A student and photographer for the College Newspaper at the time, one of his photos was used on the cover of life magazine. He has published a book about his experience, moments of truth a photographers experience of kent state 1970. Max thank you all so much for coming out tonight. Tonight, we are hosting the photographer Howard Ruffner who, during his College Years at kent state university, was a photographer for the yearbook and newspaper. His book tonight, moments of truth, is a collection of more than 150 photos around the kent state massacre of 1970 in which four students lives were lost. So without further ado, please welcome Howard Ruffner. [applause] howard first of all, i have to say it is nice to see some familiar faces out here. Lots of people from pasadena village and relatives. My daughter is here with my soninlaw, and his parents are here. People from near where i live. But most of all, i have to thank my wife for being here. If she will just raise her hand. [applause] as most of you know, whenever you endeavor on a real, good project, your spouse is the one who picks up the other stuff, and laura kept me organized and kept me going and made sure i did not lose too much of a focus on where i was going with this. So let me get started. The intention of my book is to let you know more about me at the beginning before i attended kent state, my introduction to photography. And then the rest of the story starts with when i unrolled at kent state in march, 1969. I will give you a glimpse of the campus life i knew before may 4. Then the rest of the book is about my photography and experience photographing events on campus from may 1 through may 4. That is me in the photos standing next to my mom, looking up at my newest brother, rick. That is me. Howard the cleveland press in those days thought a family of six boys made a good Human Interest story, so they entitled it sing a song of six pants. [laughter] and they sent a photographer to our home, captured an image of us all. I watched as the photographer came into our house, looked around, and found a place to gather us altogether. He positioned us and took the picture. The photo ran on the front page of the afternoon paper the next day, above the fold. Friends and neighbors could not wait to share the front page. We were famous. And this was 1953. Here we are, 18 years later. We are now seven boys in eight years. My youngest brother mick is on the far left. He was still in high school. Three of us had been in the service. Two air force, one army. Two more will be joining. One air force and the other in the navy. So it was about a year after high school when i enlisted in the air force. During my first two years as a writer in the Information Office in waco, texas, i applied and was accepted to a group called the department of defense broadcast course in indianapolis, indiana at fort benjamin harrison. During the eight weeks of broadcast journalism, we were taught to write for tv news and incorporate news and film and slides in television broadcasts. After that, i was then assigned to the American Forces philippines network. My duties included editing film, running a Television Camera during our live news shows and uso broadcasts, and this sharpened my ability to quickly frame and choose pictures. Whether behind a Television Camera or a handheld, my visual awareness was growing. And later, i became the primary news director and got to call the shots at the station. So, the base offered me a lot of opportunities to take photographs of celebrities. Celebrities who visited doing uso shows. Many uso shows flew to air force bases included comedians, singers, movie stars to entertain the troops and families. The uso shows were on their way to vietnam. General benjamin o. Davis, in this photograph, the highest ranking africanamerican u. S. Air force officer, greeted bob hope upon his arrival to Clark Airbase. And davis would later be asked to serve on the president s commission on campus unrest. To investigate the shootings at kent state in 1970. Many of the photos i took then were used during our daily television show. So it was at Clark Airbase where i got seriously involved in photography. This was where i bought my first nikon f camera and lenses. Now, i had a professional camera. The hobby shop on the base was my escape from work. Next came printing my images. Here, they really taught me how to make a really finished photograph. Watching a photo appear in the developer was like magic. I was now giving myself assignments and taking pictures daily and printing what i thought was good. After a while, the photo lab techs encouraged me to enter an air force photo competition. With their encouragement, i entered this photo, which won first place for portraiture. Another photo i entered won third place for landscapes. Having competed and won gave me a real sense of accomplishment and encouraged me to get even better. Now that my photography was taking off, so to speak, i decided to submit a recent photo i took to the news base newspaper. This was my First Published photograph. It ran with my credit, and it took some planning to get exactly what i wanted. Now i am feeling that im really becoming more accomplished as a photographer. So now it is march of 1969, and i have enrolled at kent state university, ready to pursue my degree in broadcast journalism. Spring on campus was a time for students to get out and play and enjoy campus life beyond books. The students had not been involved in anything as silly as a mud fight since elementary school. It looked like a perfectly natural way to break the ice and get to know your fellow classmates. This helped me realize that there was a lot more to college than just going to class and studying. While i was surprised by seeing this, it reminded me that it was safe, in a playful way, to relieve the tensions of school. From mud fights to dating, casual fridays had not been invented yet. Few students wore jeans, and sneakers were for gym class. It was date night for a sly and the family stone concert that spring. Sly arrived with mutton chops and an outrageous hippie outfit. Students wore their best date night clothes. They looked like they were going to job interviews. The conservative side was apparent at the concert. This was my First Student protest photograph. Up until now, the school is pretty quiet as far as protests were concerned. Students had been working on signs and banners during the week and the morning of the antiwar march. It was thursday morning, october 1969. Students grabbed signs and a banner as they left the University Campus headed to downtown kent to protest the vietnam war, and they did this on thursday, because kent was a suitcase campus. A lot of students went home to akron or nearby canton, ohio. It was the kind of school where friday afternoons, weekends, the campus was deserted. The woman standing behind the word all is allison krause. I will tell you more about her later. The antiwar sentiment was on the minds of many kent students, young men who knew they were deferred from the draft as long as they remained in school. This would change, however, on december 1 that year, when the draft lottery was put in place. As a photographer on campus, other than this protest march, most of the protesting i heard was in the classrooms and the student unions. The next large antiwar gathering would not occur until may 1, 1970, when 300500 students would attend a rally to protest nixons expansion of the vietnam war into cambodia. By the fall, the Antiwar Movement had grown off colleges, campuses, to the mall in d. C. Four of us from the daily kent stater decided to drive to washington, d. C. To join the antiwar protests on november 15. Just a few weeks after our own homecoming. We arrived friday evening in time to watch people honoring the soldiers that had died in vietnam. That night, 18 of us slept in one room of our friends dorm, feet pointed in, heads out. The next morning, we headed to the mall, and i was impressed by the size of the crowd and by their focus and steadfastness to be part of something so big. It would make the government take notice. This was my first trip to washington, d. C. Everything was very new and very exciting. The resentment of half a Million People of this continued war could be felt as i moved through the crowd. Their determination to have their voices heard was deafening. With the u. S. Capitol, the background, these protesters demanded an end to the war. I needed to push my way through the crowds to find out where the march was to begin. And after a lot of walking and nudging my way around, i came to the beginning of the parade. I stood in awe as i spotted Coretta Scott king and George Mcgovern at the front of the parade. I nudged my way through to get as close as i could to take my photos. Locked arm in arm with mcgovern, king and others showed the strength and unity of their commitment, and i was moved to be so close to such committed and important people who opposed the war. Now, it is may 1 on campus, may 1, 1970. History graduate student steve sharoff urges a rally of about 300500 students to understand the severity of nixons decision to invade cambodia. He did this without the consent of congress. And according to steve, nixon murdered the constitution. Therefore, it was dead and needed to be buried. And with the constitution and buried and the crowd beginning to leave, the grad students packed up and went on their way. But one last grad student sees this as an opportunity to speak to the dwindling crowd to remind them of how important the rally was and that the discussion of the war needed to continue. He urged students to return on monday, may 4. This rally on may 4 took place between 12 00 noon and 1 00. Most students tried leaving just before the lunch period ended. So, after the rotc building was set on fire saturday evening, i stayed up late saturday night into sunday morning and watched as the National Guard took up positions on the campus. I had a surreal feeling as i observed the movement of the armed troops. Where did they come from so quickly . How did they get here . What kind of trouble would happen when students arrived back on campus after the weekend . Well, students walked around the burnt out rotc building sunday morning as they returned to campus. A flimsy wooden fence had been erected while they were gone, and National Guardsmen were posted at the building to keep gawkers from getting too close. The protesting had stopped. There were no rumors of more protesting or of more buildings being set on fire. Everything had quieted down. So why werent the National Guard leaving . Well, one reason was that, around 10 00 a. M. On may 3, Ohio Governor james rhodes and an entourage of officials arrived on campus. They were there to survey the damage on campus and to determine what they would do about student protesters. The governor was running for a u. S. Congressional senate seat, and the election was may 5, just a day later. Two days away. And when i heard this, i realized his viewing of the burnt out rotc building was just likely a planned event to get media coverage, so he could be splashed across the newspapers and tv around the state. He wanted to impress voters that he was the law and order candidate, so they would send him to washington. They did not. [laughter] using streetlights and searchlights from helicopters, sunday evening, i took photos of students staging a sitin at the center of town. They wanted to hear from the mayor of kent and from the University President , robert white. They wanted to know what was happening. Who was in charge . What was the National Guards exact role . Was the town and school now under martial law . Confusion reigned all around. On may 4, around 11 30 a. M. , students gathered on the commons to continue the rally of may 1. I have adjusted this photo to allow specific students to stand out. If you cannot see it very well, in the front row are the legs and arms of Jeffrey Miller, who is standing behind a female student. This is Jeffrey Miller. He was a native of plainville, new york, where he was born in 1950. To his right, carrying a dog, is mary anne vecchio. She would become the most recognizable nonuniversity student protester, the most iconic photograph you might remember as the day after. She is right here. 14 years old. A runaway from florida. There are two shaded individuals in the middle right of the photo. These students are carrying their books as they pause on the way to class. On the right is william schroeder. He was a native of cincinnati, ohio, where he was born in 1950. To his left is Sandy Scheuer. You can see her here. Sandy scheuer is a speech therapist, honor student, fully intent on going to class. She was born in 1949 in youngstown, ohio. I watched as a line of guards, students reached the crest of the hill, and the guard continued to advance on them. On the right, just under the pagoda, is allison krause. Again, that is the person i took the photo of in 1969 during the protest march in the city. Allison krause was a freshman honor student, and she was born in cleveland in 1951. And this photo is particularly difficult for me to look at, because i see her Holding Hands with her boyfriend, barry levine. I go back to 1969 to remember the original photograph that i took of her. And the banner that read, bring all the troops home. So at this point, the guard seemed to have completed their objective. They were supposed to disperse the students from the crowd that had gathered in front of taylor hall, that i showed you earlier. Yet the guardsmen were still advancing. Now, what more did they need to accomplish . What was their real objective here . What they really wanted was for this all to end, so they could go home. So as the guard continued their marching, they reached the corner of taylor hall. I witnessed the group at the rear turn in unison. Some crouched down while others stood. Then the gunshots began. Of course, i thought they would be shooting blanks. I took a photograph as they turned and fired. And i stood there. Then, a moment later, i thought to myself, i better get down anyway. I probably look like a good target with these cameras hanging around my neck. And back then, the lenses were pretty long. We did not have a tiny lenses or cameras. What i did was i swung my left arm around my cameras and camera bag and went down to the ground. Just as i was getting down and dropping to my knees, i heard a young woman scream, oh my god, get down they are using real bullets they are shooting real bullets i was 80 feet in front of the guard when they turned and fired. This cropped photo shows the ground in front of taylor hall, where the National Guard turned and fired. It does not show evidence that anything was thrown at the guard or anything that would have put their lives in danger, as they would later testify at the civil trials. And i show this because, when you look at a photograph, sometimes, you look at what the photographer intends for you to see and is of interest. In the first photograph, you see the guns pointed in the air. The bayonets. People looking. And if i go back you will see what i mean and then, when i talk about somebody, maybe i am not in the right spot right here kind of getting close to looking at me, in my direction. As i looked around for my crouched position, i spotted john cleary, was wounded on the ground to my left behind me. He was at the base of the metal sculpture in front of taylor hall. I couldnt tell if he was dead or alive. Cleary was lucky. He survived a shot to the chest. The first time i saw this photo was a week later on the cover of life magazine. Someone from life called me a week before at 2 00 a. M. , to let me know they had chosen one of my photos for the may 15 cover. Because i had sent unprocessed rolls of film to life in chicago, i had no idea how my film turned out or what my images looked like or what i had captured. I never knew exactly what the cover shot was until life hit the newsstands later that week. I am sure some of you may remember this cover. I will leave it up here. So at the memorial site of the shootings, visitors see these engraved words as they enter the Memorial Plaza at kent state. If you have not been to the memorial or kent state recently, it is a thing to see if you go there. The first word is inquire. As i wrote this memoir, i asked myself hundreds of questions about the truth my photographs really captured. Who was to blame for killing unarmed students . What role did the students have . Were the guardsmens lives ever at risk . And was there an order to fire . For the word learn shortly after the kent state shootings, i realized the kent protests and subsequent killing of students precipitated a closing of colleges and universities around the country. I remember reading about this in a local paper and watching it on television news. It was later estimated that more than 4 Million Students at more than half the 2551 colleges and universities in the country went on strike during the week of may 4. This is all in response to the kent state shootings, making it the largest student protest in history. Then, the last word is reflect. I always have been willing and open to share my kent state photos and memories. I have given talks in Public Schools to all grade levels, college classes, and local community groups. However, my proudest moment happened in october of 2016. I told my story about the kent state tragedy and protest at hanoi university, where i was invited to speak to 200 englishspeaking undergraduates. And this could not have been possible without the help from kent state international department. These Young Students had heard about the protest in the United States from their parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles. But this was the first time they had heard the story from someone who actually was there and was a primary witness. And the other thing that made this so important to me was just that the students at hanoi university, and their parents and grandparents, recognized that the sacrifice at kent state and all the College Campuses that protested the war in 1970 was what actually determined the ending of the vietnam war. Because within 10 months of what happened at kent state, 90 of the troops in vietnam were either leaving or scheduled to leave. And they recognized that. And i think they really responded to what i had to say. Actually, the people i told you about, allison krause, Sandy Scheuer and Jeffrey Miller those were the four students who died. Nine students were wounded. And one was crippled for life from the waist down. So i would like to turn this over to any questions anybody would have, because i would be sure to share more than i have here. [applause] yes . Im interested in your transition from the family that had many people in the military and the military that you served in and how if, how your experience in the military affected your view of what was going on . If you became an antiwar activist at some point or just even antiwar without being an activist. Im just interested in that transition or relationship. Howard well, growing up in a family of seven boys born eight years apart. My dad never drove. We actually did not have money for college. And as a young, poor, middleclass kid, i stayed out of school for about a year working several jobs and trying to go to an extension school. But realizing it is all not going to work out very well. And a friend came in one day and said he had just joined the air force and asked me if i would join too . It did not take me half a second. I am with you, ready to go. As far as the war goes, i was against the war, but i knew that if i did not enlist and get g. I. Bill money, i could be something other than what i was. Because in 1965, when i enlisted, when you got to your draft place, if they drafted you, if the marines did not have enough marines to fill their quota, you are a marine. You are a marine. Air force and navy did not have that problem. So i thought it was better to enlist than taking my chances to be army or marine. And when i was in the service, i probably did not have the same experience that a lot of people did. I had a brother who was a mechanic in vietnam, another one who built roads in vietnam for two years. I wrote press releases in waco, texas and directed tv in the philippines. My view of the war was still the same. I did not think it was just. I had no reason to believe we needed to be there. When i got to kent state, i held that view, but my personal desire to do photography was stronger than my desire to be a protester. And so i chose that, and that way, i had to keep myself a little bit more objectified than trying to do one side or the other. Yes . Why do you think the National Guard opened fire . Howard i can explain that, really. And it is quite strange. When governor rhodes all of this is in the book. When governor rhodes arrived on campus, he went and had his public appearance. But then he had a private appearance in the firehouse with the i do not even believe there were any kent state officials or administrators there. Fire chief, state police, National Guardsmen, some reporters. And his words were being broadcast also to the i dont want to call them dormitories, but the facilities where the National Guard were being bivouacked. And he made it very clear, and his pronouncements at the fire station, that, he said, these students are worse than the brownshirts of world war ii, and we are not going to let them get away with anything. This kind of stuff is going to stop here. They are no longer going to burn down our 1 million buildings the building they burned down was a 1942 world war ii barracks worth about 100,000, maybe. But he gave the guard, in that talk, which the people could hear, permission to use any force they could, to stop the protesting. And what becomes very confusing and is probably something that needs more answering than whether or not the guard had an order to fire, was, why did the University Administration give up their role and protect their students, and why did they feel they had to give up their position to the Ohio Governor at that time . When governor rhodes took control of the university, he gave permission to the generals to do whatever they could to stop rioting. And that included that there would be no protests of any kind, peaceful or otherwise, no gatherings of students. So, at 12 15 on may 4, a jeep went around where the students were gathering and told the students they had to disperse or suffer the consequences. At that point in time, though we did not know it, their guns were locked and loaded. And their bayonets were out, and they had their gas masks on. And even though if i were to go back to that one photograph, the people in the front of the crowd, maybe 300 to 500 protesters. Ok . Behind them were people who were like, yeah like cheerleaders. And behind that, just onlookers. At kent state this was a school of 18,000 students at the time, and the number of real protesters was fairly small. So, without anything further, the guard just said they had permission to disperse the crowd. Problem is they did not have a plan b. Because kent is a huge campus, like many College Campuses. And they chased them, and they disappeared. When you look at the book, you will see that the guard ended up in what they call a practice football field, which is surrounded on three sides by a six foot chainlink fence. They had nowhere to go themselves. And the students gathered again right in front of them. They could have gone down, back to the rotc building, very easily and avoided any confrontation, but they chose to, again, disperse the students. But from a military standpoint, they did so by chasing them up a hill, giving the guard a 20 foot advantage over the parking lot and the football field. So when they reach that spot, there was a certain number of guards who turned and fired. We do not know there are a lot of conspiracy things about whether they were ordered to fire. Some people say they were. Some people say there may have been a gunshot. It really does not matter, because the guard claimed their lives were in danger. And we know that to be a lie. So, regardless of what the guard had said, they shot and fired, and it took 10 years for one guardsman to admit to a reporter from the Akron Beacon Journal that he intentionally stood there and shot two bullets into joe lewis, the student who was 60 feet in front of the guard when they fired. So there are a lot of secrets, a lot we do not know. We do know the guard got away with murder that day. Along that line, there was a report that there was a tape where the word fire was heard. Have you heard that or any opinion on that . Howard i have heard about the tape. I know who has the tape. The person who the audiologist who did all the listening to it, he has passed away, so he cannot testify to anything anymore. I think it is interesting. I was 80 feet in front of the guard when they fired. I did not hear anything. It could have happened. But to me, it does not matter. I feel that there was a group of guardsmen there were a group of older, more seasoned guardsmen, and it seems that they are the ones who stayed back as they marched toward the hill. It was only that Certain Group that turned and fired. And if you go back and look at that picture, you will see that the general is far ahead. That is where the things that that is one of the things that is confusing about kent, because no one knows who had control of the university. Martial law was never officially proclaimed, but it is often thought that it was there. The ohio telephone operators, they have a procedure that if a school or unit or anyplace like a town is under martial law, they cut off telephone lines. So they were under the impression that it was under martial law. You say they were . Howard they were under the impression that it was under martial law, but it had never officially been documented. Peter . Back to the comment about whether somebody said fire how much noise were the protesters making, per your recollection, at that Crucial Point . Howard actually, there was no noise. I mean, the guard were walking up the hill. The students were watching them. I was watching them. And i was kind of alert for because i was a stringer for life magazine at that point in time, so i was keeping my eyes and ears open, being ready for anything that might happen. That is why i looked back a couple of times to see if there were rocks being thrown. I did not see anything. I did not feel anything. And, you know, i did not hear anything. There was not really any noise at that point in time until they turned and fired. And then it became you know, to this day, i still get shook up or have a reaction to helicopters flying overhead with searchlights or ambulances racing down a street. I can still see the kids being put on gurneys and rolled away from the campus that day. So yes . Just sort of as a recap, how did this incident compare to any other University Campus violence at the time . I mean, was this a huge deal . Or, i mean, as far as i can sort of remember, being really young, is there was violence at berkeley, and ucla had a riot. Was this vastly larger than those other larger places . It seems ohio is, kind of, not really on the forefront howard i cant speak completely for this other universities, but i had gone to ohio state several times before the incident at kent state, and i had seen National Guard at parking lots and protesting. And i think it was more pronounced at other schools but not to the but the burning of the rotc building, which happened on kent at that particular time, was the straw that broke the camels back for the governor, and the fact that he was running for Public Office at a high level. I would think that that is what i would attribute kent states situation or tragedy to be all about. I know that schools in the east, columbia, a lot of violence. Berkeley had violence. But not the kind of violence that precipitated the National Guard to stop anybody physically, like they did at kent. You know, it is just it became a political thing. Because governor rhodes was there, and the mayor it was a new mayor, and on friday evening, there was some roughhousing going on in downtown kent after the cambodia invasion. Trash cans were burning. Set on fire at midnight. So the mayor immediately called for a curfew for the town and demanded there be a curfew on campus. It all gets down to who is in control of what. One other quick aside we did not know who was in charge. And, for the record, the president of kent state university, robert white, at 12 00 on monday, may 4, was having lunch at the brown derby, 20 minutes away with one of the other generals who was in charge of the National Guard. Do you have any idea what is going on . So post may 4, then there were massive demonstrations at universities across the country. I lived in seattle at the time, and at the university of washington, maybe as many as 10,000 students decided to march downtown to the federal courthouse and protest. And they marched out onto interstate 5 and shut down the freeway. But you, in effect, said, and certainly implied, that it was not unusual for universities to insist, public as well as private, to insist on their police forces, the university police, retaining control over Law Enforcement on the campus. And that was what was the case at the university of washington at that time. The University President absolutely insisted that neither the state patrol nor the Seattle Police department were to come on campus without express permission from the university. Howard right. And i think that is what happened at kent. They just the mayor gave in very easily to some violence that took place, called governor rhodes. Rhodes sent the troops in, and the troops came in on friday. The building was burnt on saturday. I was watching the troops roll in, you know, under the darkness of the night at 2 00 in the morning. Students are still away or in their dorms. No one could see them. Then you wake up, and here you have the National Guard. If the National Guard had not been there, i am not sure there wouldve been a problem at all. Students went to rallies, back in those days for one thing, right . To get information, really. A rally was not to storm or take over a building. That was decided at the rally. But the rallies were to get information to determine what you believed in or did not believe in. We did not have instant information. Throughout the book, i try to remind the reader that we did not have cell phones. We did not have a tv in every room. And let me say one other thing about the book before we close this out or have more questions. Another intent of the book, 50 years later and it is very timely right now is that back in the 1960s and early 1970s, we saw a lot of passion. End the war there was a lot of passion with students in our schools. Today, that passion is just beginning again with the youth of the United States to end gun violence, climate control. And i am hoping that the book will help them understand that keep your passion, keep the fight. You are going to have to make some sacrifices. But you can make a change. So the book is more than just a reflection of kent state. It is a hope for our future students and generations to know that they can make change by being passionate about something. What motivated you to put this book together . Was it someone told you to do it . Or you sat there and said i want to leave this whole thing i am using as a teaching tool . Howard well, i know i had all these photographs, i just did not know what to do with them. And my wife and i have real Close Friends who are phds in history and teach history at colleges. And they also have a cabin in casper, wyoming. We were up there for a while with them, visiting. Just spending some time with them. Jeff looks at me and says, howard whenever i am with somebody, it usually gets around to kent state, usually, especially if they are historians. He said, you know what, howard . You are an eyewitness. A primary witness. You need to write that book. And they gave me a good kick in the butt, so to say, a good push. And we have another close friend who lives in brooklyn, new york, michael mcdonald, who lives in brooklyn, and he wrote a book about all souls. It is about growing up in southie, in south boston, and he wrote a book about whitey bulger. I said, michael, how do i get this started . I want to do this. But i do not have a clue. And i taught english for two years in high school. He said, well, there is my writing desk. This is what i did. Just start from the top of your head. I may have wrote 40 pages to 60 pages. And laura looked at it and said throw that away. [laughter] which is actually what you need to do, because you get that rough stuff out of your head and then you get organized and focused. So, that is how it all got started. It actually took about three years. Say that was a long process, but it was something i wanted to get done. And as the only photographer there for the entire weekend, i have the only record. And you were hired by life . Howard i was hired by life on may 4 to be a stringer. I went to kent on the g. I. Bill. I was not in any relationships. I had nothing to do. I had two roommates. I had 5 a week spending money. I had free film. So what better thing to do with free film than to take pictures . You said that somebody at columbia thought to take over a building for a couple of days. Didnt anyone think these are the kids of affluent citizens . And what about the repercussions . This was a horrible decision. And what were the repercussions . Because parents of these kids were slaving to send their kids to colleges, and then have them slaughtered what were the repercussions . We know about the tragedy. But what were the consequences . Howard well, some of the students went home. Cleveland, being a very conservative area, i know someone who has a masters in journalism, whatever, and her dad said, if you were involved in those protests, you should have been shot. The conservative nature back then and i think you have to look at the generational thing. If your dad or uncle had gone to world war ii and fought in the war, and you did not want to fight in a war, they did not think you were very manly. But, they did not understand that there was a difference. Because of the generation. They fought for something that was meaningful. And we were trying to, you know, say that you need to be democratic here, not communist, and sending people over just to get shot we were not protecting ourselves, we were just advancing ourselves. There were no repercussions . Howard the National Guard . In terms of the National Guard, the repercussions for the National Guard was they went to trial twice. I was a lead witness at both civil trials at the courts. I was on the witness stand for three days, advanced all my photography. The first time, they actually were convicted, but then, it was thrown out and appealed. So then they had a second trial. That was in 1978. And i was on the witness stand. And then, after my few days, they got the second witness up there. And just, while he was up there, the judge came out and said we have reached a conclusion. The government and the court had agreed to a settlement with the guard writing a letter of they did not want to say it was a letter saying they were sorry, it was a letter saying they wish it couldve been handled a different way. The judge awarded the plaintiffs 650,000. The reason for this was, dean kahler, who had been wounded and paralyzed from the waist down, he did not have a rich family and he is still paralyzed. So they gave him 450,000. So, part of the settlement was to end the whole thing and get to help people out. People who died, the parents of the children who were killed, got money. But most of it went to dean kahler, so he could live the rest of his life. And he actually worked for the state of ohio. He has been a teacher. He is in a wheelchair. He does wheelchair races every weekend. He is still alive and well and lives in kent. [indiscernible] howard yeah. Actually, ive a photograph that he saw in the kent state memorial area. And he called me one day and said, hey, howard, you know that photograph . I have never seen that photograph before. And that was the last photograph taken of me standing. One last question, i guess. How did you maintain your ability to take photographs on such an emotional day . Yeah, really. Howard i have been asked that several times. And maybe i have a i have an ability to not let my emotions get involved in my work. And thats it is kind of difficult. Because when i got down you know, we all thought they were shooting blanks. Or over their heads. You know, the bullets they were shooting, there is a sculpture on the campus, a metal sculpture with 3 8 inch steel. Some of the bullets were armor piercing and went right through that sculpture. But as far as my own way of maintaining myself, i had a job to do. And i maintained that sense of separateness. And i was even told, you know, or asked to stop taking pictures by some people on campus. And i told them i had to keep taking pictures, because people had to know what actually happened. But if i was taking pictures of somebody, and they looked at me and said dont take my picture, i certainly would not have taken it. And if the person on the cover of life magazine, if nobody had come around to his aid, i wouldve put down my camera and gone to help him. I have done that in other situations where somebody needed help. It was not a picture opportunity. You cannot let your feelings sometimes get in the way of your job. It is tough. Thank you for coming tonight. And i hope it was something useful. [applause] max thank you all again for coming tonight. We now are going to move on to the signing portion of the event. We ask that you do please buy your book before getting it signed. You can find books on this table as well as over on the shelf. You can buy them at all registers downstairs or at will call. I hope you have a good night. Thank you. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] back a moment we will look 50 years to the deadly confrontation between students and the ohio National Guard on the kent state campus that left four students dead and nine wounded. Howard means joins us live. He is the author of 67 shots kent state and the end of american innocence first, here is president nixon in a televised white house address a few days earlier. Pres. Nixon the entire communist military operation in vietnam. This key control center has been occupied by the north vietnamese and viet cong for five years, in blatant violation of cambodias neutrality. This is not an invasion of cambodia. The areas in which these attacks are launched are controlled by north vietnamese forces. Our purpose is not to occupy the areas. Once enemy forces are driven out of these sanctuaries and once there military supplies are destroyed, we will withdraw. No wayctions are in directed at the security any government that chooses to use these actions as a pretext for hardening relationships with on its. Will be doing so own responsibility and initiative and we will draw the appropriate conclusions. Reasons me give you the for my decision. A majority of the american people, a majority of you listening to me are for the withdrawal of our forces from vietnam. The action i have taken tonight is indispensable for the continuing success of that withdrawal program