There’s something happening here What it is ain’t exactly clear
There’s a man with a gun over there, telling me,
I got to beware, I think it’s time we stop,
children, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

Stephen Stills, For What It’s Worth

 

Watching above the Bridge

Attending Iowa University for dental school in the early 70s, I was safe from the draft and the possibility of placing my life in jeopardy amidst the steamy jungles of Vietnam. My sentiments were with those protesting the war, and I considered jumping into the fray. The consequences of such a bold move seemed more than I was willing to accept. I was conflicted between my emotional and practical sides; to risk my young marriage and my lifelong dream of becoming a dentist would take courage. The lesson from the protest debacle during my senior year of undergraduate school taught me the other side held all the cards. My conscience told me I should join the Iowa student movement, but the inevitable repercussions held me back.

Then, one day, standing on top of a towering retaining wall across from a bridge over the Iowa River, I watched anti-war protesters commandeer the highway intersection a dozen feet below me. Their action violated new Iowa City and the University of Iowa laws. Technically, so did mine.

It was my first exposure to student militancy – antagonizing armed law enforcement. While foreign to me, I found the scene thrilling. My parents would be appalled.

Organizers taunted several hundred highway patrolmen and other law enforcement at the opposite end of the bridge, adjacent to a water-driven power plant propelled by river water that dropped suddenly down from the low head dam; its below-the-surface undertow sucked branches and debris back into the dam’s undercurrent. Like the water turbulence that moved vigorously in random directions near the surface, I felt my inner self churning. Some of the protesters were likely prime draft bait. Others might have been wagering their enrollment status. If they were willing to take personal risks for their convictions, why couldn’t I?

Standing above the fray, staring at the turbulent water, I took inventory. I needed to inspect what I expected of myself as a member of a broader community. Why did I choose to watch this demonstration but not participate in it?

Occasional flashes of cop’s gunmetal shone under the streetlights at the east end of the Burlington Street bridge. Orange snow fencing reached across both ends of the crossing; Iowa farmers used the physics of wood slats lashed together with wire to subdue snow drifting onto rural roads. On this night, the barrier symbolically and physically restrained warring tribes, if only for a while. I didn’t know I had a roadblock until I moved away from home.

***

Raised in a conservative, Republican Iowa household with elephant motif wallpaper in the dining room, I drank from the cup of my parent’s political philosophies. Sitting in our faux-wood paneled basement TV room during the 60s, our nuclear family sipped hot chocolate and ate peanut butter sandwiches on wintry Sunday evenings. Staring at our black and white Motorola, we listened attentively to Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley report the tragedy, the importance, and the deaths of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy: I don’t recall my parents being overly saddened; King was black and Kennedy, a Democrat. We learned of the growth of anti-Vietnam sentiments and the promises of then-presidential candidate Nixon to de-escalate the number of battle lines and to reduce the paranoia that paralyzed the country’s youth. I was vaguely aware of the television coverage of turmoil surrounding the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School a few years earlier and, more recently, the travesty of the Selma March led by King to support black Americans. I was on the high school track team with many black athletes. I knew them well. Why would their race be treated so inhumanely? All the horror of the reporting was imprinted onto my sixteen-year-old subconscious in 1964.

During a cocktail hour at our house, I eavesdropped behind a doorway next to our living room. I overheard my dad tell his chums a joke about a family moving in next door, whose punch line was, “ Howdy, I’s yo’ new neighbah.” A chorus of hearty laughs rewarded his punch line. Awkwardly, my younger self laughed silently, not fully understanding the racist slur nor why it made me feel uncomfortable. My parents cheered all of the actions and words of Richard Nixon because he was, by god, going to be the next President of the United States. Their unwavering support upset me. How could they justify the lethality of the aggression? Confused, I felt myself moving away from my parent’s ideologies.

During that period, political activism thrived on the University of Iowa campus 314 miles east plus a million miles (mindset-wise) from my hometown of Sioux City, Iowa.

***

Following his 1943 high school graduation from East High in Sioux City, my father marched with classmates to the Navy recruitment office and signed up. He became a Navy medic who served as the medical doctor of a marine commando unit in the Pacific theater of World War II. Dad made two landings in the Philippines and one in Okinawa. Like the others, he had a bayonet fixed to the end of his rifle. Like the others, he had to defend himself while tending to his mates’ bloody wounds and screams and dealing with their deaths. I found his combat helmet in the storage room as a high-school student. The gray-painted head armor showed numerous nicks and several suspicious dents. I took it to Dad, sitting in the den, sharing his nightly martini with Mom.

When he spotted it, he rose slowly and made his way over to me. He took the reminder of war in both hands, stared at the scarred surface, rotated it to see all sides. He was quiet.

Looking sadly at Mom, he said, “I can’t talk about this,” and returned the gear to its hiding place. The sadness on his face is still fresh in my mind’s eye. I barely recognized him. While too young to truly understand the moment, the impact of his apparent grief hurt my heart. His ashen face told a story that I could not understand then, only now. His demeanor at that moment startled me and created a Moment I will see forever, an emotion I will feel forever. As I revisit this today, was he reliving the bloody horrors of the landings, the deaths of close buddies?

***

Post high school, I ventured from my parents’ politically- conservative home to the equally politically- conservative Oklahoma State University in the fall of 1966, located in a state governed by Republicans. My parents rejoiced. A cornerstone of the college experience I expected was the gift of free-thinking, an environment promoting independent thought. Author William Hamilton, who wrote Is God Dead? – a highly controversial cover article for TIME magazine in August of 1966 – was scheduled to appear on campus to speak about the “death of God movement” espoused by some 1960s theologians. As a freshman student, still under the influence of parental programming, I had yet to make up my own mind about religion about a lot of issues. At the time, I didn’t believe what seemed to be writer Hamilton’s premise, but this was college, where you should be exposed to all sides of an issue and then decide where you fall along the spectrum.

Shortly before the big day, the President of the University banned the author because “We are a Judeo-Christian university.” “What?” I thought. This contradicted my expectation of exposure to different points of view and the right to express thoughts outside the mainstream culture. I was amazed. Oklahoma State did not bill itself as a religion-based school. I was startled. I questioned why students needed to be coddled and shielded from radical viewpoints. Around beers, we argued about Man, truth, and God. It was the spring of 1967. The Nam conflict raged as the atrocities piled up.

My college girlfriend at the time was openly militant about the war that allowed American troops to kill over 500 children and adults in the village of Mai Lai. The massacre – bodies fallen in jagged rows along the edge of the road – profoundly affected both of us. For months, she conducted a one-person protest on the sidewalk outside the administration building, Whitehurst Hall. It took the form of colored chalk numbers on the concrete. Each evening, the news media gave the body count like a baseball score; each morning, she had new numbers to inscribe. She had all early classes; mine were late in the morning, so I did not witness her updates. I did make it part of my walk to cruise by her handiwork –looking down at the new death tally, looking up at Whitehurst Hall, and back to the chalk update, standing over her work for a minute or so in contemplation. I was already a campus leader and had met President Kamm several times. I hoped he’d see me visiting the chalk art, protesting the war, if only passively.

She scratched the new daily totals under two words, Vietnamese and American. She’d be pissed as hell to learn that the Defense Department released the correct numbers but flipped them if more American boys died than their enemies on any given day. I walked daily by her sidewalk art. It reinforced my growing resentment of the conflict that killed several of my Iowa high schoolmates – Steve Koson and Greg Coons – who were killed by snipers strapped into trees. For years, we had passed batons to each other on high school two-mile relay teams. We had worked out together and laughed over hormone-induced comments.

During the summer of ’67, I lived in Los Angeles, running for the Southern California Striders track team. Several firsts happened for me during those months. I took up with a hippie chick, Terri, who claimed to be Cher’s cousin. She dressed like the songstress, walked like her, and, I fantasized, kissed like her. Peace-based students on Sunset Strip handed out the Free Press newspaper at stoplights, which I snatched and read on the steps of Terri’s Hollywood Hills apartment, waiting for her to come home from work. The rag advertised opposite-sex hookup ads and seeds you could chew to get high, which, I must confess, only produced a world-class headache. Editorials espoused the tenets of free love and flower power, opposed the stench of war and the killing of brown-skinned babies in Nam. The activist tone of the tabloid’s writing impressed my conscience, but I did not volunteer to stand on the concrete dividers between the lanes to hand out the newspaper. Despite my inner self, I was only a consumer, suggesting I do more. The loss of thousands of American soldiers fanned the fires of unrest among many in La La land, where the words of the day were bitchin’ and groovy.

***

As a scholarship track athlete, I lived in the jock dorm at Oklahoma State. There was a divide among the athletes regarding the Vietnam conflict. Many were active in ROTC programs, marching from the dorm to drill at the campus armory. Many on the track team and other sports stood on the opposite side of the issue. In the privacy of the athletic dorm, pro-war folks paraded the hallways with flags, chanting  U-S-A. Others of us stalked the hallways, shouting, “Hell no, we won’t go.” The athletic department squirmed under the tension.

In April of 1970, Nixon invaded Cambodia. Legions of students from over 400 American universities and colleges organized protests. Monday, May 4, 1970, was a typical school day at Kent State University in Ohio, except for Army half-tracks and other military hardware stacked strategically around campus and the cacophonic presence of numerous Huey’s circling overhead. Reportedly, a thousand observers stationed themselves atop the hillsides dozens of yards from their colleagues and several battalions of Guardsmen. It felt as if the British were coming. At 12:24 p.m., the reservists fired sixty- seven shots over thirteen hellish seconds. Four students died. Nine other students were wounded; one was permanently paralyzed. Several weeks later, two blacks at a Jackson State demonstration died at the hands of highway patrol shotguns.

Despite administration opposition to demonstrations, the impact of the murders by government forces saddened everyone and enraged a handful of Stillwater, Oklahoma dissidents. The athletic director posted a memo in our dorm, demanding that we not participate in the anti-war rally in front of the library that afternoon. Incensed, I shelved my cowardice, thinking what can they do to me, anyway? After all, my graduation as a pre-dentistry major was only a few weeks away. I put on my varsity letter jacket and went to the demonstration – where a dozen cop cars with flashing lights idled in nearby lots.

With an enrollment of over 18,000 students, a modest fifty showed up to protest the atrocities of war and the deaths at Kent State. Taller than the rest, I stood near the front before the clicking cameras. Someone read an impassioned speech, and we headed out on a protest march through campus. Full of spirit, I placed myself near the group’s lead, past the Classroom Building, Old Central, the business and geology buildings, and several dormitories where students watched and cheered us through open windows. Once past the basketball pavilion, we took a hard left onto the practice football field, a one-square block facility with a chain link fence and junipers ten feet high, blocking the vision in or out. Once inside, the enormous gates clanked as they closed behind us. Already positioned in a battle skirmish posture thirty yards away, a half-dozen police cars with cops, butts against the hoods, and arms folded, looked us over. All sported their aviator sunglasses. Some munched on large wads of smokeless tobacco and spat brown saliva on the ground in disgust; their eyes never left us. Some unfolded their arms and gestured to us, waving their arms to go home (like good little boys and girls.) Our chanting trickled to nothing. We stood silently, taking in the intimidating spectacle and realizing we had been tricked. My heart sank. Like other university protesters, my brain entertained visions of being hauled off in busses to jail. In my mind’s eye, I saw my parents driving down to bail me out, imagined their expressions of disappointment and disgust. The authorities must have had someone on the inside. Who set us up? Who led us to the practice football field – walled off from the outside and put us in a potentially dangerous situation with pissed-off law enforcement?

Penned in, unseen by the outside world, we turned towards the massive gates. Security guards removed the padlocks we did not know were in place. Discouraged and shaken, I left quietly. Our protest had not changed anybody’s life; no one stood up to the Man. The total elapsed time for the event clocked fifteen minutes. There was little mention of it in the paper.

***

Following graduation in June 1970, I married a sophomore nursing student and left Oklahoma for dental school at Iowa University. Picking up a flier on my way home from school, I read of a protest that night at a busy intersection that dissected the Iowa campus. My experience of the farcical college demonstration still weighed on me. Here is a chance to see some real pros in action. Aware of police brutality towards university demonstrators, I was afraid of the potential for harm. Passing by the chosen location for the evening’s mayhem, I scouted a safe vantage point above the protest site and headed home for dinner with my wife. I told her I was going to a protest. She shook her head.

Jumping on my orange Schwinn Record bike, I pedaled to my reconnaissance position. As darkness settled in, the activity began. A mass of students came down the hill from a mammoth dormitory and spilled into the busy intersection of South Riverside Drive – a four-lane highway – and E. Burlington Street. Cars stopped from both directions, turned around and retreated.

The Iowa students repeated anti-war slogans. The shrill pitch of their voices sounded adolescent as the tension rose and the temperature—chilly for mid-October— dipped towards freezing. I empathized with my compatriots who wandered back and forth along the highway below me. They swore and shot middle fingers at the armed opposition, cordoned across the bridge. Nervous energy riddled their systems. Riddled mine. Aware that Iowa City had a history of unrest, I expected that law enforcement wanted to make a statement.

Student demonstrations during the end of the previous semester created campus chaos. Protestors destroyed public property; rocks rained down on police; the faculty verbally fought against each other as fear gripped many students. The university president allowed nearly 12,000 students to leave campus before finals. Rumors flew that this semester’s contingent of patriots intended to be even more disruptive, possibly more violent. In response, Iowa City cops increased the size and diversity of their weaponry during the summer months. They were trained and ready. The fence clattered to the pavement in front of the lawmen. The sound of boot heels in cadence grew as the legions gained their stride, advanced over the bridge. Student bullhorns blared, “No more war. Brains, not bombs.” Protesters echoed the chants and punched the air with clenched fists. The militia reached the midpoint of the concrete expanse, prompting some onlookers to turn and run. The faithful held steady as the second fence fell, and the enforcers waded into the student body, most of whom were in full retreat.

One of the patrolmen below looked up, spotted me. An adrenaline rush sent me stumbling through a forest of bushes, snagging my sweatshirt sleeves, gashing my arms into rivulets of blood.

An Activist at Heart

I jumped on my Schwinn, savored the thought of participating in future protests, becoming a bona fide activist, and pulled a Budweiser from the refrigerator when I returned home. Settling in a comfortable chair with a cold brew, I weighed my experience, thoughts, and options.

I imagined myself in the crowd of demonstrators tonight at the highway intersection. What would that be like? Thrilling, I decided. Different from the didn’t-accomplish-anything- post-Kent State protest in undergraduate school, these were seasoned veterans who, the previous spring, spoke up for their convictions and, in a way, forced the university president, Sandy Boyd, to let students go home with a pass-fail option for their courses before the semester ended. Scores headed for home and the comfort of their mother’s cooking. The Daily Iowan student newspaper reported that the hard-core stayed behind and planned for fall activism. The Iowa City police force bought a cache of new weapons, according to a news report in a recent Iowa City Press-Citizen.

Over the years, I have been curious. What were the dynamics when students rallied for their convictions on the University of Iowa grounds of the Pentacrest amid its collection of four, grand buildings and steps of the gold-domed Old Capitol building? Hundreds of universities and colleges across America faced similar activities that spring. However, what was it like during the month-long height of activism in Iowa City half a century ago, 50 years ago, from mid-April to mid-May 1970? I was now on campus; my need to know took center stage.

I opened a second can of Bud.

Setting aside my textbooks, I took up with Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. Knowing he had been on campus recently to teach for several years at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop added to my excitement about the antiwar messages on its pages. Vonnegut gave me intellectual insight into the social movements of the ’60s – the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King, who objected to the Vietnam War on moral grounds. Based on the infamous firebombing of Dresden during World War II, Vonnegut’s protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, advances anti-war sentiment during the narrative and makes the reader examine the devastation of world conflict and what we are afraid to know. Slaughter reinforced my commitment to stand up against war. In my heart, I yearned to be a rebel against the military actions of my country, to stand up for minority and women’s rights publicly. I have opinions. I have a voice.

Yet, I am afraid of the consequences. If I marched in the on-campus protests, even as just an average Joe near the back of the pack, my wife of two months, her parents, my parents, and my dental school classmates would certainly shame me. According to journalists, the administration removed several spring 1970 demonstrators from the university. I could not jeopardize my relationships with family and friends nor risk my long-held dream to be a dentist. As campus protests at Iowa continued through the fall semester, I lived vicariously through those courageous enough to stand up and speak up. And I wanted to learn more about May 1970 at Iowa.

I walked into the university library and passed through the ten-foot glass doors that separated the second-floor smoking lounge from the rest of the building. Settling into an over-stuffed chair adjacent to a wall of windows, I placed a stack of May 1970 Daily Iowan and Iowa Citizen newspapers and a few Newsweek magazines on the side table. I removed a maroon box with gold lettering from my coat pocket, folded back the gold foil, removed an imported Dunhill cigarette, and lit it.

I read a dozen Daily Iowa papers, integrated the opinions of the graduate student-editor, Leona Durham, and others, like Carole Auerbach, an Iowa senior from New York, who feared the loss of fundamental American rights, a loss beyond Vietnam, sexism, and racial issues. “Many of our freedoms are under a serious threat from the government,” she said and continued, “a fear that permeated much of the recent activities on the nation’s campuses. The Constitution cannot guarantee freedom – it must be fought for. It must be in the hearts of people. But when one minority group is persecuted, no one’s freedom is the same; no one’s freedom can be guaranteed.” Right on, I muttered to no one and raised a clenched fist in support. Durham berated President Willard “Sandy” Boyd for perpetuating personal oppression and promoting the D.C. war agenda through the ROTC programs on campus.

Blowing poorly formed smoke rings, I fantasized. In the movie of my mind, I was a successful activist, developing a plan of action. I reasoned that one element should be an external symbol of revolution – perhaps a badge of a new superhero. Leafing through a magazine, I found an image of Ché Guevara, the handsome rebel with long locks and a devilish grin, who looked back at me from the shiny, black, and white page. He wore a beret with a five-point silver star of his military rank front and center. I daydreamed that I bought an oversized red bandana as a tribute to my new dental knowledge. I painted a white molar on it, front and center. I looped the cloth around my head with the excess dangling down my back. I paraded around the tiny apartment, verbalizing my emergence as a budding extremist. I tied it to my backpack so my dental schoolmates could see, so everyone who saw my red bandana might give me respect as a protesting badass. I read about those who were Iowa City demonstrators.

Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) were leaders of many protests at Iowa. Often, a couple dozen clogged the hallway that blocked the Defense Intelligence Agency from interviewing potential Iowa employees. A group of campus and Iowa City cops made arrests, and the process repeated. Other SDS members reportedly lined up with the violent Black Panther groups and constructed small bombs in university dorm rooms.

I laid down the newspaper and lit a second Dunhill. My fantasy continued. My blood boiled with contempt for the social status quo. I closed my eyes and saw me enter the Daily Iowan office to meet with Durham. We discussed my idea of challenging Boyd to meet with me to discuss SDS concerns. A janitor emptied wastebaskets and swept the floor. As he moved my backpack off the floor, a baseball-sized rock fell from a side pocket, hitting the linoleum floor with a bang. He shot me a glance; I tilted my head and shrugged. He put it back. I opened my eyes and grabbed another paper. Settling behind a Smith and Corona, I advanced the ink ribbon. The bit appeared in print the next day. I swatted the university administration for not speaking out about racial and sex discrimination. I assailed Boyd for endorsing the war machine mentality of the national government by maintaining the presence of the ROTC program. It was, “Time for the leader of this university to address his administration’s suppression of civil rights and its endorsement of military aggression.” I opened my eyes. These were the published words of Durham’s that I had read. They were not mine. They were convenient for my imagination. Gazing out at the panorama of trees and the adjacent river, I continued my starring role of the movie in my mind. I continued with the thought of the university president requesting an audience with me, the protester with the red, molar bandana.

At the appointed time, I ascended the steps of the iconic building. My swagger took me confidently through the front door into the grand foyer. Standing silently, I looked up the spiral staircase to the second-floor rotunda. Boyd stood with his arms crossed. Neatly dressed in a black suit, the President wore a white shirt and thin, black tie; his brown hair coiffed Beatles-like. He must have been assessing me as well. I figured my blue sportscoat and gray slacks might impress. The bandana remained in the apartment, but I did wear my nappy, dark-blue tie with a self-painted molar near the bottom that I wore to dental school to protest the requirement to wear a tie to class. The crown of the molar was navy blue with white five-point stars. The two roots of the design sported barbershop pole red and white stripes. He reached out his hand at the top of the stairs; we shook. A flash bulb went off.

Within the Chambers, we sat casually opposite each other, close-range like duelers in oak armchairs. The door closed with a click as his secretary left. The room was magnificent; so was the moment. I had come so far, now sitting across from the President of the University of Iowa. There was some hi, this-is-who-I-am chit-chat. He smiled, “I read your editorial.” (no shit, I thought). “I understand your concerns, but I will not allow you or the SDS to interfere with the rights of students who want to go to class and get an education.” Leaning forward, I fired back, “Well, the presence of the ROTC program paves the way for more deaths and destruction. The university should promote peace, understanding, acceptance, and promotion of minority groups.” The most civil back and forth lasted an hour; then, it was over. He left me where he met me, “We should do this again sometime.” What a load of crap (I said to myself). Looking back at the smallish leader standing at the top of the stairs conjured a mental image of Mussolini. His secretary walked me to the door.

I stirred from my mental adventure, directed by the text of journalist’s words written during May 1970. My research provided a sheath of new information about the activities of that time. I put out the cigarette and wondered if others struggled with musings of their own, contemplating a move from cerebral activism to physical violence? Had I gone far enough?

Kenneth J. Heineman, in Put Your Bodies Upon the Wheels, estimated that 4 million students at 1,350 universities took to the streets over the Kent State killings. Previously, non-agitated students became radicalized by the atrocity at Kent.

After the Ohio slayings, a column of rifle-bearing National Guard soldiers lined Clinton Street in Iowa City along the east margin of the Pentacrest. Demonstrators stood at close range, throwing flowers at the soldiers. An American flag was burned near the Quadrangle dormitory, as legions of Iowa City students marched on the National Guard Armory, the Old Capitol, and the Civic Center. In the middle of a mob that unleashed a volley of rocks. The ordeal ended with fifty-one arrests.

Over the din of a campus rock ‘n’ roll band in the Gallery 117 basement venue, a childhood friend, Doug Batcheller (Batch), heard the ruckus of protesting students who blocked the interstate and principal Iowa City streets earlier. Climbing the concrete stairs lit by a bare light bulb, the only beacon of the establishment’s existence, he looked down Clinton Street. Hundreds had assembled, singing songs and carrying signs. Others carried baseball bats and large sticks of lumber. The frenzy of the crowd grew before his eyes.

A block away from Batch, large sheets of plate glass covering the fronts of the University of Iowa bookstore, Bremmer’s clothing store, the Iowa State Bank, and the historic Airliner Bar gave way to various implements of destruction hurled by passionate students. The sounds of exploding glass stimulated the crowd that grew as they advanced down the street towards Batch. He says he hurried down the steps, locked the door and turned off the outside light. I might have had the guts to be in the back of the brigade. Batch would not be in the group. He knew he didn’t fit into that destructive element.

On the night of May 8, several thousand attended a demonstration, billed as a party, which was in full swing on the Pentacrest with Batch in attendance. Some revelers entered an open Jessup Hall without permission. Others broke into the Old Capitol, setting off a smoke bomb to create a fake news story that the venerable building was on fire. These actions were beyond his comfort zone—a little drink, a little weed, a little rolling around on a blanket, sure.

 At 2 a.m., Boyd ordered the clearance of the Pentacrest free-for-all. Batch left. Police arrested and handcuffed 228 students who defied the order to disperse. Loaded into four buses, they headed for lockup at several area county jails, charged with disorderly conduct. Several unidentified Iowa City businesspeople, whose motives were never known, provided the $100 bond money for those arrested, arraigned in the light of day, and released in the afternoon.

Just after 3 a.m. a day later, Iowa City firefighters got a call. They arrived on the scene of a towering fire that engulfed “Big Pink,” a two-story wooden structure near the library known as the Old Armory. Fire Chief Dean Bebee claimed arson from a flammable substance in the eastside entryway, insinuating that protesters set the fire. Sentiment against the Iowa rebels grew. (A Des Moines Register article on October 3, 1970, detailed the five-month investigation into the cause of the “Big Pink” demise, which proved that faulty electrical wiring started the blaze.)

Amid some local citizens claiming the protesters were a “bunch of hippies” attempting to get out of the draft, President Boyd urged “calm and reason.” Governor Ray mobilized 300 National Guard, as the community dealt with the upheaval.

Campus dissidents finalized a list of grievances. They called for a student strike beginning Monday, May 11, stating, “Our educational and daily activities can no longer take place while irrational policies guide our nation and University.” Responding to students who feared physical harm from campus violence, Boyd presented a memorandum of options on Sunday, May 10, to students who wished to leave for home before finals. He sympathized with those who condemned the war but would not let the university be a political agent for them.

In reflection, what is not said is of interest. Boyd seemed to be indeed concerned about the well-being of the students. He knew that protester’s rocks and bullets from gun-toting lawmen recently injured innocents across the country. He knew that increasingly tired, frustrated, angered, and vulnerable guardsmen camped in Iowa City could explode with a quick burst of lousy judgment, adding to the number of wounded and slain collegiate protesters and innocent bystanders of Kent State.

While 11,796 students headed out of town down slabs of concrete to the safe confines of home and 500 others prepared for an evening rally, the Faculty Senate championed a resolution to end ROTC as an academic program. The Student Senate issued an official statement aimed to protect the peaceful protesters who have the right to voice their convictions and all students’ unrestricted right of free choice to complete the semester, unfettered.

Boyd was off the hook. The Pentacrest became deserted. On Wednesday, May 13, Governor Ray ordered the National Guardsmen to leave Iowa City after five days of occupation, substantially reducing the threat of violence on the Iowa campus.

Despite the similarities of downtown merchant property destruction, the burning of an ROTC building, rock-throwing, and protest disruptions, Iowa did not become a second Kent State.

It was a relief that the Pentacrest did not suffer bloodstains. During the spring of 1970, the prolonged period of discontent pitted brave students – who stood up for their convictions – against Boyd and administrative others – who made delicate decisions, aimed at defusing tensions, placating funding sources, and reassuring parents their offspring were safe.

While my belief systems echoed much of the jargon and actions of Iowa war dissidents, I lacked the guts to take their risks. The problem, as I see it now, is that you often don’t know the full consequences of your actions or inactions for many years, if ever. Consider those rocks, hurled and unhurled. What shatters at the moment, and what takes many more years to buckle, to give way?

***

Today, my silver-gray locks announce my seventy-years. I look back half a century and ask what regrets I have about those protest years? I have no regrets that I did not smash windows with rocks, burn buildings, or even march down the street yelling anti-war slogans. Over the last decade, I have penned and had published numerous social justice pieces; I am proud of them. I have made compelling speeches (so they tell me) at reconciliation symposiums, whose mission is to spark conversation and bridge the gap between ethnicities. My lack of actions regarding my social convictions during May of 1970 has prompted my activity today. My late-in-life, journalistic activism via ink on a page or words in a speech manifests my need to take a stand. These days, I am not afraid to present the case for social justice by highlighting history that tarnished the souls of Americans past. And the nation still argues for women’s rights, still doesn’t fully grasp black justice, still sacrifices American lives in distant wars, and still suffers from excessive law enforcement against minority citizens. Some states have taken away a woman’s right to protect her own body; equal rights remain a work in progress, and people with badges kill innocent people. A danger to continually bombarding human indecency is desensitization to the issues. Enraged by the current national political leadership, I will continue to throw small rocks and know in the years to come that I have the courage.

 

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