Kent State Shootings, Part 4

The rests of the posts will be correspondence between "TG" and the Kent State University President.

March 30, 1990

Dear Mr. "G",

As you know, one year ago Kent State University broke ground for the construction of the May 4 Memorial designed by Bruno Ast of Chicago. The construction is now virtually complete, and we are planning the formal dedication of it on May 4, 1990, at 11:00 a.m. Former Senator George McGovern has agreed to speak at the dedication. I expect the ceremony to last about one hour.

I invite you and a guest to join the platform party for the dedication ceremony. The University will be glad to reimburse you for your travel expenses. Please send them to my attention.

During the ceremony, Dean Kahler will introduce you and the other May 4 families. If you can attend, the members of the platform party will gather at 10:30 a.m. in Room 115 Taylor Hall to be escorted to their seats.

After the dedication ceremony, you are invited to join the speakers, other members of the platform party and special guests at a luncheon to be held in Room 306 of the Kent Student Center. The pre-luncheon gathering will begin at 1:30 p.m. with lunch served at 2:00 p.m. The late hour for the luncheon was decided upon to allow our guests the opportunity to participate in the May 4 Task Force program if they choose. Unfortunately, I can not share the schedule of that program with you at this time as it has not been finalized.

A special parking permit for May 4, campus map showing the designated parking area, and a RSVP card are enclosed for your use.

I look forward to hearing from you, hoping that you will accept these invitations.

Sincerely,

Michael Schwartz

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April 10, 1990

Dear President Schwartz:

This letter is intended both to thank you for your kind offer to attend the upcoming dedication of the May 4 Memorial as well as to ask some pertinent questions about the monument. Given the lack of any chance for previous consultation. I will use my response to raise several necessary points.

Upon first learning in 1984 of plans by my alma mater to erect a tribute to the students slain in 1970 I felt, perhaps for the first time since the shootings, a sense of understanding on the part of Kent State University. During a speech on

May 4, 1984 I praised your administration for having a new sense of openness and I spoke of the opportunity to right past wrongs.

While much has transpired since that time, much of which quite frankly has troubled me and others who were wounded on May 4, I continue to nourish hope that the memorial ceremony can be a time of some healing. Certainly it is my preference that this be so.

Before we can better come to terms with the memories of May 4 in the year 1990, however, we must ensure that those who were killed by National Guard gunfire twenty years ago are suitably and properly remembered. For this reason I can only accept your offer under two conditions. First, I ask for assurances from your office that the names of Allison Krause, Jeffery Miller, Sandra Scheuer and William Schroeder are engraved on the memorial. These four students were not nameless victims and they should not be the forgottne dead of Kent State.

Secondly, whiel there has been a controversary about the size of the memorial, what is of equal importance is that which is inscribed or conversely not inscribed on the monument. To have nothing engraved on the May 4 Memorial is to invist future ignorance of the circumstances of the campus killings. While this may be what is intended, I suggest that decades from now both students at and visitors to the university need to learn from a plaque on the memorial of how four Kent State undergraduates were slain by Ohio National Guard in a May 4 protest against the U.S. invasion of Cambodia. We have a joint responsibility to inform future generations of what occured at Kent State. By doing so, we here in the present can make some small measure of peace with the past. We owe that to the families of the slain students, to ourselves and to posterity.

With the upcoming dedication you are in a unique position to assuage some of the pain of 20 years and also be remembered as the Kent State President who bound up the university's wounds. It is my earnest wish that you will do so.

I appreciate this opportunity to respond to your letter and invitation of March 30 and will anxiously await what I hope will be a favorable reply.

Sincerely,

"TG"