A Lot of Memories

Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming. We're finally on our own. This summer I hear the drumming. Four dead in Ohio....

--Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.

THEY were shot in a parking lot on a hill. Four students at Kent State University, and 500 more, were chased into that tiny lot by a barrage of tear gas.

This fall I found a rusted Subaru and a burgundy Mercedes in the lot which 17 years ago served as the stage for one of the most dramatic events of an era.

On May 4, 1970, the National Guard, after lobbing tear gas at students and boxing them into the lot, retreated up a neighboring hill. Suddenly the Guard turned around and opened fire. A 20-year-old on her way to class, a ROTC cadet, a protester, and another headed for class--all fell dead.

I saw black squirrels scuttling up the hill the Guard fired from. Red leaves littered the parking lot. An empty wooden box for fliers about the incident, marked "May 4th Information," is the only tangible reminder of the bloodshed.

Students are raising $500,000 to build a monument near the lot. They are also urging the university president to release the information brochures he is withholding from the information box.

While the box remains empty, memory of May 4 invades the calm of this university, stuck in the flat, dry fields of northeastern Ohio. This fall 1000 students attended sessions to learn about the May 4 incident. A 25-member task force runs the information sessions and hosts speeches by '60s activists and former students who were wounded.

Every May 4, 1000 people come to the parking lot to commemorate the deaths. But during the rest of the year, activity in the lot reflects the concerns of the average student. The windows in the dormitory bordering on the parking lot showcase a U2 Pride poster and an "are you horny?" bumper sticker.

I just kept walking past the rusty Subaru, with nothing to catch my eye except the inflatable flamingo in the dormitory window.

The parking lot may have been the site of the paramount symbol of the young generation's clash with authority, a major motion picture, a cause for national mourning, and a Top 40 hit. On this November day it looked as small as my backyard at home and offered less to do.

But history is made in such parking lots. Sandra Lee Scheuer just happened to be walking through this one, at the wrong time, in the wrong decade and so she died at the hands of the National Guard.

Nixon damned the dead, by saying, "When dissent turns to violence it invites tragedy." But the students killed weren't pitching stones, and three weren't even protesting. They were just passing through. If it were any other day, they might have walked right past it without noticing it was there, as I first did.

Parking lots hold history about as proudly as they hold cars. But sometimes it's worth wandering around them, if only to remember that.