Ralph Solonitz, Oral History

 

Recorded: April 30, 2020

Interviewed by: Barbara Hipsman-Springer

Transcribed by the Kent State University Research & Evaluation Bureau

 

[Interviewer]: This is Barb Hipsman-Springer, recording on April 30, 2020. In this next section, I am interviewing Ralph Solonitz as part of the Kent State Shootings Oral History May 4^th Project.

We started talking, I know that you were born in Germany, correct? And then maybe—

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Correct.

 

[Interviewer]: Can tell me how you came to be in the United States?

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Well, my parents both survived World War II. My dad wound up escaping with my mom and he joined the—

 

[Interviewer]: They were in Vilnius, right? Latvia?

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Right, right. They came from Vilnius, Lithuania. My dad joined up with the Polish Russian Army and fought the Nazis and my mom wound up in different labor camps and ended up surviving the war. After the war, the Russian government actually gave my dad a farm in Munich with—the farm owners actually became his servants.

 

My dad wasn’t the kind of person that enjoyed that kind of relationship. They couldn’t believe it when they actually found out that he was Jewish. They just didn’t know what to believe. Actually, my dad survived the war with false identification papers. During the war, nobody knew he was Jewish in the Polish Russian Army. His name was (unintelligible [00:01:50]) and so he was able to survive the war that way.

 

After the war, I guess somebody found out that he was Jewish and they came after him. They wanted to kill him. So, it was really strange—people’s behavior and their prejudices and thoughts and their hatred for somebody that fought along with them against the Nazis but then, when they found out he was Jewish—so, he had to leave.

 

His father wanted to go to Israel and my dad wanted to go to America, but—I’m sorry, it’s the other way around, yeah, the other way around. My grandfather wanted to go to America, my dad wanted to go to Israel. So, my dad chose to come to America so, when I was two years old in Munich, Germany, we immigrated. We came over on a troop ship. Actually I have photos of it, the SS Greely was converted into a troop ship to carry immigrants from Europe to America. So, I wound up in New York and then came to Cleveland. I guess based on what your skills were—if you were a farmer, maybe you wound up in Kansas, but that wasn’t one of my dad’s skills.

 

So, with my dad’s skills, they, he was very mechanically-inclined. I guess Cleveland was a pretty technical manufacturing city, but anyway, so my dad and my grandfather wound up here in Cleveland. My grandfather remarried. His wife, my dad’s mother, and my dad’s brother: they were all machine-gunned in the Ponary woods in Lithuania. So, I wound up in Cleveland. I came over here when I was two with my twin sister, Sophia.

 

[Interviewer]: Is she still alive? Your sister?

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yes, she is. She’s living pretty close here in—

 

[Interviewer]: In the Heights?

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: In the Heights area, right. But I spoke German when I was two years old—my first language because, as I mentioned, my dad inherited this farm and I had two nannies, actually, which probably saved my ass because my parents were both basket cases. As I was growing up, it was just really a struggle with two Holocaust survivors. My dad had a of couple nervous breakdowns, and my mom was just always anxious, yeah, very anxious.

 

So, kindergarten, well, first day of kindergarten, of course, I had to go to the bathroom and I said to the teacher, “Ich muss pinkeln machen” which means, “I have to go pee-pee.” And anyways, so I think she looked at me and said, “Say what?” And at about that time, I ran out of the room and an hour later, they finally caught me in the men’s room.

 

[Interviewer]: And so it starts.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yeah, I was like, What am I doing here? Let me out of here. Anyway—

 

[Interviewer]: And so, you went to what? Cleveland Heights High School?

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: No, actually, I grew up in the inner city off East 120^th and Superior, so it was a huge, huge kindergarten class. I mean, maybe fifty kids in there from all over the United States.

 

[Interviewer]: That’s how ours was too. There were fifty-three kids in my kindergarten class and there were three classes of fifty kids and you look at the classes now and how difficult it is to run them with twenty-five and thirty and I’m thinking, Oh my God, maybe we need more discipline and we need fifty kids in a class.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yeah. We didn’t misbehave. It was double jeopardy, probably. I mean, the teacher would get after you and then parents would find out and, I don’t know, you know what I think is missing in our society and that’s shame and guilt. Like there’s no consequences for these kids today, but anyway.

 

So, kindergarten was in the inner city and I went to Rosedale [School], and then we moved two streets, moved me into a different elementary school, Chesterfield, and then a couple years later, or maybe a year later, we moved to another elementary school district, Hazeldell. And then, another year later, we moved again to Cleveland Heights school system at the time, so I went from fifty kids in my kindergarten class and I’d say it was mixed with hillbillies from down South and then Blacks that came in up from the South up to Cleveland, during the war there was immigrants that made it into the United States. Just pretty much it was a mix of everything. It was just amazing, just amazing. And then, in 1960, when I got into Cleveland Heights school system, there was one Black kid, Andsy Groves.

 

And it was just so bizarre because I was one of the few white kids in school. I almost went to Patrick Henry Junior High School. But, it was just really strange. To really feel comfortable with the mix of cultures and different ethnic backgrounds, so I feel comfortable with that. I guess that’s why I picked Cleveland Heights and stayed here. It’s just such a nice blend of everything. Anyway, moving along, I guess—

 

[Interviewer]: [00:08:12] Yeah, how’d you get to Kent State?

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yeah, so I always liked to doodle when I was a little kid. My dad, he made sure that he would reinforce the fact that, “Ralph, you’re wasting your time, stop your doodling.” So, it was like, “Stop your doodling, you’re wasting your time.” So, when he said stop my doodling, well, of course, I would pedal to the metal. Yeah, I’m going to doodle. I think anything my dad said, I was just the opposite. He was really one tough guy, really was one tough guy. So, after high school—I mean, I took some art classes in high school, and after that, went to community college and I was doing mechanical technology, engineering stuff, mechanical drawing, but then I took an art class, like drawing, and it stuck. So, I kept doing that. Transferred to Kent State after getting my associate degree and I took graphic design as a major and I loved it. It was great.

 

[Interviewer]: I was thinking about you this weekend because John Buchanan typed to me that he had had a birthday over the weekend and so, J. Charles was the chef and they had a little dinner for themselves and had a virtual Zoom birthday party with friends from all over the country. I wasn’t in the party, but he posted a couple things about it and it just reminded me of you and thinking to them, they’re in their mid-seventies, or he’s, I guess, Charles is older than John, and John just had his seventy-second, I think, birthday, so those graphic design crews, they all kind of interconnect across the country—people who were trained by J. Charles.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yeah, he was just an amazing designer, just an amazing designer. His concepts were dead on, but would you ever mention my name? He might still remember me.

 

[Interviewer]: Yeah, I’ll do that because I was going to send him a little birthday note today. So, I will, for sure.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yeah, absolutely.

 

[Interviewer]: [00:10:34] So, when you first came to Kent, you lived in an apartment?

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Well, yeah, I lived at Glen Morris for about a year. I was twenty-one, so I could do that. I lived at Glen Morris and—

 

[Interviewer]: They’re still there.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yeah, yeah, it was a guy by the name of, “Fat Jack” was the manager or the, I don’t know, the rental manager of the complex. “Fat Jack” Watson, Jack Watson. We used to call him Fat Jack. Anyway, he was kind of a hard head.

 

[Interviewer]: So, did you know anybody when you came, or did you rent at a place with a couple guys?

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yeah, yeah, actually, one of my friends I had gone to community college with, we both transferred to Kent. So, he was my roommate and then we had a couple other guys from Middlefield, Ohio and—

 

[Interviewer]: Oh, sure. Cheese country.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yeah, yeah, country boys.

 

[Interviewer]: So that was, what, like fall of ’68 or ’69?

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yeah, I started at Kent in ’68, yeah, I’d say ’68.

 

[Interviewer]: So, as a sophomore—

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: I loved it, I loved it, man. It was like art classes—

 

[Interviewer]: Girls.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: —strip on South Water Street. So, I moved off-campus after my first year. My buddy and I, we wanted our own place and he was a pretty artsy-craftsy guy. He was a business major, but he was really talented in art. So, anyway, we got a place off South Water Street, fixed it up really, really nice. Of course, any place I’ve ever been, I’ve always turned it into like an art project. It was really a nice place off of campus, South Water Street and I worked at L&K. It was a restaurant there, washed dishes and prepared—

 

[Interviewer]: What was the name of the restaurant?

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: It was L&K, the letter L and then the letter K, L&K. I did that and a lot of odd jobs in the neighborhood too because the president of a bank, his name was Mr. Green, he owned our house which was a duplex and so we did a lot of side jobs for different properties and places he would suggest.

 

But anyway, so, here I am, an art major, graphic design, and—

 

[Interviewer]: [00:13:17] Did you have any inkling of politics at the time?

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yeah, I mean, I was always interested in politics and world history based on my background, growing up a child of Holocaust survivors and World War II. I enjoyed history, not necessarily studying history but I enjoyed learning and yeah, politics, sure. The Vietnam War, I mean, I was fortunate enough to have a number that they didn’t get to. My draft board here in Cleveland, I mean, they got to a lot of people who were real close to my number, but I had a student deferment so, I was good.

 

A lot of the veterans that came back from Vietnam, they were in school. So, we would sit around and talk about their experiences, and they were one of the first ones to come back and be against the War in Vietnam—Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

 

[Interviewer]: Yeah, I just spoke with a woman who was real involved with that group and that was fascinating.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: And they continued to be involved even, I mean—well, I first started going back for the reunions, commemorations actually, and the Vietnam Veterans Against the War would be there and I got to listen to a lot of their stories again, twenty years later, twenty-five years later, thirty years later. I got to be really good friends with Country Joe McDonald and he was a big anti-war, pro-veteran, and nursing advocate.

 

His wife is a delivery nurse, yeah, delivery nurse. He would—it’s just amazing the people that I have met through my involvement with Kent. I got to meet all the wounded students. I got involved with the May 4th Task Force and I designed quite a few of their commemoration—

 

[Interviewer]: Shirts? Yeah, designs their—

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: —logos. Yeah, yeah.

 

[Interviewer]: Oh, did you?

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: I’m sorry?

 

[Interviewer]: You did, I mean, there’s been some really nice logos over the years.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yeah. Well, I got to meet Jim Russell. He was an art major actually with me at Kent at the time. I didn’t realize it, but he was a—the reason I bring his name up because he’s one of the few wounded students that was shot point-blank with a shotgun. That kind of killed the excuse of, “Well, we shot up, we shot down, it was stray bullets.”

 

[Interviewer]: Yeah, We weren’t aiming.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yeah, We did aim. So, yeah, Jim Russell and Robbie Stamps—

 

[Interviewer]: So, Robbie Stamps, yeah, Robbie Stamps took a class from me. He was a really fascinating guy. He passed away a couple years ago.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yeah, he used to live around here. He was from Lorain or something.

 

[Interviewer]: Right, right. He passed away a couple years ago.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yeah, it was strange. It was like a deer tick killed him.

 

[Interviewer]: Yeah, it was very odd.

 

But, so that weekend, were you on campus? You were at your apartment downtown, and I think you were talking about being a photography student.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: So, yeah, I was in this photojournalism class and we had assignments. We had night shots and day shots—

 

[Interviewer]: Who was your teacher?

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: One of the— I’m sorry?

 

[Interviewer]: Who was your teacher? I was just curious.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Oh, I had Brill.

 

[Interviewer]: Okay. Charlie Brill.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: I had Brill, Charlie Brill.

 

So, my buddy and I, Rick Carleton, we decided that—he was in the same class, so we decided to go out and do night shots on that Friday night and so, we climbed up on a rooftop across from JB’s and we had a full roll of film. He had his single lens—

 

[Interviewer]: So, you were sort of across from JB’s?

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yeah, right across. There was a storefront and then above the storefront, I believe, it was just an inclining roof and so, we’re on there and we’re getting ready to do our night shots of people showing up at the bars, anyway.

 

All of a sudden, a motorcycle group comes by, starts doing wheelies in the street, cars screeching up and down, and people start to spill out from the bars to try to see what the hell’s going on here. Somebody lit a barrel on fire with, I don’t know, some trash in it and, pretty soon—I guess the city of Kent, or the police, somehow, they made this decision to empty out the bars—

 

[Interviewer]: Yeah, apparently the mayor decided it was, he needed to have a little bit more control. He said he thought it was going to get out of hand, so he wanted to shut down the bars and herd everybody back towards campus.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Satterfield [editor’s clarification: LeRoy Satrom served as the mayor of Kent from 1970-1972], was that his name?

 

Okay, so kids start spilling out the bars and all of a sudden, hey, look there’s people zipping up and down the street on motorcycles. So, I mean, what would’ve probably just dissipated, turned into an event. So, here’s all these kids, probably half-drunk, having to walk back to campus.

 

In the meantime, this is just a day or two after Nixon went into Cambodia and accelerated the war, or whatever you want to call it. Kids are pretty freaked out and upset about it and some of them started yelling and screaming anti-war slogans and smashing windows as they were walking back to their campus.

 

Well, okay, so the next thing I know, and I’m taking pictures and so is my buddy, Rick, he’s taking pictures of everything, and state police come in busses, if I’m not mistaken, and arrested people, or whatever. And that was Friday night, that was Friday night.

 

[Interviewer]: What’d you do with the pictures then?

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Well, we started calling the Plain Dealer and they mentioned we should put them on a Greyhound bus and they’ll take a look at the negatives. Called the Akron Beacon Journal and they said, you know, “Call us back in the morning.” So, we left our phone numbers. I think about four in the morning or five in the morning, get a call from the Akron Beacon Journal, “Come on down. We’re going to buy you breakfast and see those negatives.” I guess, at that point, they thought, Boy there was a riot down at Kent, so we have photos of it. Okay, yeah, put it on a Greyhound bus and we’ll take a look at it. So, we went down to—we went to Akron, to Akron Beacon Journal. I guess they bought us breakfast, I don’t really remember eating breakfast, but—

 

[Interviewer]: Well, you must have had a car, so you took your car down.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yeah, yeah. It was coffee and a donut, wow! So, Rick Carleton, his photos turned out really nice, so—

 

[Interviewer]: Didn’t you say he had a different kind of camera? He had a single lens?

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yeah, he had an Asahi Pentax at the time with the interchangeable lenses. He was a Vietnam vet and had really good camera skills. I had a Minolta Hi-Matic 11 which was a rangefinder, so I had limited—

 

[Interviewer]: So, was that a twin lens or a single lens?

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: No, it was a pix lens, so it was a rangefinder and you didn’t—you had to match up like a split image, so you really weren’t going through the lens. You couldn’t interchange the lens. But he knew how to push film, which I did not. So, he changed the ASA on there and he was able to get some really good black and white shots, which they used and I think the Record-Courier must have used them also. I’m not really sure about the Plain Dealer. So, we had photos of that Friday night.

 

[Interviewer]: And that sort of kicked things off really.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yeah, yeah, so that was Friday night and that was the most exciting thing really that had happened up until that point. Saturday afternoon, it was pretty quiet, but I think the National Guard had—

 

[Interviewer]: I think by then, yeah, they might have called the National Guard in because they were—

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yeah, the National Guard might have come in there and then at that point, wow, that was even more of an opportunity—

 

[Interviewer]: Or maybe it was Sunday, yeah.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: —state police and yeah, I don’t know if the National Guard were called in because of the Saturday night fire, or they—

 

[Interviewer]: I think that was it, yeah. I’d have to pull out my history sheet there.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yeah, but anyway, Saturday was pretty calm, pretty quiet, up until somebody set the ROTC Building on fire.

 

[Interviewer]: And then cut the hoses.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yeah, then I think, for some reason—helicopters flying around and armored personnel carriers up and down the street.

 

Now, my wife, I just talked to her yesterday; she was shot with a rubber bullet. I said, “Where were you?” And she said, “You know what,” I thought she was in front of her off-campus apartment, but she was just getting groceries from Sparkle Market. And she was shot by a Kent policeman with a wooden bullet, or I don’t know, were they wooden bullet, or rubber bullets, but she told me her whole thigh was swollen and black and blue. Just out of the blue, this Kent, now I never knew, I thought it was National Guardsman, and I’m thinking, wow, these guys are really, they were hopped up. These guys, they were hopped up.

 

[Interviewer]: Was it later at night when she was hit?

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: No, it was right in the afternoon on, I think it was, maybe it was Saturday afternoon? It might have been a Saturday afternoon. She was doing grocery shopping at Sparkle Market. And anyway—

 

[Interviewer]: Maybe there was a curfew on by then?

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Not in the afternoon.

 

[Interviewer]: Well, yeah, not in the afternoon. Right.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: But I don’t know. Maybe she bought the wrong kind of eggs.

 

[Interviewer]: So, when did, you were, were you down there during the fire and stuff like that, or did you just hear about it from other people?

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: No, no I was not around at all. I think I had walked up to Tri-Towers or something, there was a party or something. I think that might’ve been—there might’ve been some kind of a curfew where they didn’t want you walking around, running around on that Saturday after the ROTC.  Like everybody was like, “Stay in your dorms and don’t go anywhere.” But I lived off-campus, so I was just able to walk down Main Street and head over there. So, but I did take some pictures of helicopter trails. I got the—

 

[Interviewer]: Yeah, I saw that on your archival things. There’s some photos that were kind of cool.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: So that was Saturday night. That was Saturday night. Anyway, so—

 

[Interviewer]: Sunday was relatively quiet then, perhaps?

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yeah, after the ROTC Building burned down, I mean, you had people come in from Cleveland, a buddy of mine came up from Cleveland and he was a student at Ohio State, to check out the smoldering embers.

 

Yeah, it was festive. It was surreal. And then you had— I’m sorry?

 

[Interviewer]: A lot of campuses had like big May Day things and I think at the time, it was probably a mix of May Day revelers and then, all of a sudden, it wasn’t anymore. It was more anti-war and then took off from there.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yeah, I mean, Friday night at the bars, kids were liquored up and it was hopped-up motorcycles doing wheelies up and down the street. Yeah, I’m not sure how much of it was anti-war just as much as just craziness.

 

[Interviewer]: So, Sunday, there was probably some calls for assembly on Monday if I remember rightly. People were putting up flyers that said, “Show up Monday.”

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yeah, I think there was something scheduled already, if I’m not mistaken. I think there was a demonstration going to be scheduled on that Monday anyway.

 

[Interviewer]: What was the next time you were on campus then?

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Right, so I had walked up to Taylor Hall with the photos that I had from Friday night and I was going to do some prints, a roll of film. Now, maybe I was thinking about it, what was the reason that I went? I think I was going to use the photo lab at Taylor Hall and maybe catch this war protest. Because I was in a photojournalism mode. I had a full roll of Kodacolor film in my camera and I figured I’d walk up and well—so, I did. I walked up to—on my way to Taylor Hall. I never made it to Taylor Hall.

 

[Interviewer]: Yeah, what route did you take? Do you remember what route you took?

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Well, probably South Water Street to, is that Main Street?

 

[Interviewer]: South Water, you’d probably would’ve come across either headed up Lincoln, right by the—that would’ve been the Prentice Gate.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: If I had gone up Lincoln, I just, I think I went through, is that Main Street? And it was the administration building faces the street, I think that’s Main Street.

 

[Interviewer]: Main Street, right.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: So, yeah, so I’m walking in that direction. I wind up at—

 

[Interviewer]: You go past the Robin Hood, in other words.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Correct. So, I wind up at Blanket Hill. I’m coming up the beginning of Blanket Hill there. Anyway, so I’m walking up in front of the Victory Bell, that area there and let’s see. I had heard all these sirens and ambulances zipping back and forth and I didn’t know what had happened and I get to the area there by the Victory Bell. The students are sitting there, standing, everybody’s in shock, bewildered. I hear things like, “They’re going to attack again. They’re going to come. They’re going to kill us all. Were those real bullets?” Blah, blah, blah, and I think I heard, was that Frank—

 

[Interviewer]: Yeah, Glenn Frank.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Glenn Frank, and I think I remember hearing him saying, “Move. Get a move, got to go. Got to leave. We have to get out of here.” I’m picking up people saying, “They were shooting at us. They had live bullets.” Whatever it is. I’m taking photographs of looking up towards Taylor and I see rows of National Guardsmen there and then I’m looking towards maybe it was like the heating plant or the steam plant.

 

[Interviewer]: Right, right, I saw those pictures of yours. Yeah, those are good.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: They’re lined up that way and I’m going around, I’m taking photos. I’m just in my little photojournalism mode. I’m taking pictures of all this stuff here.

 

[Interviewer]: Got your little press hat on.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yeah, press, press, and pull. It was like The Three Stooges, remember that? “Press, press, pull.”

 

Okay, so yeah, I’m walking around and taking photos of everything and I make it up towards The Pagoda and I see the National Guardsmen, I think it was General Del Corso and Canterbury and there was a guy from KYW or, yeah KYW at the time, news people. They’re pointing their finger through the bullet hole and I’m taking pictures of all this stuff here. There was another guy looking at the trees that—these trees were like, I don’t know, two feet thick with an entry and an exit wound and I’m walking down from Taylor Hall and I see—I find out later, that’s where Jeffrey Miller was killed. I see this pool of blood and half of it is still liquid form and the other is starting to coagulate and it was like surreal. I’m taking pictures of all this stuff here. There’s a girl standing there, some blonde girl, standing there over this scene and I keep walking through the parking lot taking photos of the cars that were damaged with the stray bullets, broken glass, more blood spilled next to the vehicles. I’m just walking around in this photojournalism mode and— 

 

[Interviewer]: I saw your pictures of the girl. You took a couple different kinds.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yeah, I mean, she was there when I came back, forty-five minutes or an hour later, she was still standing there. I think I took another picture of her. So, it’s amazing, just an amazing story.

 

[Interviewer]: How did you end then? I mean, you kept walking around. Did you go back into Taylor?

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Well, that was it. Yeah, they were clearing people off campus and I could see people headed off campus and told that they needed to leave. They needed to leave the school. School was closing down. So, I made it back to—I must have made it back to South Water Street and hitched a ride with somebody that I knew back to Cleveland. I couldn’t call anybody. The phones were—lines were disconnected or cut and so, headed back to Cleveland.

 

[Interviewer]: [00:33:20] Looking back now, do you think those events of those few days— How did it affect your adult life?

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Well, I never felt hated as much as I did living off-campus by the townies. I mean, I always knew that they resented the students. I think every university goes through that, you know—these kids causing trouble. It’s okay to spend the money in the city, but. “Shut up.”

 

[Interviewer]: It’s kind of a different, seemingly a different attitude between town-gown. They really broken down a lot of that in Kent. And maybe it’s because more people our age have moved into Kent over the years.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yeah, but, at the time, there’s only probably a few places you could catch music and well, I don’t know. But now, it seems like the school has just kind of moved into the city. I mean, the School of Architecture is like right there and the university—

 

[Interviewer]: Journalism moved over, you know, Journalism moved right across the street from the Architecture. We were there, we took over Franklin Hall about ten or fifteen years ago and that was a massive move for the university because that put all 1,500 of our journalism students right in town. I mean, it was great for businesses there because there was very little traffic around there and then, when we put that many kids in and then the Fashion School really boomed and so, now, they got two, three thousand kids in and out of those buildings every day and it made quite a difference in downtown. It just opened up, I mean, kids were walking downtown to see what was for lunch and they took down all the fences and they bought up some of the houses and made it a green area. It really has changed. You can walk from one end of Kent, all the way through campus and to the other end of Kent. [00:35:30] It’s a little different.

 

I imagine when you left campus then—what was the reaction of your parents when you came back home?

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Oh, my parents were devastated. Three out of those four kids were Jewish, but still—yeah, they were just devastated. They just—

 

[Interviewer]: You mean like they couldn’t believe it happened, or personally, or just worried about you?

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Death and loss. I mean, they had seen enough death and destruction during the war and lost their whole family and here was another tragedy where these kids were shot and wounded. I mean, it was just surreal, just an insane time.

 

So yeah, I came home, and I dropped off all my film and prints that I had taken to one of these photo-developing places and I tried to work a little bit during that time off. I still had—

 

[Interviewer]: Because you were a senior, right?

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: —classes that I needed to finish.

 

[Interviewer]: Yeah, you needed to graduate.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yeah, so I graduated in the fall. So, I had to complete some of my arts classes, painting and graphic design and whatever else was in limbo. I finished that off-campus and so, I would come into Kent and do my schoolwork and then go back to Cleveland; I was only about a half-hour, forty-five minutes from Cleveland. Just a crazy time, just a crazy time.

 

Anybody that I had worked with, a lot of these people that I was working with they were all pro-war or they weren’t anti-war. I had to live with, “Oh, they should have shot more kids.” This went on off campus, in the city, this went on in Cleveland. I had graduated in the fall and—where am I going with this?

 

[Interviewer]: What was your first job?

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yeah, I figured, I better get to work. People were going to California, or they were taking time off and doing whatever they were doing. I figured, I was living with my parents and I said, “I got to get the hell out of here.”

 

My first job—well, I interviewed with American Greetings and they didn’t hire me. Okay, and so, I interviewed with an exhibit company, Ohio Displays, they were looking for an artist so, my first job was with an exhibit company that manufactured these giant trade show exhibits that were completely built out of wood or fiberglass. That was in the era where you had these clients like BF Goodrich and Republic Steel. They would do these trade show exhibits, so I would do—they taught me how to do, well, I also—they didn’t have to teach me, but I had done some silk screening already but I did the silk screening and the hand-cut lettering and the lettering and I got into the design department at—=I started doing sketches at different designing tradeshow exhibits and working with these people who hated, hated anti-Vietnam. [War]. They really weren’t—

 

[Interviewer]: So, you were around Cleveland for quite a while. Did you go back down when they did Tent City to fight the gym and—

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: No. No, I did not. I actually worked at this display company. I got my job there in ’70 and I did that for a couple of years and I would periodically go back to Kent and catch The Numbers Band.

 

[Interviewer]: Which still plays.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yes, yeah. I hear them when they come up to Cleveland; these guys, they’re amazing. But yeah—the Kidney brothers.

 

So, I would drive to Kent and listen to the bands play and, somehow, I was okay with that part of it. It’s strange how you can compartmentalize the trauma, but then that part was okay. Well, I did not go back for any memorials. I wasn’t involved in any moving of the gym or building of the gym or any of the— No, I stayed away until 1990. At which point, Carol Cartwright I think, brought a lot of healing into the picture.

 

[Interviewer]: Yeah, she did. And that was the year you donated a lot of things, in 1990.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Right, right, so they had a—you know what it was? They had an alumni gathering at Williamson building there and I showed up with my photos—three-ring binder, and I would start to talk about May 4th and what was going on and where were you? And I said, “Well, I took these pictures on that day.” And everybody walked over and they went, “What?! You—let me see that!” And all of a sudden, it’s like—I didn’t think that I was the only one that had—I know I wasn’t the only one that had photos. But, somehow, having color photos or just from a different perspective. It was like I had just gotten there, and this is what I saw.

 

[Interviewer]: Yeah, it was just a different view.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: So, somebody interviewed me. Amy somebody maybe, if I remember the name. But anyway, somebody interviewed me and said, “Well, we’d love to have that in our archives.” And I said, “Yeah, sure.” Made arrangements to give them the negatives. I had made up a bunch of buttons, class of ’70 I think would be Kent in blood and then the scope, the rifle scope crosshairs—

 

[Interviewer]: Yeah, I remember that one. I was, came to Kent in ’87 and, of course, my office was right in Taylor Hall and I had remembered it from my undergraduate as well at another public university. But, when I came to teach at Kent, it was sort of full circle because it was like, Oh, wow, this is part of my history. And here I am with my office overlooking Blanket Hill, which is a gorgeous place to be on campus for most of my career with Kent. I became sort of a—I liked going out and telling people, “Here’s a brochure. Take the walk.” Because there was no Visitors Center yet and so, it was sort of the Journalism School profs who kept the little thing full of brochures and anytime you looked up, there was somebody your age out there taking a tour themselves and that was before Laura [Davis] and the rest and Carole Barbato got it to be National [Register of] Historical Place. But, you’re right, Cartwright in 1990 made a big difference.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yeah, it was like, I remember it was a beautiful—no, it was rainy, rainy.

 

[Interviewer]: It was pouring.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: It was a very, very rainy day, and then the sun came out.

 

[Interviewer]: Yeah, the big tent, because that’s where they made presentations and stuff right in the Taylor Hall like on that little grassy spot next to Taylor Hall. And then, they had all the press cars and stuff behind Prentice, all the big trucks, so it was—

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: I have a lot of photos of the 1990 [commemoration], which—

 

[Interviewer]: Oh, yeah?

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: —they’re not in the archives. It’s just photos that I took of that day.

 

[Interviewer]: Well, that might be something for the archives. That’s interesting, yeah.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yeah, I’ll have to go back and take a look because we only had like the big banners that said, “Vietnam Veterans Against the War.” I got so focused on the May 4th stuff and I took photos of the ’90. But now, I look back and I go—what year is it? What’s that, thirty years? So, that’s thirty years ago and I’m thinking, Hey, these might—

 

[Interviewer]: They’re history!

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yeah, it’s funny how you look at the photo and go, Yeah, just took these last week. You take a picture of yourself and then, thirty years later, you go, I don’t look like that anymore.

 

I just really felt a turning point in— And I think, I’m not sure if I met anybody that day, but I know that when I would start going back to the ’91, the ’92, the ’93, [commemorations] and then I would listen to all the victims. I would listen to all the victims, and I got to be really good friends with them all. Year after year after year, their families would come in, their kids would be like a year older, and another year older, and—it’s personal. It became personal. These were my friends. They took me under their wing. They allowed me to become part of the Kent family or whatever you want to call it.

 

[Interviewer]: Yeah, I don’t know that there, there’s some things that are online this year, but I have heard that some people are coming down no matter what on Monday and just hanging out. So, we’ll see. All the buildings are locked.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yeah, I had heard there was going to be a candlelight walk, which—

 

[Interviewer]: Right, there is.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: —I thought would be meaningful. I did one of those and that was pretty powerful with Dean zipping in front of me—Dean Kahler.

 

[Interviewer]: He’s been kind of sick, but he’s a little bit better.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yeah, he’s been through it, he’s been through it.

 

[Interviewer]: Yeah, he was supposed to be a speaker at graduation along with Tom Grace, but they’re hoping that they’ll do it for the December graduation instead. 

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: So, it affected me, yeah, it affected me. I mean, being a child of Holocaust survivors and Kent State and my childhood and it was all just—

 

[Interviewer]: Now, do you have children of your own?

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: No, I did not want to have any kids. I had to take care of Ralphie. I knew I didn’t want—yeah, and I met my wife in ’80 and I don’t think she wanted to have any kids, either. Her childhood was pretty difficult, too. She grew up with an alcoholic, abusive father and her mom, my wife’s mother, passed away when my wife was nine years old. And so, she had to grow up with some kind of a crazy stepmother thing and so, we both found each other, and it was like—

 

[Interviewer]: Yeah, it’s okay to be child-free.  

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yeah, but I made up for it. I got involved with mental retardation—developmentally disabled—through an organization and I spent twenty-one years doing. Some of it was still when I was doing my graphic design, but full time really for the last ten or fifteen years. When I thought I was going to retire, I decided to go on-call and still be available. Well, I would work for forty hours or forty-five hours a week on-call within the last year, because of the shortage of staff. I just recently, within the last month, stopped taking assignments because I’m high risk with my age and—

 

[Interviewer]: Oh, yeah. All of us are.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yeah, yeah. So, those are my kids. Yeah, but I was always a cause-driven person. Life isn’t fair. Don’t push my “not fair” button. I was involved with the Cleveland Holocaust Center for ten years and a lot of self-help groups where—I led a lot of these CoDA groups and AA groups because I had really—I had gone through a lot of therapy and I was giving back. Actually, by giving back, I was actually reinforcing everything that—whatever I was expressing to these new members, it was like just reinforced everything that I had worked on and have to continue to work on because I don’t think you ever really resolve. I mean, it’s just you’re constantly working on, well, how do I feel? Because, I was pretty numb growing up. I mean, nothing fazed me. I think that’s part of the process of going through the photography shoot on campus was that that was an assignment and I somehow, maybe it’s just survival, but you kind of separate yourself from the feeling at that time then you got to deal with it later. Yeah, I was pretty numb growing up and had to get myself into therapy and joint therapy with my wife and feel. Yeah, it was like: think less, feel more.

 

[Interviewer]: There you go. Breathe, as you said, breathe out.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yeah, and just take inventory of yourself every day. Okay, now what am I feeling? Am I nervous about something? Yeah, I have to kind of check in with yourself when you’re not used to it because, usually, you’re in a survival mode from the day you’re born. Well, not really the day you’re born, actually, because I think my first two years were pretty good. That part saved my ass having those two nannies, you know, because there was love and nurturing and all this good stuff. And then, boom, here I am on the SS Greely troop ship with my parents coming to this country—

 

[Interviewer]: Yeah, with a lot of other hurt people as well.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yeah, actually, I Googled it, the SS Greely, and there’s photos of that ship. It had made like, I don’t know, ten or fifteen trips back and forth to Europe and then it was sold as a—some South American country, and finally scrapped, but it’s interesting to see that ship. 

 

[Interviewer]: It’d be interesting for you to do some Ancestry.com stuff.

 

[Ralph Solonitz]: Yeah, I wish, and there are some people that are really good at that and I probably would have an opportunity because I really don’t know what happened to my family. My mother was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia. She came over to Vilnius as a little kid. Everybody perished, everybody perished except for my grandfather and his Yosh’s chicken farm.

 

[Interviewer]: Well, listen, I should let you go and I’ll double-check this right away and—

 

[End of interview]

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