Kent State Recalls Day 4 Students Were Killed

Kent State remembered with the tolling of a bell, a chalk message in a parking lot, and silence.

There were peace signs and people dancing barefoot. Peter, Paul and Mary sang “Blowin’ in the Wind.” Some lit candles.

About 3,000 people showed up Thursday to mark the day 25 years ago that a cluster of National Guardsmen opened fire and killed four students during an anti-war protest.

Some in the crowd weren’t born back then. Others remember all too well.

In the hilltop parking lot where the slain students fell, silent candlebearers stood vigil from midnight until a bell tolled at exactly 12:24 p.m., the moment the shooting began.

Around them, people chalked peace signs, flowers and messages into the blacktop. “Has anything in the way of change become real? HAVE WE LEARNED?” one said.

The school’s victory bell rang 15 times - once for each of the 13 students killed or wounded and once for each of two students killed at Jackson State University in Mississippi 10 days later.

Around a stark granite memorial to the dead, near 58,175 daffodils decorating the hillside - one for each American killed in the war - students, former students and others paused to remember Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandy Scheuer and Bill Schroeder.

Mary Ann Vecchio, whose moment of agony kneeling near Miller was frozen in a Pulitzer Prizewinning photograph, stood on the spot where he died. The photo, taken by student photographer John Filo, was distributed worldwide by The Associated Press.

It was the first time Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary had seen the memorial, dedicated in 1990. Many have criticized it as too little, too late. Travers said it suits its purpose.

“As a memorial, as a physical thing, it’s enough,” she said. “The real memorial, of course, and the responsibility of the university is to infuse the student body with the moral questions that it produces.”