Richard and Karen Glance, Oral History

Recorded: March 25, 2026

Interviewed by: Kathleen Siebert Medicus, Special Collections Librarian

Transcribed by 3PlayMedia; edited by Kathleen Siebert Medicus

 

[Interviewer]: This is Kate Medicus, Special Collections Librarian, speaking on Wednesday, March 25, 2026. We are here in Taylor Hall at the Kent State May 4 Visitors Center to record an oral history today. Could you please state your names for the recording?

 

[Karen Glance]:  Yes, I am Karen Glance. I am the wife of Richard Glance.

 

[Richard Glance]:  And I'm Richard Glance, the husband of Karen Glance.

 

[Interviewer]:  Excellent. Thank you so much. Thanks for being here today. We're going to start this part of the oral history; we're outside. We're going to walk around the site and tell their story of what they remembered from the actual day, Monday, May 4, 1970.

 

[Karen Glance]:  OK. Sounds good.

 

[Richard Glance]:  So, our knowledge of what happened on campus prior to May 4th was really secondhand in what was on the news. On Monday morning, we drove into campus. My wife worked at the university at a building very close to the Commons, and I had architectural classes. As we parked the car going to our designations, I noticed several flyers saying that there was going to be a rally at noon at the Commons, which was where all of the rallies occurred.

 

And so, I told Karen, “I'm going to be there,” because I was very much involved in radical politics with SDS and the Socialist Workers Party, the Trotskyist organization. But that was secondary to my architectural degree, which encompassed a lot of time. So, she knew I would be there. After attending class that morning, I came down to the Commons and noticed a large crowd around the [Victory] Bell. I mingled with that crowd around the Bell and saw the troops that were on the other side of the Commons.

 

The Jeep came up, said, “Disperse!” Hahaha! They shot tear gas. It was a beautiful day with just enough wind to make the tear gas ineffective. And then, when we could, we would throw the tear gas canisters back. And we were pretty far distanced to really hit anybody with a stone or—

 

[Karen Glance]:  Oh, no. It was too far.

 

[Richard Glance]:  It was, but whatever we could throw, we could throw because we were absolutely livid that our constitutional rights were being suspended, and that you could be arrested if they think it was a group of four or more. So, I was there [pointing to the Victory Bell].

 

[Interviewer]:  Sorry to interrupt, but just to clarify, you were pretty close to the Victory Bell down on the Commons.

 

[Richard Glance]:  That's correct.

 

[Interviewer]:  And for you to come to the rally, your classes were here in Taylor Hall. For you, it was just step out of the building and it's all happening right at your feet.

 

[Richard Glance]:  Yeah, I walked outside. So, as documented well, it was a tit for tat. They came out. They came back. But we're not going to charge the troops. They've got fixed bayonets. And we have—

 

[Karen Glance]:  Nothing.

 

[Richard Glance]:  —books.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Books and bayonets doesn't mix.

 

[Richard Glance]:  The troops slowly charged across the Commons and drove the students back, and the tear gas was effective. And I went into Taylor Hall to the bathroom to clear my eyes as best as possible. And then went up to the fourth floor, just to see what was going on, and noticed that the troops had assembled in the practice football field.

 

[Interviewer]:  On the other side of the building?

 

[Richard Glance]:  On the other side of the building. And, at that time, there was a parking lot that was open to the students—harassing them. There was a hillside, the one side for students to congregate. On the other side was a fence. And in the back area of the practice field was also a fence. It was a standstill, and no matter what they did to try to intimidate the kids, it was ineffective.

 

I then said, “These Looney Tunes are trapped!” They've put themselves in a position that they can't—

 

 

[Interviewer]:  —get out of.

 

[Richard Glance]:  Now, the kids aren't going to charge them, but they can't—they're going to run out of tear gas. And whatever tear gas they have is not effective. So, I ran downstairs and went to the hillside, which would be to the left of them.

 

[Interviewer]:  Do you want to walk over there?

 

[Richard and Karen Glance]:  Yeah.

 

[Interviewer]:  Why don't we?

 

[Richard Glance]:  Are you going to pause that—

 

[Interviewer]:  I'll go ahead and pause it while we walk.

 

OK, we are back recording again, and we are now standing on the other side of Taylor Hall, very close to the Don Drumm sculpture. And Richard, you were saying you were inside maybe five minutes and rinsed out your eyes, et cetera.

 

[Richard Glance]:  Yeah, well, the main purpose of going inside is that it was a safe space. Number two, I couldn't see because of all the tear gas, even though most of it was not doing its job. It was ineffective. And then going to the fourth floor, which is a panoramic view, I could see where the troops went. All I know is, before I went into the building, that they were coming towards us at the Liberty Bell [editor’s clarification the Victory Bell in the Commons]. I saw they were in the practice football field and noted they're trapped. And so, I came back out and I actually came over here, to a portion of the hill that the university tried very hard to obliterate with this expansion of the gym. But this part somehow was not within their reach. I'd have to say, because—I'd have to say I was standing somewhere right here.

 

[Interviewer]:  We have walked closer to the MACC Gym Annex. We're basically on—this was called Blanket Hill, I believe.

 

[Richard Glance]:  I was married!

 

[Karen Glance]:  Good answer!

 

[Interviewer]:  We're on the hill behind the MACC Annex building.

 

[Richard Glance]:  Just a little comment about that. At the time of the shooting, I was 22 and she was 22. Married, not 18-year-old freshmen. Even though those four years don't seem like a lot—

 

[Karen Glance]:  They are at that age.

 

[Richard Glance]: When it comes to a dangerous or potentially dangerous situation, I think that common sense kicks in. And therefore, I attribute that to me being as cautious that I am. I had no idea, nor would I ever think that they would have loaded bullets. They would have bullets that were loaded. They had M1 rifles with fixed bayonets and we just simply had schoolbooks. There is no—and they are trained to move together for attack and protection. Students, they're just a mob. They go in any different—they're untrained.

 

[Karen Glance]:  They are just walking on campus.

 

[Richard Glance]:  So, at no time did the students even remotely threaten them. And threaten them with what?

 

[Karen Glance]:  When they had the instrument—

 

[Richard Glance]:  I looked everywhere for stones to throw.

 

[Karen Glance]:  There weren't any.

 

[Richard Glance]:  There weren't any, just as we're looking right here, there aren't any stones to throw.

 

[Interviewer]:  A lot of acorns.

 

[Richard Glance]:  Yeah, that's exactly right. And they’re what?

 

[Karen Glance]:  What's a stone going to do when someone has a rifle?

 

[Richard Glance]:  They’re 250 feet away and whatever—all right. So after—maybe it's five minutes here, I don't know. Something like that. They turn and come towards me, which I'm between them and The Pagoda. They came over the hill. Now, I didn't know this, because I was in the building. They were returning the way they came, but I didn't know that. All I know is that they ended up over here, trapped.

 

And so, as they came towards me, I would always keep a safe distance of let's say, 200 feet, 250 feet. Like here to a truck or something like that.

 

And the students here were like a blob in amorphous shape. The troops would move, and then they would kind of swarm around and allow the troops to go anywhere they want. But as you do that, now, they can swarm around behind. They never did that. They never did that. So, I now, keeping a safe distance, work my way back towards Taylor Hall, which I believe is the safest place to be, and I can always jump in there, OK, unless they chase me into the building for whatever reason. I'm walking backwards, keeping a distance of 200 feet or so. There's no one between me and the Guard.

 

No one threatening them. I come here and—so now, there are far enough to ahead—they're going around this tree behind—I can't remember exactly. So, I say, I don't think I need to get into this building. What I do is—

 

[Interviewer]:  Now we are back next to Taylor Hall near the Don Drumm sculpture.

 

[Richard Glance]:  Yeah, and there's a series of air intakes for the HVAC system that is at ground level. So, I'm standing here. Standing here.

 

[Interviewer]:  Right between these two HVAC panels [editor’s clarification: outside the building, along the southeast side of Taylor Hall].

 

[Richard Glance]:  And there is no one. I have an absolute clear sight between me and the Guard.

 

[Interviewer]:  Who, by now, are up near The Pagoda.

 

[Richard Glance]:  There, at The Pagoda. And I noticed a small group of them, at the tail end of the group, turn. And it took me a long time to figure out why I ducked. But I think evidence has shown that there was like one shot at the beginning. And that was in the direction of the gymnasium, because there was a student there throwing rocks or whatever. OK.

 

That was a shot, and I hit the ground right here.

 

And then, what, seventy shots, thirteen seconds later, which is an eternity, and then it stops. There's smoke everywhere. They're showing blanks. You just—at the moment, you just can't believe. They're not being threatened at all. Here, there's nobody between me and them, except for that very unlucky soul that walked out in front of me, OK.

 

I don't know. Was he paralyzed? I don't remember.

 

[Interviewer]: If you're referring to Dean Kahler, he is in a wheelchair as a result of his injuries that day.

 

[Richard Glance]:  I don't think so. There's a plaque there.

 

[Interviewer]:  Someone walked out in front of you, coming out of the building?

 

[Richard Glance]:  Right there, coming out of the building. I mean, he's just at the wrong place at the wrong time. And why, after the shooting, he walked. Excuse me, I mean right before the shooting, why he walked out? Hey, it's noon. Kids are trying to get to their classes. And you see how many of the students that were either killed or injured had nothing to do with it.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Yeah.

 

[Richard Glance]:  And one of them all the way back there. Was it 300 yards or something crazy like that? After the smoke cleared, I got up and I saw John Cleary. I came over here. Now, there was already a couple students around him, and I could see that there was blood. And as at that time, I realized that these were real bullets.

 

And I could see—I don't know anything about medical, but there was somebody there putting a compress on the wound to keep the blood. He was conscious. Then I said, well, I can't do anything here. What else is going on? No, no one's here. Everybody's back here. After they saw it, they went back down the hill.

 

[Interviewer]:  Towards the Commons.

 

[Richard Glance]:  So I said, OK, I came around here. I got like a better look. OK, so who is this here that was shot? A Joseph Lewis.

 

[Karen Glance]: Oh, Joe Lewis.

 

[Richard Glance]:  Yeah.

 

[Interviewer]:  He's the person who walked out of the building between you and where the Guard was?

 

[Richard Glance]:  He walked out of the building just as they were, or got to the sidewalk. I think that he was on the sidewalk. Now, maybe they didn't want to put the plaque there on the sidewalk.

 

He's walking out of the building. See, if you put it here, it gives the impression that there was some ominous student that was going to charge these soldiers with bayonets. There wasn't.

 

[Karen Glance]:  No.

 

[Richard Glance]:  Clear shot, walked across. Minding his own business and he was on this—

 

[Karen Glance]:  That had to be so shocking for him. I'm surprised he didn't die from just shock.

 

[Richard Glance]:  Shock, yeah.

 

[Karen Glance]:  I mean, you come out of your classroom and someone's shooting.

 

[Richard Glance]:  So, yeah. Again, I think that you can check the evidence, but I'm convinced that he walked out or came—there were students in here, but whether he exactly walked out of the building, but he came from on the sidewalk from behind the [Victory] Bell straight. So, I didn't see him. I come over here and what's going—there's a commotion down here. All right. And I now—

 

[Interviewer]:  Down the hill towards Prentice Hall parking lot and the football field.

 

[Richard Glance]:  And they're screaming and there's whatever. And it's like, What the hell is going on? And I got to within—what is this? 100 feet, 120 or so, of Jeffrey Miller. And I knew he was dead. Why did I know he was dead? Well, because at this distance, there was so much blood coming from his head. And that his body, as you can see from the photo, is completely lifeless.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Oh, yeah.

 

[Richard Glance]:  OK. Now, I’ve got a wife. I got armed soldiers that at, least, killed one person.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Yeah.

 

[Richard Glance]:  And it kicks in that I got to find her. Get safe, get her, and get the hell out of here. So, I then went to the place, the office that she worked just over the hill. Found her, got in the car—

 

[Karen Glance]:  And left.

 

[Richard Glance]:  —and left. Excuse me, I got to back up. After I saw Jeffrey Miller, I then ran up the steps to the first floor where the Architecture Library is. [Editor’s clarification: that was the location of the Architecture Library in 1970]. I knew they had a phone. So, I called—I called the Police Department and I said, “We got one dead and one injured student here from the National Guard. You need to send an ambulance.” And I talked to somebody and hung up, and then I went to find her.

 

So, I mean, that's what you can kind of do if you're 22, but maybe if you're 17 or 18, you don't have that presence of mind. Or you just simply say, oh, I'm so pissed off. I'm going to attack. And when we had— where was White? That was the President. He's nowhere to be found. He's not even in the office.

 

[Interviewer]:  He was out of town that day.

 

[Richard Glance]:  He's out of town. You got Rhodes, who's running, and we can get into the whole politics of it, of the Teamster’s strike.

 

[Karen Glance]: Yeah, we won't do that.

 

[Richard Glance]:  The whole thing.

 

[Karen Glance]:  That's a whole other ballgame.

 

[Richard Glance]:  That was really running the show. And that's what they did.

 

[Interviewer]:  What building were you working in that day, Karen?

 

[Karen Glance]:  The housing.

 

[Richard Glance]:  No, no, no.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Oh, wait.

 

[Richard Glance]:  Dean of—

 

[Karen Glance]:  Dean of Arts and Sciences.

 

[Richard Glance]:  Yeah.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Yeah. Right over the hill there.

 

[Richard Glance]:  Right over the hill.

 

[Interviewer]:  OK, next to the Commons?

 

[Karen Glance]:  Yeah.

 

[Richard Glance]:  Yeah, there's a women's dorm that had all the FBI people on top of it. And then it's just beyond that.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Yeah.

 

[Richard Glance]:  And so, do you want to tell them your story? Do you remember?

 

[Karen Glance]:  I don't really remember that much other than you coming to get me and say—and I said, “What are you doing?” He said, “We're leaving. They're killing students.”

 

[Richard Glance]:  No. She knew that I was going to be in the middle of this. And she came—it was lunchtime. It was a beautiful day. She came out.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Yeah, it was a beautiful day.

 

[Richard Glance]:  And she then—she has a little short-term memory—so I don't want to pretend like I'm speaking for her.

 

[Karen Glance]:  No, but I do. I have short-term memory loss, so it's hard for me unless I review it all and then—

 

[Richard Glance]:  Tell me if I say anything wrong.

 

[Karen Glance]:  I will, you know I will. I’ll say, “You’re wrong!”

 

[Richard Glance]:  So, she's outside. She saw everything was happening on the Commons. She knew I was in the middle of that.

 

[Karen Glance]: I was frantic.

 

[Richard Glance]: She stayed there. And then, of course, Company G came over here. No one knew, over there, what was going on, until the shooting. And then a student, in fact, came over the hill and started yelling and screaming, saying that they're shooting—

 

[Karen Glance]:  They shooting students. Yeah. I mean, that was true.

 

[Interviewer]:  And did you see and hear that student?

 

[Karen Glance]:  I did hear that in my office. Somebody came—

 

[Richard Glance]:  No, no. You were outside.

 

[Karen Glance]:  I was already outside.

 

[Richard Glance]:  You were outside then you went—once you heard that, you went back to your office.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Yeah, I thought I’ve got to wait here, because I know Richard will come get me.

 

[Richard Glance]:  Yeah.

 

[Karen Glance]:  That was my thought, he'll come get me. And he did. It was just awful. No one could believe it. It was like, What are they doing? What is happening? Why guns? I mean, there's other ways to solve problems besides shooting people. I think that was—

 

[Richard Glance]:  So, if I could editorialize here, why was this such a pivotal point in the student movement as it relates to the electorate turning against the war? It's because it's Kent State. It's meat- and-potato. It's Ohio. These are just meat-and-potato kids. And if it was at Berkeley, at Columbia, there had been other students killed. And it was Jackson State just a few weeks later. Right? But they were Black, that doesn't “count.” And so really what happened was that—

 

[Karen Glance]:  These were middle-class white kids, never did anything wrong in their life, how could this happen?

 

[Richard Glance]:  Exactly right. They're not elite from elite colleges. This is whatever. I've always believed that the killing, the murder of four of my classmates and the injuring of eleven others doesn't show how radical the students were. It showed how demented and sick the government was at that time.

 

[Karen Glance]:  That's it.

 

[Interviewer]:  Just a follow-up question. For you to get from here, this side of Taylor Hall, near The Pagoda. Right now, we're standing where Thomas Grace was hit. Was it hard to get there or did you have to—were there crowds—or did you have to skirt the Guard?

 

[Richard Glance]:  Look, I was at her office building probably within three or four, five minutes.

I came here, looked, went up there, made the phone call. I got to find my wife.

[Interviewer]: Oh, right, you went inside to make the phone call first.

 

[Richard Glance]: Yeah, yeah. So, it was five minutes. I didn't know anything that happened afterwards. And how the professors de-escalated this and saved a lot of lives. The university [administration] was nowhere. The structure of the university was nowhere to be found. It was these individuals, professors, that were marshals.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Right. Yeah.

 

[Richard Glance]:  That said, if you—

 

[Karen Glance]:  For God's sake.

 

[Richard Glance]:  Yeah.

 

[Interviewer]:  Glenn Frank.

 

[Karen Glance]:  What are you doing?

 

[Richard Glance]:  Glenn Frank.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Glenn Frank, Jerry Lewis, they're the real heroes. They really are. They took the bull by the horns and said, this ridiculous. You're killing our students. I'm going out.

 

[Richard Glance]:  No, they prevented the students from—they were going to charge them.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Yeah, I know.

 

[Interviewer]:  There were a lot of kids just in shock. And they didn’t know what to do.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Of course. Who wouldn't be, right?

 

[Interviewer]:  They needed to be told: You need to leave for your own safety.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Yeah.

 

[Interviewer]:  Thank you. Well, I think we'll end it here for the outdoor portion, our walking tour. Thank you so much.

 

[Richard Glance]:  And I didn't cry.

 

[Karen Glance]:  No, you didn't cry.

 

[Interviewer]:  I wish I could have done a video with this because to stand here and see the exact slope of the hill and exactly where you were standing while you're telling what you saw was really moving. Thank you.

 

[Richard Glance]:  You're welcome.

 

[Karen Glance]:  You're welcome.

 

 

[Recording pauses]

 

 

[Interviewer]:  We are back recording with Richard Glance. We've stepped inside Taylor Hall, we’re in the May 4 Visitors Center after walking around, and when Richard was telling his story of seeing things from his perspective. I'm going to backtrack; we're going to backtrack chronologically. So again, do you mind stating your name for the recording?

 

[Richard Glance]:  Richard Glance.

 

[Interviewer]:  Thank you. And I want to mention, too, for the listener, that Richard's wife, Karen, is also with us and may be chiming in with other details. Thank you both.

 

[Karen Glance]:  You're welcome.

 

[Interviewer]:  I'd like to just start with some very brief background information about both of you, so we can get a better sense of, sort of, who you were in 1970. Could you tell us where you were born and where you grew up?

 

[Richard Glance]:  Yeah, actually, both of us were born in Pittsburgh, and we met junior year in high school. We were 16. And have been married, happily, ever since. After high school, she stayed at home and worked as a secretary and saved money for four years. And I went on to Kent State to get my architectural degree, which I always wanted to get since grade school. I'm not sure what influenced me.

 

[Interviewer]:  What year did you first come to Kent State as an architecture student?

 

[Richard Glance]:  Well, '67, 1967. Graduating [high school in] '65. I couldn't get into Kent State upon graduation. I went to West Liberty State College. I didn't graduate in the upper half of my high school class, I was admitted there conditionally. I did OK and then transferred to Kent the next year. So, a five- year degree actually became a six-year degree. That's what you have to do.

 

[Interviewer]:  When you first arrived on campus, do you have any memories of what you were seeing in terms of protests on campus or activity, anti-war protests? Were people talking about the Vietnam War a lot that first year you were here?

 

[Richard Glance]:  Oh, the first year, you were basically—there were three groups. The one were the jocks and the football game, the short hair. The other were the radicals, hippies, whatever. And I guess there's always a large third section that is absent from the world. I didn't really have much of a political standing, not at West Liberty State College. And twelve years of Catholic schooling is enough to ruin anybody.

 

But somehow—my understanding of what's fair in life—I started to educate myself about the Vietnam War and would always participate, as much as an architectural student could, while I was here. So, I was semi-actively involved all the way up through graduation.

 

[Interviewer]:  Are there any particular demonstrations that stand out in your mind? Maybe paint a picture of one of those for us.

 

[Richard Glance]:  No, I mean—

 

[Interviewer]:  Not in those early days, maybe.

 

[Richard Glance]:  No, I mean, they'd call a demonstration, and I would always be there. It’d be sponsored by SDS. And then I gravitated later on to the Socialist Workers Party, the Trotskyist Party. And as I said earlier, to this day, I consider myself a Marxist.

 

[Interviewer]:  Karen, what year did you come to Kent State, and tell us how that happened?

 

[Karen Glance]:  Well, we wanted to get married. And so, he went to college. I worked, lived at home, and my parents were very generous. My dad said, if you save your money, “You can use my car for work. We won't charge you anything to live at home. This is your home.” So, I was very lucky, and I did. I saved all of my money. He would come home every weekend, hitchhike home. He didn't have a car.

And so, we were a team, working towards a goal. After those five years, we said, this is it. We’ve got to get married. It can't go on like this. So, we did. And we just had a wonderful time at Kent State. We got into a wonderful apartment building and there were three other couples there that we became very close to and are still close with. All the women had jobs and all the men went to college. So, we all had something in common and a goal to reach, and we all did it.

 

[Richard Glance]:  We were married October, 1969. And then we got an apartment before that and had it furnished. So right from our wedding on Saturday, we drove back up here on Monday, and I was in class on Monday.

 

[Karen Glance]:  There was no honeymoon. But it ended up that our whole four years there was like a honeymoon. We had such a good time with our neighbors. He had to work really hard, though. But, I mean, after class all day, he'd come home and have our life together with our friends and so forth. We have really lovely memories of that time. And we still get together with our friends after all these years.

 

[Richard Glance]:  So, to answer your question, it was October of 1969, right after we got married, she came to Kent.

 

[Interviewer]:  And you found a job on campus, I understand?

 

[Karen Glance]:  I did. I was lucky.

 

[Richard Glance]:  Oh, she was a secretary. She could take shorthand, speedwriting, typing. So, it's like being a waitress today, right? You can get a job anywhere. She got a really good job with the Dean's Office.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Yeah, I had wonderful deans that I worked for. They were just—it was great. It was a great experience, really.

 

[Interviewer]:  Thank you. Would you characterize, from 1969, were the demonstrations and protests becoming more regular? And was that something your families were aware of? Was there any concern on the part of your families at home? I mean, you're married adults at this point, but still.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Oh, yeah. I think our families worried, because they knew all the things that were going on. But I think they had faith in us that we would know how to handle it.

 

[Richard Glance]:  Kent State wasn't on the radar for any kind of radicalization. [It’s] not Columbia, not Berkeley, not Michigan. I mean, the tactic, and it works all the time, is you start out with whoever's committed. So, you might have a hundred or two hundred kids marching around campus. But really, what you want to do is you want to get the authorities to overreact. And they do it every time. It's hubris. Now, they've got all kinds of students that would normally not get involved. It's a pretty simple formula, but they're just too—they're just egomaniacs that—I've got the gold. I'm going to make up all the rules.

 

I mean, really that weekend, what do you expect the students to do? They're up all night. You’ve got helicopters flying around, tear gas. Now, you're doing exactly what we radicals wanted you to do. We wanted you to get the rest of the student population pissed off.

 

[Karen Glance]:  And they did.

 

[Richard Glance]:  So, they didn't do this, in court terms, necessarily of the Vietnam War. They just want to get back to school, a lot of them. Did they have more? They have less. I mean, this compared to other schools, Kent State was not a hotbed. It was a meat-and-potato Ohio farmland. These are the kind of guys—

 

[Karen Glance]:  Factory blue collar workers

 

[Richard Glance]:  —who go to Vietnam and serve our country right or wrong.

 

[Interviewer]:  Where were you in terms of the draft during all of this? You were married, so—

 

[Richard Glance]:  That stopped right away. No, because I was in a certified five-year curriculum. So instead of a four-year draft deferment, I had a five-year draft deferment. When we were married, after that—but my draft number was like 312. But we were married then and we had determined that we would go to Canada.

 

[Interviewer]:  If it came to that?

 

[Karen Glance]:  Yeah, we would have left.

 

[Richard Glance]:  A lot easier if you're married, you can take your wife there as opposed to going up there solo.

 

[Karen Glance]:  I invested all this time in this man. He's not going. We're going to Canada. I don't care what.

 

[Interviewer]:  But you weren't losing sleep over it, because you had a high number. You were a student in good standing. You were focused on your studies.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Yeah, we lucked out with the number situation, and our hearts were pounding every time they pull a number.

 

[Richard Glance]:  A “C” in architectural design is a really good grade, you understand?

 

[Interviewer]:  Yes.

 

[Richard Glance]:  Yeah. And just being the real jerks that our professors were, they wouldn't just—they wouldn't give anybody or very few people an “A.” It was hard. “You're not there yet.” And I'm figuring, well, if you were that good, why aren't you practicing instead of teaching? So now, you're always worried about grades.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Oh, yeah.

 

[Richard Glance]:  It was very serious. It was either there—you were going to be shipped off to Vietnam, unless you went to Canada. So, it was very stressful. This whole thing about the great Sixties and that is just, kind of, some illusion.

 

[Interviewer]:  I don't know where you wanted to start in terms of telling the story of the events of May 1970. I'd be interested in anything you noticed in the spring, even of 1970— if the mood was shifting, if your classes felt different, if things felt different at work.

 

[Richard Glance]:  Prior to the murders?

 

[Interviewer]:  Yeah. That academic year or even in the spring, like April, May 1970, if things felt different?

 

[Richard Glance]:  No. Not at all. We had demonstrations. As I said earlier, the murder of my four students is the direct result of the almost fascist regime that Nixon put together as opposed to the radical students. And the invasion of Cambodia on Friday, May the 1st. When we were down there at the president's office with SDS and they were trying to break in. I mean, shit, they were probably a hundred kids out of 22,000.

 

[Interviewer]:  So that's a good starting point. The Administration Building and that protest.

 

[Richard Glance]:  Yeah, I was there.

 

[Interviewer]:  There were a hundred students, so it wasn't huge.

 

[Richard Glance]:  No, not at all. No, not at all.

 

[Interviewer]:  It wasn't scary like you weren't—you didn't have any sense of fear for your safety?

 

[Richard Glance]:  It was part of every other demonstration of which you gather a hundred, two, three hundred students. So, that was in the afternoon. We petered out. I went and found her at work. We went home. And then, that night, we found out that the ROTC building was set on fire. By whom? I don't know. Interesting. Interesting. Before they built Taylor Hall, in 1967, my first year in architecture, first year Kent architecture, we had design classes in those buildings. And then the next year, Taylor Hall was finished. And there was all—the protest was that we wanted ROTC off campus. They shouldn't be allowed to recruit on campus. Napalm—we wanted to make sure that that research was off campus. And then we said that the ROTC buildings, we believed, had live ammunition. And the ROTC people lied and said no, because we know when they had the fire, there were explosions. Just a little sidebar there. But it's all part of the big lie.

 

[Interviewer]:  So, Friday, after work, you both went home.

 

[Richard Glance]:  Yep. She made dinner. Blah, blah, blah. And we saw on the news, there's a fire later on Saturday.

 

[Interviewer]:  Yeah. Did you come on campus on Saturday?

 

[Richard Glance]:  No, I think we may have, but I know we came on—we came Sunday just to see what was going on.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Yeah, to see if we'd be going to work the next day or whatever. We had no idea.

 

[Richard Glance]:  Governor Rhodes was going to make sure that Kent State stayed open. He was running for governor.

 

[Karen Glance]:  For governor.

 

[Richard Glance]:  He was behind in the polls and Ohio State was shut down. And so, the strategy among us—you could call it a strategy, is that we need to shut down Kent State. That would be the two biggest state schools in the state of Ohio, which would be highly embarrassing for Governor Rhodes.

 

[Karen Glance]:  And he certainly was working on his image.

 

[Richard Glance]:  It was—that's right. He was going to be law-and-order.

 

So, we came in Sunday. We saw tanks. We saw the bivouac tents and everything. It was an occupied city. And I go back to thinking of all those poor souls in Gaza or the West Bank, where it's completely occupied. You had no freedom or freedoms were—and then it went to Monday morning, everybody there keeping the campus open, even though you couldn't possibly have classes with tanks everywhere, helicopters, it was ridiculous.

 

[Interviewer]:  On Sunday, did you get in a phone call from work saying, there's this stuff going on, we're not sure what's happening. Was there any communication to you, as a staff member, of the university?

 

[Karen Glance]:  Boy, I can't remember. I'm trying to remember. How did that work out? Did we—because our whole building, all the women worked somewhere on the university and the guys went to college that year.

 

[Interviewer]:  Oh, from your housing group?

 

[Karen Glance]:  Yeah. And I'm trying to think how we—

 

[Interviewer]:  And your apartment was off campus, correct?

 

[Richard Glance]:  Yeah.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Yeah.

 

[Richard Glance]:  It was out towards, what is it, Ravenna? That's west of here.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Yeah.

 

[Richard Glance]:  OK. Spaulding drive, just a couple of—two miles.

 

[Karen Glance]:  It was very close.

 

[Richard Glance]:  It was brand new.

 

[Interviewer]:  East of campus?

 

[Karen Glance]:  It was a wonderful place.

 

[Richard Glance]: No, Ravenna is east. We were west. Yeah, across the railroad tracks. Yeah, so what is that little town? The Chagrin Fall or something. [editor’s clarification: Spaulding Drive is located on the eastern edge of Kent close to the boundary between Portage and Summit counties]

 

So that's where it was. We were about two miles outside of campus in a new building. The news was, from the Governor, we are going to keep the school open. It may be occupied, we are going to deal with all of these Brownshirts, Blackshirts, communists, anarchists, outside agitators, which are the worst. And so there wasn't—that was the message from the Governor. So, of course, she would go in to work.

 

[Interviewer]:  You had to go to work.

 

[Richard Glance]:  And of course, I would go into class.

 

[Interviewer]:  You had to go to class.

 

[Richard Glance]:  Because they said they weren't going to—we were trying to figure out how to best shut down the school. But, actually, the National Guard did that for us.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Yeah. They did.

 

[Interviewer]:  After the fact.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Yeah.

 

[Interviewer]:  After the tragedy.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Yeah, exactly. Very sad.

 

[Interviewer]:  And on Sunday, were you driving around or did you park?

 

[Richard Glance]:  No, we parked and walked around. Yeah, because everything centered around the Commons.

 

[Interviewer]:  So, you saw what was the remains of the [ROTC building] fire?

 

[Richard Glance]:  Yeah.

 

[Interviewer]:  And were there a lot of people there? It was—people gathered there, a few people?

 

[Richard Glance]:  I don't know. There were kids everywhere. They couldn't go through the door. There were a lot of us. Tear gas was in the dorms. I mean, it was a mess.

 

[Karen Glance]:  It was—

 

[Richard Glance]:  You wanted to get the kids out instead of corralling them in their dorms. The best way to do that is to tear gas them. So, I mean, there wasn't anybody protesting on Sunday. It was just like—

 

[Karen Glance]:  What are we supposed to do?

 

[Richard Glance]:  They've turned this campus into an armed camp, and we're supposed to get an education here? Just because the governor wants to be this hard ass and is behind in the polls, and he's using students as a tool. That's disgusting.

 

[Karen Glance]:  To be re-elected.

 

[Richard Glance]:  We were there for maybe an hour, went back.

 

[Interviewer]:  Went back home.

 

[Richard Glance]:  And then said, well, OK, I gotta go to class. She's got to go to work the next day. So, we came to campus at 8:00 and there was a poster saying there was going to be a rally on Commons at noon. I said, “Karen, I'm definitely there.”

 

[Karen Glance]:  I said, “I know. Well, I'm definitely here to work at the office.”

 

[Richard Glance]:  I went to class at Taylor, noon, came out, right, and went down to the freedom bell. Is that what it's called?

 

[Interviewer]:  Victory Bell.

 

[Richard Glance]:  Victory Bell.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Victory Bell, that's right.

 

[Richard Glance]:  And then—should I continue on the Monday or do you have some other question?

 

[Interviewer]:  I was curious, because I think you mentioned previously, before we were doing the recording—were you on the Commons on Friday at the protest, too, at the Victory Bell?

 

[Richard Glance]:  No. No. I was there late afternoon at the president's office with SDS, Socialist Workers Party.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Oh.

 

[Richard Glance]:  What was that?

 

[Karen Glance]:  Something bit you.

 

[Richard Glance]:  And then picked her up, went home. We're married. We're twenty-two. We need dinner.

 

[Karen Glance]: What’s for dinner?

 

[Interviewer]:  Right, your life was off campus.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Yeah, exactly.

 

[Interviewer]:  Let's go back to Monday [May 4, 1970] and I'll just mention for the recording that this will be supplemented by what we recorded walking around outdoors. But feel free to tell us whatever you want to tell us from what both of you experienced Monday.

 

[Richard Glance]:  I think what I told you as we were walking around is complete. I can't think of anything to add to that. Walking it helped refresh my memory.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Yeah.

 

[Richard Glance]:  And my time involvement in May 4th was extremely intense for twenty minutes. And then I'm out of there. I got to find my wife. I got to make sure we're both safe, because we got lunatics with loaded rifles shooting innocent people. End of the story. And I really want to say, in conclusion, that all of the students that actively participated like me, were tangentially—like Karen was an observer, or whatever. It's noon, it's campus. It's going to impact a lot of kids.

 

[Interviewer]:  People going to lunch.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Oh, just we saw—

 

[Richard Glance]:  There was no support by any government agency to help us through this trauma.

 

[Karen Glance]:  I think they were just hoping it would go away.

 

[Richard Glance]:  No, what they did is they indicted the students to say they incited a riot.

 

[Karen Glance]:  That was such a lie.

 

[Richard Glance]:  Of course it was. They lost in court after years and years of litigation. And it reminds me of the Chinese asking a family to buy the bullet to assassinate the father for committing a crime. It's the highest insult. You, in fact, indict the students. And no National Guard were held responsible, but particularly the people in power that put the Guardsmen there.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Yeah, they were just young kids, too,

 

[Richard Glance]:  Right, were not held accountable. And they even make—add salt to this wound. The university, for years after, made a very deliberate effort to bury this. To bury this. We, as students, and I went on to graduate school after that fifth year. But if you were a freshman, you came back here. I mean, there was no support for you. As a matter of fact, there was anti-support, because the university was attacking. Let's pretend this didn't happen.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Yeah.

 

[Richard Glance]:  Who knows what's right or wrong? Maybe there was a bullet fired ahead of time, but let's not dwell on this. Let's pretend it didn't happen. We're going to expand the gym, which was vociferously lobbied against. And they put up the tents, they stayed overnight, whatever. The campus was our all—and we had nowhere to go to support us. And that is disgusting.

 

[Interviewer]:  Were you involved in the beginning of the May 4 Task Force?

 

[Richard Glance]:  I was—no. I had—I would—

 

[Interviewer]:  You had a very demanding major, we know that.

 

[Richard Glance]:  No, no, no, no. No, no. This is the first time I've talked about this—

 

[Karen Glance]:  For a long time.

 

[Richard Glance]:  —publicly. I would come here every May 4th by myself, be there at noon. I get there, I would walk where I walked, go to the fourth floor, sit there quietly and meditate and try to heal. And then go home. When we lived in Pittsburgh.

 

So, I think the book helped [editor’s clarification: Richard Glance created a work of art by altering a printed book into an interactive and illustrated timeline of the Kent State Shootings], Alan Canfora’s death, and the fact that maybe I'm ready to talk about this. Not put it behind me. This will be with me till the day I die.

 

[Interviewer]:  Well, you're certainly not alone in people who are ready to talk fifty or fifty-five years after the events and not before. You're definitely not alone in that. I'm curious about your personal experiences. Monday, after the shootings and you were able to get over to Karen's office, and you left campus and you got home. Then you were seeing things on the news. Did you come to work the next morning? Like, what were the next few days like?

 

[Richard Glance]:  The campus was closed.

 

[Karen Glance]:  It was closed.

 

[Richard Glance]:  They closed down campus. So what we did is, we got in the car and drove back to Pittsburgh and stayed at her parents' place until they opened the campus. They just said, “Campus is closed.” You go figure out where you're supposed to go. We don't care. If you're a foreign exchange—we don't care. You just saw somebody's head being blown off. We don't care.

 

[Karen Glance]:  And so, everyone had a different idea of what happened, how it happened, how it affected everybody differently. And they were just thrown to the wind. Figure it out for yourself. There was no collective—

 

[Richard Glance]:  —consciousness.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Yeah, and it was like, Did that really happen? Because you had no one to talk to about it. At least we had each other and our friends and our little apartment building.

 

[Interviewer]:  Your group of friends at the apartment building, did everyone leave?

 

[Richard Glance]:  I don't think so.

 

[Karen Glance]:  I don't remember that everybody did, because the women—Barb had a job, so she couldn't have left.

 

[Richard Glance]:  Yeah, and the women had jobs. So, they—I don't think they left, no.

 

[Karen Glance]:  I don't think they did either.

 

[Richard Glance]:  And then when they opened the campus back, we came back and then, how do you finish up after four of your students were murdered?

 

[Karen Glance]:  Yeah, it's pretty tough.

 

[Interviewer]:  And for you, that was your closest kind of support group, your friend group, these other married couples that you lived with. Were you able to talk things through with your families in Pittsburgh?

 

[Richard Glance]:  No.

 

[Karen Glance]:  No.

 

[Richard Glance]:  No, it's not.

 

[Karen Glance]:  It was so unrelatable. I think everybody in the whole United States: When did we start killing our students on campus?

 

[Richard Glance]:  You had to be from Ohio.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Yeah, something is wrong, and I think where do you begin?

 

[Richard Glance]:  I think our parents were just acting like parents. You're safe. You're here.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Let's forget about it.

 

[Richard Glance]:  That's it. They didn't ask about what we did or anything like that. It's just—OK.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Yeah, you're home, you're safe, and let's move on. But that never leaves you, no.

 

[Interviewer]:  And you, Richard, were very close to victims who were wounded and killed. Physically close, at that moment. So how soon did you come back to Kent?

 

[Richard Glance]:  When they opened, whenever that was.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Whenever they opened.

 

[Richard Glance]:  I don't remember.

 

[Interviewer]:  It depended on who you were, because some resident assistants of the dorms came back sooner. But it was sometime that summer. Yeah. And were you back—

 

[Richard Glance]:  Back to work?

 

[Interviewer]:  Your original job?

 

[Richard Glance]:  Remember, the Governor wanted to pretend nothing happened. This was a mishap brought on by these Brownshirts. And so, of course, they want everything to return back to normal. And let's extend the gym. Get the architect to draw up the drawings.

 

[Karen Glance]:  It looked normal, but it wasn't normal. It had the image of normalcy, because people did come back and go back to work and go to school.

 

[Interviewer]:  Did you work closely at all with President White in your position, or you were more with the dean in your college?

 

[Karen Glance]:  Just the deans, I never saw the president.

 

[Interviewer]: Clearly you had each other to talk things through with, thank goodness.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Oh, yeah. And our building that we lived in, we all stayed friends for years. We got together every year for how many years did that go on.

 

[Richard Glance]:  We would have done that without the shooting.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Oh, yeah, we would have.

 

[Interviewer]:  Because you had already bonded before.

 

[Richard Glance]:  Absolutely.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Absolutely.

 

[Interviewer]:  Were any of them on campus that day? Or close to the Commons?

 

[Richard Glance]:  Yeah, the other three guys were on campus, but they weren't near.

 

[Interviewer]:  They weren't at the Commons when the shootings took place, OK.

 

[Karen Glance]:  No, no.

 

[Karen Glance]:  And all of the women worked in different capacities in the college.

 

[Richard Glance]:  So, we had each other. We've always had each other.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Yeah.

 

[Interviewer]:  I'm just trying to wrap my head around your experience.

 

[Karen Glance]:  It's quite a story.

 

[Interviewer]:  —which takes a second. I'm going to pause the recording for a second.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Go ahead.

 

[Recording pauses]

 

[Interviewer]:  We are back with our oral history after a brief pause, and I want to mention, for the listener, that Richard brought a donation in with him today to give to the May 4 Archives. It's an artwork that he created. It's a book that he altered with images that tell a step-by-step story of these events that he witnessed and was part of.

 

I want to ask Richard, because I asked him earlier. You created this maybe before the pandemic and the year or two leading up to the 50th commemoration. You made this artwork in response to those events fifty years after they happened. I just wanted to ask you to tell us a little bit more about that. What prompted you to start this? What your feelings and emotions were when you—

 

[Richard Glance]:  Well, I've carried this terrible memory with me, at least once or twice a week. Earlier, it was almost every other day. And time does sometimes heal a little bit. And, as an artist, as an architect, you're not ready to produce a work of art until you're ready to do it. I couldn't have done this ten years after, twenty years after. I wasn't there. I wasn't ready. I mean, mentally, I was able to process this on a weekly basis, but to take that and turn it into a piece of art is a whole other step. It's a big step.

 

After fifty years, it was time that I do this, and not because I thought it would help me heal, it did, but it was—what artists do is they've got this inside them and they don't have an option to get it out or not get it out. They get it out. As poor as Edgar Allan Poe was, he wrote brilliantly. He had to get it out. So, nothing magical, fifty years. It's just—it was just time to get it out. I did not do it for any other reason other than myself, and it was time to get it out as a piece of artwork.

 

I had a couple of things I started and stopped. I kind of did the Bell. I threw it away. It didn't work artistically. And then I decided on, well, I do these coffee table books that don’t tell a story. Maybe I'll do one that tells the story of May 4th and where I was in that event. So, you'll see me where I stood, what I did, during the shootings. I did it, six or seven years ago. I've never imposed my art on anybody. They like it, they can have it for free. I'm like an anarchist. OK, Governor Rhodes, I'm one of those anarchists. I'll never get to Fifth Avenue in New York. But I felt that if anybody should have this, it would be this organization.

 

[Interviewer]:  When you were starting to work on it—Karen, were you aware that this was happening. Did he talk about it?

 

[Karen Glance]:  Oh, yeah. And I thought it was a good way for him to sort of vent in an artistic way, as opposed to keeping it inside. And this way, it's on paper, it will always be there. There will always be something, not just lost. It's a physical thing that will be there.

 

[Richard Glance]:  And I'm old.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Yeah. Yeah. And we're getting old.

 

[Richard Glance]:  I'm going to be 79 in May. I see my classmates are dying and many of them probably died a lot earlier. And so, you know—

 

[Karen Glance]:  Yeah. This is a—

 

[Richard Glance]:  Let's get it to a place that, may or may not—I don't care if you keep this, throw it away, or take it to Sotheby's and auction it off. This is yours. I'll never ask about this. Ever. OK? Selfishly, I'm giving it to you. That's it.

 

[Interviewer]:  Thank you.

 

[Richard Glance]:  Very well.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Yeah. It's part of our life.

 

[Interviewer]:  You've shared it with family? I assume at this point. No?

 

[Karen Glance]:  No.

 

[Richard Glance]:  I've showed my granddaughter.

 

[Interviewer]:  I was going to ask about this granddaughter you mentioned.

 

[Richard Glance]:  I showed it to her just last week. I figured, I'm going to give it away in a week, and— now, we have two boys, and they never saw it. No, I guess Karen has seen it. I've seen it. You've seen it, and our granddaughter. So, no one knows it exists. Throw it away. I don't care. I mean, I really—

 

[Karen Glance]:  We can't bring our hearts to throw it away. If you do it, see, we won't know.

 

[Interviewer]:  I'll be passing it along to the May 4 Archivist. I won’t throw it away, I promise.

 

[Richard Glance]:  I think the other question was: is there any effect on me going forward?

 

[Interviewer]:  Any other things you'd like to share about how these experiences impacted you? I mean, clearly, you've thought about it more than once a week since that time. In what ways did that very intense twenty minutes you experienced on campus affect your life?

 

[Richard Glance]:  Yeah, well, being in so many demonstrations and just seeing how the cops act and the government acts against legitimate protest, against an unjust war, which history has proven. That the law is not on your side. The law is there to protect the capitalist interest of the country and private property. So usually, you mellow and you say, well, maybe what I was thinking about back then is, I was just a kid, I didn't know.

 

I've continued to belong to study groups, particularly in New York and, right now, we're reading Gramsci. I'm still intellectually a radical. I can't—I was intellectually a radical and a semi-physical radical. I dealt with this. I said, Look, you either you want to be an architect, which is going to take all your time and energy, whatever's left over, goes to her, and whatever's left over, you got to fight for justice.

 

And I was very lucky from an early age that I wanted to be an architect. This is the route you need to go. And if I have to go to West Liberty State College for a year because I can't get into Kent State, that's my fault because I got terrible grades, but OK. And so, I like to think that I've held true to my political and economic beliefs that there is a better world, and it's not through capitalism and the profit motive. I had that before Kent State, before May 4th. I had that before. It developed when I came here as a freshman with study groups.

 

[Interviewer]:  And educating yourself about the war, as you mentioned.

 

[Richard Glance]:  Absolutely.

 

[Interviewer]:  Did either of you ever seek out professional counseling, to talk through the traumatic events that you witnessed?

 

[Richard Glance]:  No.

 

[Karen Glance]:  No. I think because we were—since we'd been together since we were sixteen, that we could talk about that with each other. He would help me if I felt sad about something. I could help him. And so—

 

[Richard Glance]:  It never really had a serious impact on our day to day lives. But it was there.

 

[Karen Glance]:  It was always there. It's like somebody dying. It's always there. Yeah. But you can't dwell on it every day of your life and ruin your life with it. You have to move on.

 

[Richard Glance]:  But it reinforced the fact that the government is not your friend, that it can turn on you.

 

[Karen Glance]:  In a minute.

 

[Richard Glance]:  In a minute and send troops in to kill you. Yeah. It's not some abstract thought.

 

[Karen Glance]:  No.

 

[Richard Glance]:  This is what happened.

 

[Karen Glance]:  It happened.

 

[Richard Glance]:  For political reasons. Because the governor was behind in the polls.

 

[Karen Glance]:  But fortunately—

 

[Richard Glance]:  So, it never—

 

[Karen Glance]:  Materialized.

 

[Richard Glance]:  And Karen is absolutely right. We've always had each other.

 

[Karen Glance]:  I think if you have that emotional support system, you can get through a lot of things that is very difficult to do alone. Because we're religious, but we're not super religious like a lot of people.

 

[Interviewer]:  I think here, we will close. I'll just ask if there's anything else from your memories that we haven't touched on.

 

[Richard Glance]:  No, no.

 

[Interviewer]:  All right. And I'll conclude by thanking you both very much for taking the time and sharing these memories and your experiences with us.

 

[Karen Glance]:  It's important for people to know these things. Yeah.

 

[Interviewer]:  Appreciate it.

 

[Richard Glance]:  You're quite welcome.

 

[Karen Glance]:  Yeah, you're quite welcome. I'm sure it was very nice.

 

[End of Recording]

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