Patrick G. Smith, Oral History

 

Recorded: May 1, 2020

Interviewed by: Barbara Hipsman-Springer

Transcribed by the Kent State University Research & Evaluation Bureau

 

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: I was a freshman in the ’69-’70 year and was actually still a freshman in the ’71. Then I dropped out, got married, had kids.

 

[Interviewer]: Let’s state your name and address, and that’ll get us started. So, let’s start out with your name. How’s that?

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: Patrick Smith.

 

[Interviewer]: And so, you were there, and what was your major when you started?

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: My original major was law enforcement.

 

[Interviewer]: And were you living in Suffield at the time? Where did you grow up?

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: I was actually living with my older brother who had just came home from Vietnam, in an apartment in Tallmadge.

 

[Interviewer]: Where were you born and raised?

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: I was born in Wooster, raised in Cuyahoga Falls and Stow.

 

[Interviewer]:  So, when we’re looking at a history-type thing, when you first started to come to campus or right around that time, since you lived with your brother, were you guys talking about the war or what was your first remembrances of knowing that something political was out there?

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: I mean, I’m a Stow High School graduate, so I was very familiar with what was going on in Kent, the ‘68 Music and Speech [Building] shutdown and things like that. We were very much aware of all that going on.

 

[Interviewer]: Where did you live in Stow?

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: I lived on Franklin Avenue, which is off 59 near downtown.

 

[Interviewer]:  So, when you were living with your brother then, and you first started in law enforcement at the university, I know you were, you said that mostly you wanted to give us some memories of yourself and one of the victims of the shootings.

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: Yeah, I wanted to give my memories of the weekend. That was the one part, because the weekend itself was kind of surreal.

 

[Interviewer]: Well, let’s start with that then, that’d be great.

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: And not living on campus, it was surreal in a different way than the campus residents.

 

[Interviewer]: When the weekend started, were you then living with your brother?

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: Yeah. I moved in, I graduated high school in ’69, in June of ’69, and moved in with my brother in June of ’69. So, I left home when I was seventeen.

 

[Interviewer]:  And so, the fall of ’69, you were probably on campus.

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: Right, that was my initial start of my freshman year.

 

[Interviewer]: And what do you remember about different activities on campus or the politics on campus? Were you aware of marches, or what was the tenor, I guess is what I’m asking.

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: I was aware that there was organizational groups on campus. I spent any downtime I had in the Student Center, so I was aware that different groups were doing things. The Liberty Bell [editor’s clarification: the Victory Bell on The Commons] was the center of attention, whether it was for a football rally, basketball rally, or a political rally, everything seemed to happen at the Liberty [Vistory] Bell.

 

[Interviewer]: When I was at Kent State, I retired from Kent State as a journalism professor, and most of my time at Kent was in the second office in that looked over the Bell. So, twenty-five years I think I was there, and everything, when I first came, people were still ringing it for various things, but over the years it didn’t. But it’s still a magnet for students to come and hang out.

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: That was before some of the buildings were built. I mean, that was The Commons area. I mean, the ROTC Building was there, it was the big open space, so it’s where people went to. Sundays, it was just the stage, or if you wanted to not feel like you were cramped in a building, you just went there. Played catch, played frisbee. But as I said, we had the Black groups trying to do their rallies, and we had the, like you said, political groups trying to do Vietnam. I actually don’t remember that there was much of a mood on campus about, against the war.

 

[Interviewer]: It seemed to be a small but pretty vociferous group.

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: Yeah, I mean there were people that went, Oh, we got to stop the war, and everything. When I graduated from high school, one of the things I was thinking of doing was enlisting. And my brother came home from Vietnam and basically told me that he was going to take a baseball bat to my knees if I thought about enlisting.

 

[Interviewer]: Did he ever join anything like Vietnam Veterans Against the War?

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: No, he was just, he spent a year in Vietnam, and he was very much turned against our policies in Vietnam. He saw a lot of corruption by the Vietnamese government. It really made him bitter about everything we were doing. Basically, he thought we were supporting a corrupt government and didn’t understand why we were doing that.

 

[Interviewer]: I wonder if I should ask you to, I mean I’m asking you, I guess, if you could chat with and ask him if he’d like to share his memories for the archives as well.

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: I could do that, he’s in Stow.

 

[Interviewer]: Yeah, I think it’d be interesting from just the idea of a vet coming back to the United States, because we’re trying to paint a picture of what was life like around that.

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: And he was on campus May 4th. Yeah, he was on campus and my father was on campus building the library building.

 

[Interviewer]:  Interesting. I’d really like to talk with both of them, if your dad’s still alive.

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: My dad passed, but his most vivid memory was, and it had to have been not too long after the shootings occurred, was him and a couple co-workers went out on the roof and felt that their life was in danger by a helicopter that basically attacked them practically. The loudspeakers, people in the doorways with guns and—

 

[Interviewer]: So, that was that weekend?

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: That was May 4th, remember they were very paranoid about snipers right after the shootings. Matter of a fact, I will talk about that when we get to my memories of May 4th.

 

As I just said, I wanted to start with May 1^st. Well, actually, April 30th. So, April 30th, if my memory is correct, President Nixon announced that we were invading Cambodia. And that’s what triggered some of the political rally, stuff that happened on May 1st. Now, I worked in McDonald’s. Unfortunately, that building has been torn down and replaced with the new McDonald’s, but I worked at the McDonald’s on [Ohio State Route] 43. Now what was it, it was about, what is that, about two miles south of downtown?

 

[Interviewer]: Really, just about a mile. Not even that.

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: I worked Friday night, May 1st. And we were not aware of any kind of disturbance downtown. The restaurant closed at one o’clock; we were never aware that there was any kind of problem downtown. I was a closer, so I cleaned up the restaurant and got it ready for business the next day. So, and that took about an hour. So, I got out of there around two a.m.

 

And at that time, there was a Purple Martin gas station across the street. And the attendant, he was a friend of ours. So, when we came out and was standing in the parking lot, because it was a nice night, one of the first nice weather days we’ve had in that spring of that year. And he came over to tell us that there had been some kind of disturbance in downtown. So, we got in our cars and we drove downtown, I mean, and there was nothing there, it was all quiet, a few boarded up windows. But, I mean, nothing that we could see that anything had happened and no police activity or anything like that.

 

[Interviewer]: So, that was after one o’clock in the morning?

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: This was probably about two thirty in the morning at this point. And so, I went home, I went home to Tallmadge. And on Saturday, May 2nd, my best friend and I were going to a local radio station’s appreciation day at a park. We picked up our girlfriends, and we went and spent all day over there, came home, and came back to the apartment in Tallmadge and we were goofing off listening to music and stuff. And we turned on a radio station and we heard about problems at Kent State. So, being the curious teenagers we were, I was just barely eighteen at this point—

 

[Interviewer]: Yeah, let’s go over there.

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: Well, we dropped the girlfriends off, they weren’t interested. So, we went over and we drove around Kent, and we basically drove around Kent: we saw no instances, no police activity, no nothing, and we were driving down, God, I can’t remember my Kent streets. It’s the street that runs parallel to 43, but just a little bit to the left. What is that street?

 

[Interviewer]: Well, Water Street is 43. As it goes out it turns into 43, so you were on—

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: This is the one that comes out of downtown.

 

[Interviewer]: Main Street.

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: Right at the railroad tracks, but where the Pufferbelly is at and everything [editor’s clarification: probably referring to Franklin Avenue].

 

[Interviewer]: Right. So, you were on that street.

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: Anyways, as we were driving down that street, we decided to cut through what at that time was Clarkins [department store] and cut through the Clarkins parking lot because it was actually connected to 43 and the street that I can’t think the name of. And that’s where we encountered the National Guard.

 

[Interviewer]: So, they were downtown then?

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: They were, apparently, they were using Clarkins as their rally point as they came in from their bridge-guarding duty on the interstates. So, apparently, they were coming into the Clarkins and that was their rally point, and then they were being distributed onto campus from the Clarkins. So, there we are in our car driving through this back parking lot, and my friend was driving. And I think I was the first to notice somebody standing off to the side pointing a rifle at us. And then, before we knew it, we were totally surrounded. We had two guys right near right in front of us pointing weapons at us. And—

 

[Interviewer]: And it’s still the middle of the day, this isn’t in the middle of the night, this is in midday.

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: Well, this is the evening, this is after the ROTC Building has been burned down. This is probably about eleven o’clock, maybe even a little later than that. I mean, the National Guard wasn’t called until ten, ten o’clock or something like that.

 

So, we’re told to turn around and we turn around and decide that going home is probably the better thing to do.

 

Now, we get to Sunday. So, we get to Sunday and get to Sunday evening. We haven’t heard anything, campus seems to be very quiet. We don’t know if we have classes on Monday. We’re wondering, we haven’t heard that they cancelled classes. My friend was going to Kent State also. So, again, being the curious people that we are, we decide to drive into Kent. Now, this time, we encounter a National Guard roadblock on 43. The person there says they have absolutely no idea whether or not that campus is open or closed the next day, but we need to turn around because the city of Kent is under curfew. So, we turn around and leave, and then we take some backroads towards Ravenna, and eventually get on Summit Street.

 

And then we said, “Okay, let’s cut over and get over to [Ohio State Route] 59 and see what’s going on. So, we get over to 59, we drive down 59, drive past the campus into downtown Kent. No police, no National Guard, no nothing, don’t see anything. Again, it’s probably, I don’t know, one o’clock in the morning or something. And so, we turn around and go back and when we get to Music and Speech, we decide to go down Music and Speech, because we were just looking for somebody to tell us whether or not campus is open.

 

And we go down the backroad of Music and Speech that cuts across to Summit. And we make it to Summit, again, not seeing anybody. So, we turn on Summit and head back in towards downtown and, just as we’re coming to the water towers going up the hill, that’s when the Kent Police stop us, pulls out of the car to search our car and basically almost handcuff and arrest us.

 

And then, they don’t find anything I guess disturbing enough to arrest us, so they let us get back in our car and tell us to get out of town. And this time, we go home.

 

And now we get to May 4th. And, in one sense, I’m lucky on May 4th—I overslept. I had a morning class, and because of all the activities that I do on the weekend and everything, I hadn’t been getting any sleep, and I basically overslept. I got up probably about eleven thirty, got dressed, I had another class at, I believe it was a one o’clock. I got dressed and was driving into Kent and had one of the local radio stations on, coming down [Ohio State Route] 261 into Kent. And that’s when I heard about the shootings. So, I went to McDonald’s, because that’s where I was supposed to work that night, was the McDonald’s. And I went to the McDonald’s to see if there was anything I could do, and the manager basically, he sent us, he told me to go monitor his citizen band radio. And then that’s when we were able to pick up the National Guard walkie-talkie traffic on the CB radio.

 

[Interviewer]: Yeah, that’d be interesting.

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: It was because they were absolutely terrified. You can hear it in their voices. I mean it was things like, Roger, where are you? Roger, you’re out of sight, Roger. They were absolutely terrified, there was a lot of talk about snipers, they really thought a sniper had opened up on them. And they were just, you can hear it in their voices, they were terrified.

 

[Interviewer]: Well, they weren’t that much older than you guys.

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: No, as a matter of fact, later on, I met some of them that were actually there. And yeah, they were my age. And my son was a National Guard, Ohio National Guard member, and he told me one time, he said, “You don’t know what paranoid is until you put a gas mask on that inhibits your vision so that you could only see a little bit straight ahead. It inhibits your breathing, so you feel like you’re constantly out of breath.” And you got to remember that the National Guardsmen members that walked over that hill and ended at cul-de-sac and came back, they were wearing tear gas, they were wearing, they were in full mask. So, when they spun that 160 degrees and then opened fire, they had no idea what was going on other than something made them spin 160 degrees and open fire.

 

Now, my brother was on campus, he was actually walking from the Music and Speech Building to the science building. He heard the gunshots, knew what they were, said he dove into a small ditch, and then as soon as it got quiet, and he said it got very quiet after the shootings, he got up and ran to his car and got off campus.

 

The phone service totally crashed. We were trying to call each other and everything, and AT&T was totally wiped out by the number of phone calls and everything. The computerized switchboard—

 

[Interviewer]: Yeah, there seemed to be a lot of discussion as to whether it crashed or they ordered it shut down so that people couldn’t—who knows?

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: I don’t know because that’s one of the funny things that happened, because I was in the restaurant trying to call home and we got no dial tone, nothing’s working at all. And then, suddenly my mother’s voice is on the other side and she had just called the restaurant and somehow got through.

 

My biggest memory of this whole thing is from my fellow students, and you got one of the four that was killed, that I worked with. He worked at the McDonald’s in January and February—

 

[Interviewer]: Was that Jeffrey or Bill?

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: Bill [Schroeder]. And Bill and I worked night shift together, I mean we weren’t friends per se—

 

[Interviewer]: I’m sure there’s stories though.

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: We were co-workers, we knew each other. So, that was kind of a shock when I learned that he was one of the four dead. But I knew he was a National Guard guy, he was a ROTC guy, there’s no way he was participating in this rally, because he was ROTC, he was planning on going into the military. So, there’s absolutely no way. But anyways, I don’t think the—I always get mad when everybody calls it an anti-war rally. I don’t think it was an anti-war rally, I think it was National-Guard-get-the-hell-off-our-campus rally.  Yeah, I mean we weren’t so much against the going against the Vietnam War, we were going against the government’s machine being on our campus. And we were very angry. I know Monday, we were all very angry about Governor Rhodes calling us all Communists on Sunday. I mean, there’s a lot of politics going on—

 

[Interviewer]: Oh sure, he was running for re-election.

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: May 5th was an election day. And Governor Rhodes was on the ballot for the U.S. Senate or something like that because he couldn’t be Governor anymore. So, there was a lot of politics being played out that weekend. The mayor of Kent being paranoid and an idiot, the president of Kent State not being in communication with the mayor of Kent to realize that the mayor of Kent’s going to order a curfew, then he probably should order a curfew on campus instead of letting the campus be wide open and Kent having a curfew. Just adding gasoline to the fire.

 

I don’t believe, again, the rally, the rally call on May 1 for May 4 was for an anti-war protest about going into Cambodia. But I don’t think what happened on May 4th was that rally, I think that reason for the May 4th thing was, I mean, it was a whole bunch of people getting together on the Commons and then the National Guard deciding that they shouldn’t get together so were going to disperse them. Big mistakes on many, on all sides. Once the National Guard started trying to disperse the crowd, it became an anti-National Guard thing.

 

[Interviewer]: Yeah, I could see that. And so, after all this went down, did you notice any changes in attitudes about students in the community or—

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: Yeah, many. I mean, I became totally anti-government for years. For years, I tried to think of scenarios that we could come up with that would get four National Guardsmen members shot. I was extremely upset that no criminal charges were ever brought against them, because what they did was a crime. I mean, it was accidental, it was not intentional, but it was a crime.

 

[Interviewer]: What do you think your parents and their friends thought that time?

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: My parents were okay. My girlfriend’s father though, he asked me if I was on campus on that Monday and, again, you got to remember school was open, so we were supposed to be on campus. I never quite made it to the campus, but I lied to him and said, “Yeah, I was on campus.” And he said, “Well, you should have been shot like the others.” I mean, it was like, wait, there’s 20,000 of us on that campus. What, you think all 20,000 of us should have been shot? And that was the prevalent attitude, there was a lot of people that felt that way.

 

The city of Kent for the month of May and June was, I mean, the curfew, I forget how long curfew was in effect until, I know it was in effect past Memorial Day, and those goddamn helicopters flying around at night maintaining the curfew. We felt like we were in a war zone.

 

[Interviewer]: You mentioned that your dad was working on the library building.

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: Yes.

 

[Interviewer]: So was it, it was after May 4th then, that he was sort of—

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: No. It was May 4th when the helicopters challenged them on the roof. It was right after the shootings. And they continued to work on the library once they were allowed back on campus, which was, when did they reopen campus? That was like late June or something.

 

[Interviewer]: Yeah, it was late June.

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: So, once the campus opened that back up, he continued to work on the library, but they had strict orders, they were not allowed on the roof. And, like I said, my older brother and I finished that quarter with remote classes. I continued to work at McDonald’s, we were open until curfew. So, one of the interesting side stories that came out of that, interesting to me, was one day I was working at the counter and these two gentlemen came in and both ordered coffees. No big deal. I got their coffees and they walked away. They were just different in the sense of their bearing was slightly different. And the fact that they were wearing suits, and not that many people being in McDonald’s in the daytime are wearing suits.

 

[Interviewer]: So, what’d do you think they were?

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: At the time, I thought they were probably somebody with the government, but I didn’t know who they were. But about a week later, my brother and I get awakened by somebody ringing our doorbell. So, I get up and use the intercom to say, “Who’s,” because we were in an apartment building with the intercom and everything, and I get to the intercom and I hear, FBI, they would like to come in and talk to my brother.

 

So, we let them in, and then they’re sitting there and I’m looking at them and saying, “I know you guys.” And they’re like, “No, we’re from the Pittsburgh office, you don’t know us.” Well, eventually, I figure out they’re the two guys that bought the coffees. But they’re in there and they’re interviewing my brother like he’s some radical trying to burn down— And my brother is listening to them and he’s answering their questions and then finally, he’s like, “What is this about? Why are you asking me these questions?” He said, “Well, you were one of the ones arrested at the Music and Speech building in 1968.” And my brother’s like, “Well, that’s interesting because when that happened in 1968, I was in Saigon in the middle of the Tet Offensive, fighting to stay alive.” And the FBI guys were like, “Oh, we must have the wrong Michael Smith.”

 

[Interviewer]: Yeah, well, Michael Smith is sort of a common name.

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: Yeah, like Patrick Smith.

 

[Interviewer]: Well, there was no internet then either, so, I’m sure they were just looking at all the Michael Smith’s and thinking, hmm, let’s try with this guy. Interesting.

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: That is a little comical aside, that I actually knew the two FBI guys from just serving them coffee. But yeah, the FBI was doing that and they were from the Pittsburgh office. And they were basically interviewing—they were looking for the reasons why the shooting occurred. And we eventually know that, now know, that apparently an officer, somebody in that group going over the hill, fired a pistol and that must have been the shot that everybody else thought was a sniper shot, made them turn and open fire. But yeah, the sound recording that, thankfully that we have, clearly identifies the very first shot was a pistol shot.

 

[Interviewer]: It’s always a point of controversy. Seems to go back and forth and back and forth, there’s a lot of good reading about it. A lot of things have come out in the past year, year and a half as so many people to get the age. I’m sixty-nine, so we get to this certain age and you say, Gotta get this stuff out there. So, as people, especially now with the pandemic, people are going through books and going through their photos and it seems like the archives should be getting a lot of calls, because people just, you want to share that.

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: I already have stuff that should be in the historical archives, because I wrote a paper. After Kent State, like I told you, I got married and had two kids, and I finally went back to college in 1980, but I went Hiram. And so, I graduated from Hiram with a degree in business administration and a minor in history. With the minor in history, I had to take a few more hours of history than was available to me. So, my history professor had me write an independent paper for full credit. And it was a paper on my, basically what we just talked about, on what happened to me, the May 4th weekend and afterwards, the month of May.

 

[Interviewer]: Well, if you want to share that kind of stuff or put it in the archives, certainly put it in.

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: Well, we did, that was in 1985, so it was put in. I submitted it to him, I got an A on it. His only problem was that I put a few too many personal conjectures or whatever in it, and for a history paper, he wanted it to be only fact-based and have no “I’m surmising this,” or “I’m surmising that,” type thing. But he gave it back to me. Together, we submitted it to the, I think it was the called the Kent State Historical Library at that time, back in 1985. So, it’s there in the archives somewhere.

 

[Interviewer]: I’ll double check for you. Make sure it’s there and accessible. Everything that’s in the May 4th Archives is slowly, but getting digitized, so it may even be accessible on the May 4th Libraries, May 4th site. So, that’s something to look at.

 

So, when you were out of school, when you look back, how did it affect your life? Do you think you became more of an activist, or you said you’d mistrusted government?

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: I mistrusted government, so I was very vocal. Yeah, and to this day I’m still vocal on I don’t like government, I want government to stay out of my life as much as possible. I want government to be small, I don’t want big government, I don’t want entitlements, I don’t want—I want to fend for myself and I want to be self-sufficient. And I think the rest of the world should fend for themselves and self-sufficient, and it just turned me against government. Like I tell people, there’s a reason why comedians use the phrase, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help” as a joke. I mean it seems like nothing the government gets their hands in works as well as something that private people could do with that.

 

I went back to school in the fall of ’70, just could not get back into the ID checks. Kent State in the fall of 1970 was a police state.

 

[Interviewer]: Oh, I’m sure, it would change radically.

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: You had to wear your ID badge, you had people checking up on you if you came on campus to make sure you were allowed on campus, and I just couldn’t get back into the groove, so I dropped out. And at that time, I was also—I met the woman that’d be my future wife. And so, I got married, had two kids, moved on in my work career just bouncing around doing different jobs.

 

[Interviewer]: Life changes.

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: Yeah, life changes. And like I said, in 1980, I decided that if I was ever going to do better in my life, I had to get a college degree. There was no way I was going to go to Kent. So, a good friend of mine at that time was a Hiram graduate and he told me to go to Hiram. So, I checked Hiram out and Hiram at that time had something they call the “Weekend College.” Basically, you went to classes on Friday night—

 

[Interviewer]: I’m real familiar with it, yeah. A friend of mine was running that.

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: Who?

 

[Interviewer]: Jane Preston Rose.

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: Doesn’t ring a bell.

 

[Interviewer]: She was the Dean of the Weekend College for years.

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: Must have been after I graduated, because she wasn’t dean when I was there.

 

[Interviewer]: Yeah, could be very easily. I think she was there from like ’87 on or something.

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: Yep. I graduated in ’85.

 

[Interviewer]: There you go. It’s a great school.

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: Yeah. And so, I went there and just was hanging out doing the weekends, having fun, drinking a lot of beer, and—

 

[Interviewer]: No, not beer.

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: —the nineteen-year-old college student again. And then, all of a sudden, I graduated. I was like, wow, and—hang on one second.

 

[Interviewer]: Sure.

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: So, and I graduated with Latin on my diploma. And it was one of my goals, I’d set a goal that I wanted Latin on a diploma. And it drove some of my friends crazy, because I’d be moaning and groaning about accounting tests, and they’re all happy they got a C. And they’re like, “Why are you moaning and groaning?” Because I got a ninety-eight—

 

[Interviewer]: Yeah, you wanted to graduate Cum Laude.

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: And because I graduated so well, all my friends convinced me to take the G, the, what is it-

 

[Interviewer]: GRE, the Graduate Requirement Records Exam, or whatever it’s called? GRE?

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: Yeah, so, I took that, and placed really well, really high. And so, I applied to a couple schools that had master programs and one of them was Kent State. Kent State had something that was called the Executive MBA program, which is kind of like the Weekend College, it was only on weekends. And since I was working a full-time forty-hour-a week job, I was looking for these weekend type, go to school, so I can fit it in and still work my forty hours a week. And Kent State accepted me, even though I didn’t do all the stuff. I mean, I went on a cruise and when I came back from the cruise, I was reading, I had all this mail and I was reading all the mail from Kent State, and most of it was, we can’t finish your application, because you didn’t do an essay. And my wife and I on the cruise, I talked about how burned out I was from going to school at Hiram, so hard, and working a forty-hour job a week. I said, “I think I’m going to pass.” And then I’m opening up all these letters and saying, “Good.” I decided to pass, because they’re basically saying I have to do more stuff to get in, and I’m not going to do more stuff. And then the next day, I get a letter from them saying, “Classes start August twenty fifth, welcome.”

So, in 1987, I graduated with an MBA from Kent State. I am a Kent State alumni now. I always was an alumni, but now I’m a Kent State graduate also.

 

[Interviewer]: So, are you still working, or have you retired?

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: I have a disability, so I had to retire because of the disability.

 

[Interviewer]: Yep. Many of us do.

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: I’m just a tad younger than you, I’m sixty-eight.

 

[Interviewer]: I retired a little early myself, same reason. So, it was great to talk with you today. Thanks again, Patrick. Thanks so much. Bye-bye.

 

[Patrick G. Smith]: No problem. Bye.   

 

[End of interview]

 

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