William "Bill” Wise, Oral History

Recorded: August 3, 2026

Interviewed by Liz Campion

Transcribed by 3PlayMedia

 

[00:00:03.20] [Interviewer]: This is Liz Campion speaking on Monday, August 3, 2026. As part of the Kent State Shootings Oral History Project, we are recording an interview over the telephone today. Could you please state your name for the recording?

 

[00:00:21.68] [William Wise]: Bill W-i-s-e.

 

[00:00:24.92] [Interviewer]: Thank you. I would like to begin with some brief information about your background, so we can get to know you a little bit better. Could you tell us where you were born and where you grew up?

 

[00:00:37.12] [William Wise]: In Cleveland, Ohio. My father was in the Navy on the aircraft carrier [USS] Ticonderoga in the Pacific. He got back a couple of days before I was born, I guess. But my mother was living with her parents in Cleveland. And I'm not sure when we moved to Kent, but it was probably '47, I think.

 

My father was from Kent—they met in Kent. We ended up living in the upstairs of the house that my grandmother's Wise's house in Kent on Lake Street. My grandfather died before I was born, so I didn't know him.

 

[00:01:28.93] [Interviewer]: Can you talk about what it was like growing up in Kent, Ohio, particularly during the Sixties?

 

[00:01:36.93] [William Wise]: Well, the Sixties, 1960, I was a freshman in high school, or I was a—sorry, a sophomore in high school by the fall. And that was at Kent Roosevelt. I think that was the second year it was open. And I know I was very much in favor of John F. Kennedy for president.

 

And my high school experience, I don't know. I wasn't that happy with it. I was kind of a loner. But Kent, it was—I think it was still a small town. A lot of the kids I went to high school with were associated with the university or some of them anyhow. Some of my friends were the children of professors or other employees of the university.

 

[00:02:37.81] [Interviewer]: When you were in high school, were you involved in any activities, clubs or athletic programs?

 

[00:02:45.97] [William Wise]: Not seriously, no. I think I was in the French club a year and I did track for a year. I guess I wasn't—I did some things, but no.

 

[00:03:03.90] [Interviewer]: How would you describe the overall relationship between the Kent State students and local community members in the 1960s?

 

[00:03:15.18] [William Wise]: Good, particularly. I mean, Downtown Kent starting probably—I'm not sure when it started. I think The Deck was the first bar that opened, but the bar scene on Franklin Avenue and on Water Street by the Sixties was pretty wild on the weekends. And I think there was a lot of resentment in the community about that and about you get a lot of drunk people downtown and they're vomiting on the street maybe, or doing things.

 

Just I'm sure it intimidated, looking back on it—not that I wasn't part of that, but looking back on it, I'm sure it intimidated a lot of people in the town who were more conservative. I don't know. I lived at home until '66 and at that point my parents moved from Kent, and I lived on in an apartment on River Street, my last year as an undergraduate.

 

[00:04:36.79] [Interviewer]: And what year did you first come to Kent State University and what was your major when you were a student?

 

[00:04:43.75] [William Wise]: I came in the fall of '63, and I had a dual major in political science and history.

 

[00:04:52.33] [Interviewer]: As a college student, what was campus life like for you and how was it different from attending the nearby high school?

 

[00:05:01.44] [William Wise]: Well, I guess I was a much more social person by the time I was in college. I was always a little—I was only four when I started kindergarten, so I was only seventeen when I graduated from high school. And maybe I was a little immature, but yeah, I don't know. I thought I had a pretty—I actually felt like I was having a pretty good time during those years. So, I enjoyed it.

 

[00:05:35.72] [Interviewer]: How did your time at Kent State shape your views on the social and political climate of that era?

 

[00:05:45.32] [William Wise]: Actually, I think my political views were shaped more by my family than what I encountered there. My father, although not well educated formally, was interested in politics. His uncle was a—my uncle was a politician in Portage County, and they were Democrats. And I think my mother was the only one in her family who was not a Republican. Some of them, they were more like Eisenhower-Republicans, though. They had both been inspired by Franklin Roosevelt, I think. My cat's joining me. And anyhow, we were Democrats. I was left leaning, I would say, all the time. I mean, we were big supporters of John F. Kennedy.

 

[00:06:52.13] [Interviewer]: During your time at Kent State, do you recall any protests or any anti-war events taking place?

 

[00:07:01.61] [William Wise]: Yes. But I recall one out for some reason outside Bowman Hall and it was just a few people. And this would have probably been maybe after the Gulf of Tonkin or maybe the fall of '64 or early '65. And there were only maybe ten people protesting. I think there were a couple professors that were protesting. And I can't remember their names, but one of them, I think, I'd had as a history professor or at least know him.

 

[00:07:49.78] [Interviewer]: After graduating from Kent State University and before being drafted, where were you working and living at the time?

 

[00:07:58.06] [William Wise]: I was still living in Riverview Apartments. I didn't graduate till '68. And honestly, I spent another year as an undergraduate to avoid the draft. I went five years instead of four. But one thing that happened—I might have gone to graduate school, but one thing that happened in '68 was that they ended draft deferments for graduate school. And it was no longer possible to sit out the war forever in graduate school. That's why you see, well, Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush all graduated in June of 1968 as well, and they found various ways to avoid the draft.

 

At the time, going in the National Guard, everybody knew that anybody that went in the National Guard was trying to stay out of Vietnam. It just was. We talked about it. You talked about it with your friends, What are you going to do? And I had two friends who I'd gone to high school with from Kent. One of them was Paul Burkhart, who was the son of the superintendent of schools. Another was Richard Whitney, whose father was a history professor at Kent. And they had both gone to graduate school. And of course, now they couldn't get another deferment for that. And they both went to Canada. I think they're still in Canada.

 

Dick Whitney told me he was going before he went. He was going to Illinois. He was in graduate school at Illinois, I think, in maybe physics or something, but he told me he was going to Canada. I saw him after that summer sometime.

 

I had worked summers previously for the county highway department, but I didn't go back to work after I graduated. If you were classified 1-A, you really couldn't get a job. I could have gone back to that job. But I figured I'd just hang out for the summer because I knew I was going to be gone. So, I partied, I guess.

 

[00:10:35.91] [Interviewer]: Can you describe your experience of being drafted and what your initial reaction to the news you'd be heading to Vietnam was?

 

[00:10:44.68] [William Wise]: Well, I was being drafted. I knew it was going to happen. It was a shock to me. And I'd gone—by then, I'd given up my apartment. I'd gone to live with my parents. I remember it was September that I was drafted, that I was ordered to report to duty, the 22nd, I think, of September. But I remember watching the Democratic Convention and all that was going on with the protesters and Mayor Daley and the police beating everybody up and tear gassing them.

 

And I definitely had some mixed emotions about that because I knew that what we were doing was electing Richard Nixon. And I didn't think that was going to be a good thing, I guess I—well, by then I was certainly opposed to the war. But I think I still was maybe a supporter of the main line, although I wanted Kennedy in the spring—Bobby Kennedy. But after he was assassinated, I knew McGovern was not going to—it was going to be choice between Humphrey and Nixon. I've always been a lesser of the two evils person, I guess.

 

[00:12:13.29] [Interviewer]: Can you walk us through your experience—

 

[00:12:15.35] [William Wise]: Pardon me. Let me get to—I went out with my college roommate and my dad the night before. I was supposed to report to the post office in Ravenna, I think. We went out and had a few drinks. And then the next morning, he drove me to Ravenna, and I got on a bus and rode it back up to Cleveland to the federal building.

 

And they do a physical on you and tests and stuff all day. And then they tell you you're going to get a steak dinner, but they took us to some—they had a deal with some horrible restaurant. I remember we had this horrible meal. And then we flew to Fort Knox, Kentucky. That's where I started my military career.

 

[00:13:08.69] [Interviewer]: Do you have any specific memories that stand out from your time at Fort Knox, what that training experience was like for you?

 

[00:13:16.73] [William Wise]: Yeah, the first experience I had was you go to the reception center—that's not basic training—while they give you uniforms and do tests. They give you various testing for various things and maybe more. I don't know. But I do remember that the barracks—this is my most vivid memory of the reception center. We were in a barracks and the latrine was just open, there were just toilets with no stalls. Just a line of six or eight toilets. That's where you were supposed to poop. And honest to God, I could not. I don't think I had a bowel movement until I got to basic training where we had more normal—it was horrible. That was horrible for me. The rest of it was just inconvenient.

 

Anyhow, we were there about, I don't know, maybe five days. And then we went to basic training. And they line you—they have you march. They got you all out in Kentucky, September. It was really hot. We're out in this asphalt parking lot in front of the barracks, which was a brick building. And one of the drill sergeants tells us he's from Cuba and been fighting the communists all his life, and he was a Cuban refugee. And he can teach us how to kill communists or something. I remember that. And then they took us across the street and they had us do calisthenics at three in the afternoon in the sun.

 

And there was one guy that was kind of overweight. I remember we were down doing push-ups or something on the asphalt, and the sergeants come over and maybe he threw up, I don't know. But they were kicking him with their feet, poking him. They weren't really kicking him, but it was pretty—they'd tell him, call him fat and stupid. I don't know. Anyhow, it was stuff like that for eight weeks. It wasn't something you couldn't survive.

 

You had to do—of course, I smoked, then you had to run a mile. I probably wasn't in very good shape after the way I'd been living before I was drafted. But anyhow, I was drafted. And after a while, you would get a weekend pass. We got one where we could go to Louisville. And me and my friend, a couple of my friends, we got a hotel room and we just sat and we didn't know what to do. We had some liquor and we drank, I don't know.

 

But after that, the next time they gave me a pass, I flew home and saw my girlfriend and saw my parents. And I do remember it was the flight from Louisville, stopped in Dayton and then Cleveland. It was still a propeller. I think that's the last time I ever flew on a commercial plane that had propellers.

 

[00:17:09.20] Anyhow, that was that. And then I was in basic training. And I did learn one thing about the Army. At any time, if you don't say, they tell you you're going to be in the infantry, they draft you and tell you can reenlist at that point for three more years. And as long as you can qualify for it, you can go into a school in whatever you want, basically. I had that in the back of my mind. I had thought about I can still go to Canada. I can desert and go to Canada. I certainly thought about that.

 

When basic training was over, they had orders for me to go to Fort Jackson in South Carolina to train as an MP. And everybody got orders to various things. A lot of them to oh, the fort in Louisiana. That's where they sent you for advanced infantry training. I can't remember its name now. But then they told me my orders were canceled because I wasn't qualified to be an MP because I'm red-green colorblind.

 

And so, I guess that's because you wouldn't be able to recognize forged documents so easily or something. I was just there. I was a casual laborer for about a week. They just sent you around to do. I think I had KP one day and you had that once during basic training. That was a horrible fourteen-hour day or something.

 

But then they said they were sending me to clerk school at Fort—what is it in Missouri, Southeast, Eastern Missouri? Well, I'll think of it. They called it Little Korea. And I can't believe that I'm thinking—anyhow, I went to the clerk school there. And while I was there, I got the measles. I thought I had the measles as a kid, but I was actually in the hospital for the first days.

 

[00:19:58.59] Our barracks were in the old hospital. There's a big Army medical center there. It's actually where they do train combat engineer schools there. But first, they told me I had the flu. They put me in a barracks with a bunch of other guys that had the flu. And then I went out and told the guy who was in charge, I said, look at me. So anyhow, I was in the hospital, but I got out. I didn't die.

 

And if you pass the clerk school, the four basic one, you either went—you went to on-the-job training or if you were in the top half of the class or top third of the class or something, you went on to either personnel school or finance school at Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis. So, it wasn't much to finish in whatever I had to in the class. So, then I went to Fort Benjamin Harrison. And I went to accounting specialist school.

 

Are you still there?

 

[00:21:15.17] [Interviewer]: Yes, I'm listening. Yes.

 

[00:21:16.03] [William Wise]: Indianapolis, this was much better. So, they also had schools for journalism. I think they had a number of schools there. It was pretty much—there wasn't any fence around the place. It was small. The Army finance center was there. And we had to wear our dress uniforms to class to prepare us to work in an office. Not every day, but maybe three days a week. And we just had classes like accounting 101, I guess, and specific stuff.

 

So, most of the people in the class had degrees in accounting. They had enlisted for this. Most of the people that did not have a tdegree in accounting did not pass the course, and therefore, they could reassign them anywhere. That's what happens to people if you enlist for something and you can't complete the training. Now, they can put you in the infantry for three years or whatever. But anyhow, I passed the class and I actually had a pretty good time at Fort Benjamin Harrison. We were off every day at five o'clock.

 

There was a guy from—I think he was from Mentor, or Eastlake, or something. He had a car and we got off every Friday at 5:00. I drive with him, split the cost with him, and we just drive back to Ohio every weekend. That wasn't a bad time for me. The food was good. Everybody ate in the same mess hall. The officers ate in the same mess hall and the food was good. Living conditions weren't bad. And I liked Indianapolis, too.

 

Well, they didn't have orders for any of us right away. And then we got the orders to go to Vietnam, and I wasn't surprised by that. And I got a couple of weeks of leave, I think. And then, I flew to Fort Dix in New Jersey. That's where I went to Vietnam from. And I was there a while—maybe a week or longer. We flew from Fort Dix to Anchorage, Alaska. It was a charter, stretched 707. And there were two hundred soldiers on it. We flew from there to Tokyo. They couldn't fly—they had to—and then from there to Saigon.

 

[00:24:45.78] [Interviewer]: Can you talk about what it was like first arriving to Saigon? Was it a culture shock for you? What was your first reaction?

 

[00:24:55.78] [William Wise]: Well, we were at an air base. I didn't have any culture shock, particularly because the military is the military, I think, wherever you go. And of course, we saw some Vietnamese who worked on the base. And I think I was only there a day and then we flew to Da Nang. And that's where the unit I was going to be assigned to was. The payroll office, that's where I worked in Vietnam.

 

But they had three offices, one in Da Nang, one in Phu Bai, and another one up farther north. I forget where—Quang Tri, I think. And I was told I was going to Phu Bai. And I was in Da Nang for a few days. I don't think it was a week. And then we got on a plane. And this plane, this was the first time—it was a cargo plane, and I remember it didn't have any seats. We just sat on the floor, and they had put straps over all of us. That was the seat belt. And I remember they said something about if we have to ditch. I'm not usually too afraid of flying, but this kind of—and no windows or anything, so it was kind of unnerving.

 

But we got to Phu Bai and we went to, it was metal building, but it was the office. And we saw the first sergeant, and I remember he said, “We get incoming here sometimes. If you hear somebody yell ‘incoming,’ immediately get your ass in a bunker right away. Don't wait.” And he also told me to get a haircut. This was my job for a year and it was like working in a bank maybe, or I don't know. It was both a payroll office and a bank because people would come in, and we had all their financial records.

 

And I had several different jobs. My first job was to audit their finances. When they came in country, they bring their—you bring your finance records with you. And you were to audit them, go through and see if they were—because this was done by hand. Some of it was computer or some of the pay vouchers when they were in the States depending on where they were, were printed out by a machine. But you're supposed to go through and make sure nobody made a mistake with it.

 

And then later I worked out processing people that were going home. But anyhow, I'd been there about a week. And it's the middle of night somebody yells, “Incoming.” So, my bunker was right across the street from, well, we call it hooches. They were little barracks just screened in and maybe six, eight people would live in one. I went and got in the bunker and everybody's in there. Some people are laughing and talking. And then all of a sudden, we heard what people had been there longer knew. I didn't know what it was, but that was a rocket coming in. You could hear it. You could tell it because it was artillery there, and it would shoot out.

 

[00:28:46.53] And it came in. We could hear it and then there was this big kaboom. And you could hear—well, I don't think it was shrapnel, but it was gravel hitting. The hooches had metal roofs, and you could hear the gravel hitting the metal roofs. And I was sort of in the middle. I could feel everybody on either end. I could feel the humans pushing in towards the middle then, towards me. I was getting squeezed. People were squeezing in closer together. And right after that, another one came in and pretty much the same thing. And that was it for that night.

 

Most of the time for—that was in April, I guess, or May. That must have been in May. From May through about September, we got incoming about once a week. But usually, it was a big place. There were 10,000 troops there. So usually, the rockets never hit that close again. Usually, you didn't even know where they hit.

 

But a few weeks later, this happened again. No, maybe this was earlier. We were still all up, maybe like 8:00 or 9:00 or something. It was dark, but it was still—everybody was awake. And we all went to the bunkers and they sounded the all clear. I guess when we came out, though we could see a big fire. It looked like maybe it was the PX [editor’s clarification: also known as Post Exchange]. It turned out it was a warehouse next to the PX, and there were flames up in the air. The PX was just a huge big metal building too.

 

And then this other siren went off, and they said, that's the ground attack siren. So, the sergeants had—we didn't walk around with M16s. They kept them locked up. And so, they had to open them. There was one locker in each hooch that had the rifles in them. I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt and so I got my flak jacket and put that on over and got my steel pot helmet.

 

And the sergeant—well, there was one person. It wasn't necessarily a sergeant, but they gave me my M16 and I got a whole bandolier of clips for it. I don't know how many were in it. But I took one out and I put it, shoved it in there, and locked and loaded it. Put a round in the chamber and took the safety off and went to what was—they told us was our defensive position, which was this drainage ditch behind that separated the company from the next company area. And, well, we called it the “piss ditch” because that's where we urinated because we had outhouses where we pooped. But the pee, you just went for the piss ditch. So, we had to take our defensive position there. So that was disgusting.

 

[00:32:21.08] [Interviewer]: I can imagine.

 

[00:32:22.14] [William Wise]: Now, at this point, I don't know what time it was, but there were people who were drunk. And there were people who had been smoking marijuana since they got off work. I don't think I was either. I was pretty depressed by the whole time in Vietnam. I tend to try not to drink or use. I never was big with weed anyhow—kind of makes me paranoid.

 

But there were people that were drunk and I. And we're in this ditch. And after a while, it's apparent that there isn't a ground attack and people are starting to laugh. Anyhow, some idiots start to just fire whole clips off from their M16s up into the air, and you can see the tracers going up. And the sergeants are trying to get everybody under control. And that was the last time that anything's—it scared me when the warehouse was on fire and stuff. I just counted the days until it was over.

 

[00:34:01.81] [Interviewer]: Something I wanted to ask a little bit ago was, do you recall how locals responded to your presence in Vietnam? Were there any memories that stood out to you?

 

[00:34:15.10] [William Wise]: We didn't get to interact with the locals much. There were two older Vietnamese men who the Army had picked up. They called the men papa-sans and the women mama-sans. I think that came from Korea maybe. But they did various tasks around the company area, including taking—they had cut off metal barrels in the latrines. They would pull those out and put diesel fuel on them, I think, and burn the shit—so they were shit burners.

 

And then we had maids, women. We paid so much a month and they did—I mean, they made our beds, they did our laundry. That's the way the US Army operates in a lot. I mean, the people are poor, they work for nothing.

 

I do remember after the My Lai stuff came out, we had a—and I was soon to leave I think, but we had a company formation. They talked about treating the Vietnamese with respect, and it was related to the My Lai Massacre, that formation.

 

I mean, we had to have guard duty on the perimeter once in a while. And there were bunkers there, and there was all kinds of barbed wire and things. And you would see firefights outside the wire, or you would see helicopters coming by. And you could see them spraying machine gun fire. And of course, the artillery fired all the time.

 

But it started raining in October, and this was the monsoon for that area of Vietnam. And it really rained till about March. For a while, it just rained. You can't believe it. Well, I've been in a couple tropical storms here. It's like that, but it would go on for days. It seemed like for days. Everything was muddy. And we got—all of us got the skin rash. We'd have these little white spots on us. They gave us stuff to put on it, but it never really went away. It was some kind of fungus, I guess. It went away when I got home. So that was that. And that was pretty miserable.

 

The rain was worse than the heat. You got used to the heat. Everything was mildewed and wet. And you were cold. I mean, for a long time, we didn't have hot water for months. When I got there, you had to take cold showers. But when it got cold, we finally did get hot water, I think. Maybe it was only sixty-five degrees or something. Maybe that's probably the coldest it got. But you were just freezing because you were wet. You couldn't get dry. Everything was muddy. It was miserable.

 

[00:37:52.72] [Interviewer]: How did your military service shift or affect your perspective on the Vietnam War?

 

[00:38:01.60] [William Wise]: Well, by the time I was drafted, I was surely against the war. Of course, I wanted to survive my tour in Vietnam. I just played the odds with it that I wouldn't be in the infantry. If I was drafted, if they put me in the infantry, I could re-enlist for something else. And when I was in Vietnam, I felt lucky because I wasn't out fighting.

 

My thoughts on the war; we shouldn't have been in the war. You can't win wars like that. From the perspective of international politics, I can understand some of the decisions. I can't justify them. And from a lot of what kept the war going, I guess, was the politics of it for—there was a lot of opposition to the war, but there was a lot of support for it too. I don't know. My feelings about the war are complicated.

 

I was against the war, but somehow, I felt like a lot of the anti-war movement, especially as it became more radical, was just playing into the hands of the people like George Wallace and Richard Nixon. Sort of like now, I don't know. I guess I'm just not—although sometimes with Trump, I feel I'm ready to go out and just let's fight the bastards even if we lose, even if we get killed. But I don't know. Somehow, I'm innately a moderate, I guess.

 

[00:40:26.10] [Interviewer]: Can you talk about what it was like to return home in that April of 1970, what that transition back to civilian life was like for you?

 

[00:40:36.94] [William Wise]: I had my first panic attack, I think, before I went. I was with my college roommate. And I was home on leave before I went to Vietnam and we had smoked marijuana. This is one reason I don't indulge in psychedelics, I guess. We had gone out. We were driving around Brady Lake, the old amusement park there. I think the part of the roller coaster and stuff was still up then. And I just really started getting really paranoid.

 

On the flight back—I think I had one panic attack when I was in Vietnam, but I had one on the flight back. And I really thought I was going to die. That was, I'm sure, related to my service and stuff. But when I got back, I wanted to see my girl—went to see my girlfriend. Well, she wanted to dump me slowly, I guess. But that was—be kind about it. But anyhow, she had somebody else.

 

And so, when I worked in the finance office, people would come in and say their wife was living with another man and they wanted to stop the money that was going to the wife. Because if you were married, you would get so much extra and they would send that right to your wife and you couldn't stop it. But anyhow, that didn't happen to me. But anyhow, that was that. So now I don't have a girlfriend and I'm living with my parents.

 

[00:42:39.19] [Interviewer]: And at that time, your parents were back in Cleveland, correct?

 

[00:42:42.97] [William Wise]: They were still in Cleveland, yeah. They were just renting a house. And then they moved right around that time, they moved in with my mother's mother in Cleveland. She was living with my mother's sister, who was an alcoholic. And she was old and wasn't being taken care of. My parents never owned a house.

 

I was having panic attacks. And then, well, Kent State happened and it just I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe that the National Guard shot —

 

[00:43:30.04] [Interviewer]: Well, to go back a little bit before May 4, can you talk about how you reacted to President Nixon's announcement to expand the war into Cambodia on that April 30, 1970?

 

[00:43:43.28] [William Wise]: Yeah, I remember seeing it on the evening news. And I thought—by then I knew whatever they did wasn't going to work. I mean, it was just going to—of course, there was a big reaction. One thing I haven't mentioned, when I came back, when I got back to the country, things seemed so different. I'd been gone a year, but maybe I've been gone more than that because I was in the military.

 

And it just seemed like everything had changed so much that, to me, it really seemed like the Sixties started while I was gone, what we think of as—I think a lot of what we think of as the Sixties now are really the early Seventies, and late Sixties. Because if you look at people talk about the Sixties, if you look at '63 and '64, they're more like the Fifties than what we think of as the Sixties. Everything seemed weird to me, and I'm having panic attacks. I really didn't even know I was having panic attacks. I just knew sometimes I felt like I was going to die and I'd go in my room. And of course, I should have sought treatment of some sort. I should have gone to the VA, maybe, and asked for help. But of course, I didn't do any of those things. I just self-medicated.

 

[00:45:20.22] [Interviewer]: Can you talk—

 

[00:45:22.18] [William Wise]: Oh, go ahead.

 

[00:45:22.98] [Interviewer]: Can you talk to me about your memories from May 4, 1970? Where were you and how did you react to that news?

 

[00:45:31.94] [William Wise]: Well, I had not been to Kent yet, but I was thinking about going. I wanted to go see if I could find any of my friends and stuff. But I had heard what had happened. Of course, I was aware of what had happened over the weekend, on Friday night. But having lived there, often, there was trouble downtown on the weekends and not maybe related to the war. I knew there was an active anti-war movement by then. And I knew there were people, demonstrations about the Cambodia invasion.

 

And I had no idea what—I figured there would be more demonstrations. I mean, it was a time, there were demonstrations. There were things all the time. And of course, I was at my parents' and they were both at work. I must have turned the TV on maybe. And maybe I turned the news on and I heard about it. And I just couldn't believe it. I was just shocked and sad.

 

[00:46:55.79] [Interviewer]: As a veteran who—sorry.

 

[00:46:59.03] [William Wise]: Oh, go ahead.

 

[00:47:00.15] [Interviewer]: I was going to say, as a veteran who just returned from Vietnam, a Kent State alum, and a local community member, how did those events resonate with you?

 

[00:47:11.47] [William Wise]: I was already in psychologically bad shape. And it just made everything worse, I guess. I mean, I didn't know all the details at first. So, it's hard to come up with exactly. I just didn't see how it could happen. I'm sure I knew the National Guard was in Kent. I'm sure I knew that they had been called up and stuff, but it never occurred to me in a million years that they would open fire.

 

As I was telling you, when we were in Vietnam, I mean, we didn't—what I did that night when they had the —I wasn't supposed to do that. I wasn't supposed to put a round in the chamber and take the safety off. I was just supposed to put a clip in it and go to the piss ditch. But the other stuff, you weren't supposed to do. I mean, I assume that if we, my unit of clerks, have been assigned to do something like that, we wouldn't have had—if we'd had loaded rifles, we would have had the safety on and we wouldn't have had the—that's what I couldn't figure out about.

 

It seemed to me they must have planned to do this. I don't know. It seems they should not have had—they should have had the safeties on and they shouldn't have had a round—and they shouldn't have had a round in the chamber from the cockpit. They should have had an order. You would have to have an order to do that, I think, from what I know. I don't know.

 

[00:49:15.10] [Interviewer]: You had previously mentioned in a phone call prior to this interview that you had attended high school with one of the National Guard members that fired that day. What do you remember about that person prior to May 4?

 

[00:49:29.64] [William Wise]: Well, of course, I didn't know he was one of the shooters. I didn't find that out until he was indicted. I saw his name. And I later talked to people I knew from high school and said that was him. I vaguely remember him, but I didn't know him. He wasn't in my class. And later, somebody that was in his class—this is years. This is on Facebook. Somebody that was in his class told me he was an asshole. I don't know. How can I validate that? That's all I know about him.

 

[00:50:13.39] [Interviewer]: Did learning that someone you knew was involved changed the way you thought about the events?

 

[00:50:20.41] [William Wise]: Well, yeah, because it didn't change my opinion of what happened. It never should've happened. It was a crime. The people that ordered it or the people that did it are criminals. They should have been prosecuted.

 

Now, I think at Kent State, didn't somebody set off some kind of Army ordinance training device that weekend?

 

[00:50:56.78] [Interviewer]: I am unaware of that. Yeah, I think I would need to look into that a little bit more.

 

[00:51:06.94] [William Wise]: Look into that. Then call me back. I know who did that, I think.

 

[00:51:10.78] [Interviewer]: Prior to this interview--

 

[00:51:12.82] [William Wise]: I found that out later, but he was anyhow.

 

[00:51:16.78] [Interviewer]: Prior to this interview, you mentioned meeting two of the students that were wounded on May 4. How did those relationships come about? And did anything stand out to you when meeting them?

 

[00:51:27.94] [William Wise]: Well, I decided to go to graduate school at Kent, and I got a master's degree in political science. I wanted to get some money from the government, the GI Bill. I was living in Kent in the Seventies. I was living in an apartment complex. And Dean Kahler used to come there and swim. I don't know if he lived there, but I talked to him a few times at the swimming pool.

 

I met Robby Stamps. I got into a relationship with a woman there who lived in the same apartment complex, but she worked in Cleveland at St. Luke's Hospital. She was a nurse, she was a psychiatric nurse, and she had Robby Stamps as a patient. One time, I was there—we were there, and he knocked on the door and came in. And he wanted to talk to her. I think I may have left, but I did talk to him a little bit. And she told me a little bit about him. He'd suffered. I don't think she went into details about what his issues were, but yeah, that's how I met him.

 

[00:52:58.71] [Interviewer]: How have the events surrounding May 4 and its aftermath impacted you personally, professionally, and/or politically?

 

[00:53:09.75] [William Wise]: Well, in a way, for me, it's hard to separate Kent State, my year in Vietnam, my service in the Army, and my personal life at that time, what the effects were. But I know I was having panic attacks for years after that really and I was drinking too much. I probably would have made more money. Although I'm doing fine now. I mean, actually, I've been married for, what twenty-three years to another Kent State graduate--

 

[00:54:18.56] [Interviewer]: Wonderful.

 

[00:54:20.52] [William Wise]: I actually met when I was living in—going to graduate school there. She was an undergraduate and we later reconnected on the internet. And so, we adopted a child from Vietnam. And she went to graduate school here at NC State and she had a room. Well, it was after that, I guess, while she was working. She had a roommate who was Vietnamese. So, we decided we would adopt. And we were back in Vietnam. And this time I really got to see some of Vietnam and meet some Vietnamese people who were universally friendly. And so, we now have a child who's twenty-one, who was three when we adopted him.

 

[00:55:19.17] [Interviewer]: Oh, wonderful. What lessons do you hope that future generations will take away from the events surrounding May 4, 1970?

 

[00:55:32.57] [William Wise]: Well, I don't think we've learned the lessons yet from what I see from what ICE is doing—shooting people—or learn the lessons of starting stupid wars like what's going on with—so we haven't learned them yet. I'm not optimistic that we will. Although I think in a lot of ways, despite Trump, we're in a lot better place in a lot of ways as humans in this country, at least. I think people are a lot more accepting, I hope. But I think—wasn't one of the shooters later; he was mayor of Ravenna or a long political career in Ravenna or something? I can't remember.

 

[00:56:39.48] [Interviewer]: That does not ring any bells.

 

[00:56:43.48] [William Wise]: [INAUDIBLE] I think. Is he one of the shooters?

 

[00:56:46.84] [Interviewer]: Who was that?

 

[00:56:49.18] [William Wise]: I know there was—but, I when I lived in Kent again, the town-and-gown thing, I think it breaks down along ideological lines. But I'm kind of rambling now. I'm sorry. Go on.

 

[00:57:15.26] [Interviewer]: That's fine. Is there anything else you'd like to talk about that we haven't covered yet today?

 

[00:57:20.38] [William Wise]: Oh, I think I've probably taken enough of your time. I hope you get some benefit from this.

 

[00:57:26.20] [Interviewer]: You did. I want to thank you for participating in the Kent State Shootings Oral History Project. And we truly appreciate your contribution.

 

[End of Recording]

×