John Filo's iconic Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of Mary Ann Vecchio, a fourteen-year-old runaway, kneeling over the body of Jeffrey Miller after he was shot dead by the Ohio National Guard.
Today is the 40th anniversary of the shootings at Kent State University. These deaths — William Schroeder, Sandra Scheuer, Jeffrey Miller and Allison Krause — at the hands of the Ohio National Guard on May 4, 1970, persist as a significant historical marker.
The incident is today seen as the moment the free-spirited idealism of the Sixties collided head-on with the state’s deadly coercive powers. A nation’s youth, attempting to exercise their rights to free speech and assembly, were deliberately gunned down by their own government.
That the deaths were immortalized in iconic photos and the song Ohio by the band Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, which still receives substantial airplay today, has solidified the incident’s stature as a signature moment in modern social and cultural history.
But here’s another way of looking at it. Kent State was one of the biggest blunders ever committed by the American military.
This incident had a profound effect on me at the time and throughout the forty years since it happened. The images have often popped into my mind, especially when I listen to Cosby, Stills, Nash and Young's song 'Ohio':
Tin soldiers and Nixon coming, We're finally on our own. This summer I hear the drumming, Four 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?
From Wiki: Just Nuisance was the only dog ever to be officially enlisted in the Royal Navy. He was a Great Dane who from 1939-44 served at HMS Afrikander, a Royal Navy shore establishment in Simon's Town, South Africa. He died in 1944 and was buried with full military honours.
Nuisance was allowed to roam freely and, following the sailors, he began to take day trips by train as far afield as Cape Town, 22 miles (35 km) away. Despite the seamens' attempts to conceal him, the conductors would put him off the trains as soon as he was discovered. This did not cause him any problems though, as he would wait for the next train or walk to another station where he would board the next train that came along.
Although somebody offered to buy him a season ticket, the Navy instead decided to officially enlist him. It was thought he would be a morale booster for the troops serving in World War II and as a member of the armed forces he received free rail travel, so the fare-dodging would no longer be a problem.
Nuisance's service record was not exemplary. Aside from the offenses of traveling on the trains without his free pass, being absent without leave, losing his collar and refusing to leave the pub at closing time, his record shows that he was sentenced to have all bones removed for seven days for sleeping in an improper place: one of the Petty Officer's beds. He also fought with the mascots of ships that put in at Simon's Town, resulting in the deaths of at least two of them.
Hehehe ... I remember visiting the statue a few years ago with my brother and his young son ... at the top of his voice, in front of a crowd of tourists, my nephew exclaimed: "Gee Dad, look at his big winkie!" ... :)
Just Nuisance was entitled to the same benefits as any other Able Seaman, which included a cap. Here he sports a cap from the HMAS Canberra in one of the many promotional photos taken during World War II.
