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 fro