Christopher Marek, Oral History

Recorded: May 4, 2000
Interview by Deborah Frazier
Transcribed by Maggie Castellani

Note: This transcript includes geo-references to locations that are discussed in the oral history. Geographical names linked in the transcript will open in a new window or tab that takes you to that location information and map in the Mapping May 4 project. To request a transcript without geo-reference links included, please contact Kent State University Special Collections & Archives.

[Interviewer]: Hello. I'm Deborah Frazier and I'll be helping you with your oral history. Could you tell me your name and what you were doing on May 4th, 1970.

[Christopher Marek]: I'm Christopher Marek. I was a student at Kent State on May 4th, 1970. It was my senior year. I was -- I had missed the entire weekend and I had just gotten back Sunday. I was going to classes. I attended two classes and I had lunch in the cafeteria and I was heading back to the dormitory at 12:24.

[Interviewer]: What memories of May 4th would you like to leave with us?

[Christopher Marek]: Memories? I'm not sure. I think I'll just tell a little about that day, maybe a little bit of May 3rd, too. Having missed the entire weekend -- that was my weekend to go home and visit, and rest and study and listen to the radio about burning down the ROTC Building, riding downtown. I called my roommates and they had a good view of the burning of the ROTC Building, being in Johnson Hall, room 302. And so they were all -- I don't know what to say -- anxious about it. I come back, my dad drove me back. And Kent was like an occupied city. There was the National Guard all over the place. We had trouble getting through the front of the campus intersection because it was soon to be blocked off by students, the National Guard. And as we got in and we went around and got into the campus, stopped by police, and they said, "Is he a student here?" I said, "Yeah." So I got in. But my dad called me afterwards because of the -- some disturbance out front. He said there was teargas fired and all that stuff. So I said, "It's O.K., bye," and everything. And we watched the helicopters circle overhead and people outside from our windows. And it was a very eerie experience. That movie caught it good, where there's lights coming in the windows and the actor playing William Schroeder was somehow -- things somehow didn't seem right. And they sure didn't.

Well, May 4th, I got up and it was cool in the morning. Got a good view of the ROTC Building, the remains and the National Guard guarding it, guarding the ruins. So, let's see, what were my classes -- one was the History of Germany and one was some other history class. Of course we talked a lot about what was happening on campus. And then after that I went to lunch at Lake-Olson cafeteria. Had lunch there and then I knew there was going be a rally. I had the feeling that there was going to be a rally. And on my way back ... I kept hearing, people would come into the cafeteria yelling and saying that the Guard's going over here, they're going over there. They're doing this and they're doing that. And I said, "Well, I gotta make my class." I had a class at 1:00 or so. So on my way back, I guess the Guard was approaching Blanket Hill from the other side because all of a sudden a large crowd of students come running down. But I just walked through them. I saw a lot of smiling faces, like people thought it was a big game. And I said, "Well, I still gotta get to class." So I went up to my room, or down the hall anyway ... let's see, this is like when Kennedy was shot, you know where you were when events happen, you can remember other things about them. And the halls and the corridors were named after ... they had Elizabeth and Faith ... I was on Faith walking to Elizabeth. And all of sudden these, what I took to be firecrackers came out, sounded. And I thought that's a really bad idea because the Guard will assume it's shots. But no, that was the Guard shooting. And I could hear people, they were leaning out their windows looking, incredulous voices saying, "Did you see that! They just turned around and shot!"

And all through that afternoon, I couldn't accept it. It was too, too unreal to accept. I just ... and gradually through the afternoon it dawned on me. But I knew, in my mind I could think, "Well, if that's what happened, if they turned around and shot, this is going to be a big event. I just hope they didn't hurt anyone. Maybe they just shot in the air or something." But little did I know. Anyway, I went to my room and I continued to get ready for class and it was like ... it was starting to dawn on me so, and other people too. They were just sort of breaking down, feel, smell teargas wafting through the halls. Then I thought, Well, I know, I got a bright idea. I'll go up on the roof and get a good view of what's happening. So, not putting any credence on any sniper, but some other people had that idea too, and so there was about twenty of us on Johnson Hall roof. But we looked around, we could see The Commons good but not Prentice Hall parking lot. And the police came though and chased us down and they said it would be a bad idea to be on a roof. So we went back to our room and we watched and we heard people. I remember some girl running down the hall screaming that if they start shooting into the hall, into the windows, to duck. Which I already had that plan. I thought it would be a good idea. But, and I thought that was very possible. I thought, Well, hey, I'm a student. They're shooting. Sure, that could happen.

But, let's see what else. I remember one of the people that were at the rally ... I had a good view of the Victory Bell, and on Friday I watched the, they had a rally there a little past noon. And one of the people that were leading that was also there Monday. And he was engaged in an argument with someone in Johnson Hall and very excitedly saying that, and trying to convey -- I seem to be an eye-witness to what had happened -- he was trying to convey when it happened. So I was listening to that and thinking, Wow.

We had a friend in Johnson Hall, Larry, who had a girlfriend, Virginia. She came ... and he would come to our room and she'd come to our room, because she was a commuter and she didn't have a good base of operations. She had the Student Union, but she often came to our rooms, and we would let her study there, we'd talk. Well, she came there too, she came to our room then. She was ... but she had a class in Music and Speech, so she had to cross the Prentice Hall parking lot. And during the shootings, she ducked into Prentice. And so she had to cross the parking lot and when she got to our room, she came to our room and promptly fainted. Later in talking to her, she didn't remember too much of what happened. She had like traumatic amnesia. She remembers ducking into Prentice and then appearing in Johnson Hall, but not too much in between. And my friend had taken psychology, and they said it was traumatic amnesia. I remember she was saying that as she was leaving Prentice, she was trying to avoid the massive amounts of blood on the floor so she wouldn't slip and get her dress dirty which is hard to comprehend. I always thought of Kent State before as a relatively nondescript college and a very average college.

Well after a long afternoon, heat building, very summer-like, the wind had stopped, and we had to leave. They said everybody's going to leave. So we, my roommate had a vehicle, so we thought, Well, we'll go to Virginia's house in Cuyahoga Falls and call our parents from there. We tried to call and it was the same thing. All the phones were out because everyone was calling. So, only a few calls got through at a time. You couldn't push Niagara Falls through a tiny pipe. We left through Lake Hall. And on the way, some people started from Lake Hall, started out the same time we did, just by coincidence. So as we come out the entrance, some Guardsman comes up and says, "Halt!" And he's got his big rifle. So we said, "What?" And he said, "Well, you can't be congregating in a big group like this." And we said, "What big group? We're just, us, we're leaving like we're supposed to leave. Right?" So, he called over an officer. And the officer said, "Well, I'll escort you." He also had a big gun, a revolver -- not a revolver, a pistol. Anyway, anyway, so we left and we ... the evacuation from Kent, that was interesting, too. Like all the roads leading into Kent were closed. And that led to a little traffic jam. It must have been miles and miles, miles of cars. You could leave but to enter was difficult. So that's basically what happened. We went to her house and called our various parents and they came and picked us up.

Yet still ... over the week it kept -- what had happened -- it kept building in my mind and I was able to accept it. But, not even in one day. So that's what I was doing. That's what happened to me. Okay, that's what I was going to say. That what's happening now is the -- in importance of conveying this to the younger people and getting the history down correctly, or at least so someone can remember it -- what happens is that my younger relatives will occasionally -- they get born, they grow up, and after awhile, about twelve or thirteen, they finally -- it dawns on them that, Hey, you were at ... They kept saying, "You were at Kent State." But then they realize what that means. And then they'll ask you, "Well, what about that?" And what I do is I offer to take them here and tell them ... [tape ends].

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