophile Organization) and later the Gay Liberation Front.  An architect who collaborated with Buckminster Fuller, he died of AIDS at age 57, like so many contemporaries. 

 Kiyoshi Kuramiya

Sylvester in 1974

Bayard Rustin

I met Bayard Rustin, a co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, at an IUN function and noticed that he smoked European cigarettes from a holder, had manicured nails, and made no effort to camouflage his effeminate mannerisms.  While jailed as a conscientious objector during World Wat II, lover Davis Platt wrote him as a woman to avoid the letters being confiscated. Bronski’s “A Queer History of the United States” noted: “Rustin’s habit of seeking hookups in public places, called cruising at the time, often got him into trouble.”  In 1953 he was arrested for having sex with a man in a car.  In 1977 65-year-old Rustin settled into a permanent relationship with 27-year-old VISTA worker Walter Naegle.

Twenty years ago, my colleague Terry Lukas was arrested and briefly detained during a raid on a park where gay trysts were taking place.  He was fearful he might lose his position at IU Northwest and thankful when I stuck by him.  I recall his telling me that there were few places where gays could meet.  The bust was front page headlines; one man identified was a Baptist minister.  Chancellor Hilda Richards called Lukas to her office and warned him not to put himself in a potentially embarrassing position again, then dropped the matter. 

When Paul Kern and I wrote a history of IUN, we mentioned numerous matters of sex but left out that incident as well as one where a professor was punished unfairly due to unproved innuendoes that he was involved in an inappropriate relationship with a male student - despite a predecessor having slept with a string of comely coeds under his charge with impunity.  Now I wish we’d have included the incidents - perhaps in a revised addition, now that both principals are dead.  Writing a queer history of IUN would be a pathbreaking accomplishment, albeit difficult to research, even for an oral historian. 

 Jimmy Hoffa flips RFK the bird during 1957 Senate hearing

Brother-in-law Sonny, a truck driver who became a Republican after Attorney-General Robert Kennedy went after Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa and who postured as a big Trump supporter when alive, had a gay friend named Harry who got caught in a police sweep of a public park in Florida frequently by gays.  The Korean War vet claimed he was merely taking donuts to those hanging out there.  A onetime victim of police harassment himself during younger days, Sonny defended Harry and thought it disgraceful that he was identified in the local newspaper, jeopardizing his job as a supermarket packer.  After a cop ordered Harry to cease crossing an intersection in a golf cart on the way to work, Sonny told him to keep on doing it, that the cop had no right to stop him.

In the “We Do History” Indiana Historical Society blog, Kathy Mulder discussed father and grandson William Henry and Benjamin Harrison, who became the country’s ninth and twenty-third presidents.  The latter lived in Indianapolis from 1854 until his death 47 years later. Mulder wrote: “One of Benjamin Harrison’s most notable campaign attractions was a giant campaign ball made with a steel frame and slogan-covered canvas. The ball was modeled after his grandfather’s 1840 presidential campaign ball and was rolled nearly 5,000 miles to Harrison’s Indianapolis home during the 1888 election.” On several occasions Harrison vacationed by the Kankakee Marsh and shot down countless migratory birds. In 1888, for example, the President-elect recuperated from the campaign on General Lew Wallace’s houseboat at Baum’s Bridge.

Playing poker for the first time in a year at Dick Hagelberg and George McGuan’s place of business, Kidstuff Playsystems, I was rather rusty and not used to high-low Omaha, which requires one to use two cards from your hand of four and three of the five up cards.  I had many second-best hands, in which I stayed in for the large final bet only to lose, for example to an Ace high flush when mine was King high. Twice I would have won low except for a rule that the winning hand needed to be eight high or better.