May 4, 1971.....

I was in the ninth grade....

Friday April 30th, we had a canteen dance at the Junior High School...

One of my buddies gave me this piece of paper and asked me to see if the band would let me announce a walk out on Tuesday at 11:00 for five minutes to commemorate the Kent State Shootings and protest the war...

I did, the band said okay and I read off the paper...

Monday, the word had spread about the walkout... About 500 7th, 8th and 9th graders were all abuzz about the walkout tomorrow...

I was pulled into the Office by the principal warning me not to go through with it...

I just sat there....

The next morning, Mr. Terrick, who was retiring at the end of the year, announced that if anyone walked out, they would be suspended....

It was fourth period, the school was electrified as 11:00 approached...

All eyes were on me....

I got up at 10:58 and walked out the door of the class room...

My teacher let me go...

Mr. Terrick was at the door saying if I walked out, don't bother coming back...

I was determined to stand up and also I was not going to stop and let everyone think I chickened out...

At 10:59 I was walking in front of the school by myself... Yelling stop the war Stop the war...

I was by myself....

I could see all the kids clustered around the front windows...

It was an old two story brick building with those huge half story windows...

I thought to myself, well, your in deep now Chris...

And then, the doors burst open and about 350 kids quietly joined me on the front walk...

I started to chant stop the war..

But my friend Steve Lisenby said "not now, Chris... This is for the dudes at Kent..."

I shut up.....

We stopped, bowed our heads and for five minutes just stood there silently...

Mr. Terrick had gotten a bull horn somewhere...

He was out telling us all to go back inside immediately...

And then he looked out at us and dropped his arm, the bullhorn at his side...

At 11:05, we all went back into the school...

Well, everyone but me...

I was suspended for three days...

Everyone else had to serve two days of detention...

They held it in the gym....

Thank you for sharing your story Chris. I remember hearing about "Kent State" and thinking how awful it was. I was 14 at the time and lived in Ontario Canada, it wasn't that well covered there.


thanks again.

aA
:hug: :loveya: :hug:

We are only about 45 miles from Kent State...

My mom was in a Masters program at the time at the College....

But she wasn't there....

I'm impressed by your actions on that day. :hug:

Regardless of why you went through with it.

My mom was a masters student at Kent so I had been with her to the campus a lot....

Was your mom in the protest at all?

My school never had a major protest like that. I did, however, have the principal totally scared I was going to start an "unauthorized" student publication. I never followed through on it. It was fun fucking with him though. My psych/phil teacher said I was his worse nightmare because I was a smart student who never got in real trouble with a severe disdain for authoritarianism.

Only I got blamed for a whole lot of stuff I never did.....

We nearly had a walk out in my final year of high school but it never materialized. It was over something much more trival than Kent State of course, a new principal.

Ten kids at the other Junior High walked out and no one from the High School....

I was on the ACLU's radio show on WMMS, which was the cool FM station back then....

Like it that way. I like being low profile. Cool that you got interviewed. What happened at Kent State was tragic. I've heard the song "Ohio" many times. I always mishear the lyrics though/
"Ten soldiers and Nixon lying" thats what I hear.

I actually felt sorry for Mr. Terrick in later years...

His last few weeks of school before he kicked back would be cominated by the memory of our little protest....

Sometimes the authority figure that you had a hard time with may have been right after all.

:applause:




if you look hard enough you can see that the Lounge is giving you a standing ovation right now

It was the beginning of my active political life....

I can just see you, walking out of your classroom, alone, onto the sidewalk.....

What courage you had, and so young too.....

Bravo!

Kicked and recommended...I don't care if this is a Lounge thread.....

This one belongs on the Greatest Page!

:patriot: :applause: :applause:

Colbert's got nothing, compared to you. :D :hug:

But mainly because I can't keep my big mouth shut.....

:hug::loveya:

about either the detention or the suspension.

I would have been nine that year. I did not learn about Kent State probably until my sophomore year of college.

Closed them. No exams that year. No nuttin'. You took the grade you had or a "Pass/Fail". All of the Philly schools were united. By 1971, we were moving along with changing the curriculum and some faculty.

If you didn't live through it...it's nearly inexplicable.

Well....

It was a time...

A flash point that people wanted to capture but, as with all flash points, it faded, destined to become a part of who we are, a defining moment, but just that...

A moment in time...

I remember Kent State. I had just gotten out of the Air Force and was living at home with my ultra-conservative parents. They were shocked and hurt that I was against the war. The day after Kent State look me in the eye and said if I had been one of the war protesters who got shot, she'd figure I got what I deserved.

That's when I know my whole family had drunk the Kool-Aid. I was never close to them after that.

I remember Kent State. I had just gotten out of the Air Force and was living at home with my ultra-conservative parents. They were shocked and hurt that I was against the war. The day after Kent State she looked me in the eye and said if I had been one of the war protesters who got shot, she'd figure I got what I deserved.

That's when I know my whole family had drunk the Kool-Aid. I was never close to them after that.

Two posts for the price of one!

That's when I wa firmly tansformed into a liberal.....