Denny Benedict, Oral History

Recorded: April 8, 2010
Interviewed by Stephanie Tulley
Transcribed by Erin Valentine

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]: Good afternoon. The date is April 8th, 2010. My name is Stephanie Tulley. Today we are conducting an interview for the Kent State Shootings Oral History Project, and could you please state your name.

[Denny Benedict]: Denny Benedict.

[Interviewer]: When were you born?

[Denny Benedict]: October 13 of 1951.

[Interviewer]: What years did you attend Kent State?

[Denny Benedict]: Let’s see, it would be ’69 -- 1969 to 1973.

[Interviewer]: What did you study while you were here?

[Denny Benedict]: Marketing.

[Interviewer]: Marketing. Interesting. And are you from the area? Is that why you --

[Denny Benedict]: Marysville. I grew up in a little town kind of like Leave It to Beaver, with the brother two years older, the mom at home and dad. Small town, Marysville. But I wanted to get away from Marysville as far as I could but still stay in Ohio.

[Interviewer]: Can you tell me what the general atmosphere was like on campus around 1969 when you started here?

[Denny Benedict]: It was fun. It was just a lot of fun. Most of the students were from near here: Cleveland, Akron, Youngstown. They called it "Suitcase College": on the weekends everybody was gone, except for the out-of-state students and people without cars that didn’t want to go home. I think it was on the verge of things changing. There was still rules about dorms: you couldn’t have girls in your room ever. The doors had to be open and all kinds of things. Things were changing, and it was political unrest, civil rights were picking up. But it was generally real positive.

[Interviewer]: You mentioned some of the civil unrest. Did you ever take part in any of the student organizations like the SDS? Any of the protest movements?

[Denny Benedict]: No. I was more of an onlooker. I watched them. We went to the sporting events, and a lot of the black students would root for the other team, against Kent. Things like that. But I wasn’t, up to that point -- up until May 4th -- I wasn’t really politically active. But I was in the band all four years.

[Interviewer]: What are your memories of the days around May 4? Some people like to start on April 30th, when Nixon made his announcement. Some people like to start on the 1st. You can start wherever you like.

[Denny Benedict]: Let’s see. On Friday, I didn’t go downtown that day. I wasn’t really involved in that. But we had heard -- people came back from downtown and told us some of the stuff that went down on that day. So I wasn’t really involved. So Saturday I went down to look at the damage. A lot of broken windows, and we’d seen where the fire was. There was some students down there, helping them sweep up glass. Looks like they were -- it was quite a mess down there.

[Interviewer]: Downtown Kent?

[Denny Benedict]: Yeah. After Friday night’s -- I think there was a lot of outside -- some bikers were in town. I think that’s what really set it off. And then when they shut down the bars all the kids came out. So you had -- let alone, that was late. It was 11, 11:30 so the kids might have been drunk, and then you get the bikers and fires going on, so it just got out of control.

[Interviewer]: So there were fires going on Friday night?

[Denny Benedict]: Friday night, downtown. That’s when they broke quite a few windows. They seemed to favor throwing at banks and maybe something that represented the government. I’m not sure how many businesses were hit, but it was quite a few. It was quite a mess.

[Interviewer]: So then you went down then --

[Denny Benedict]: I went down Saturday, just to see, because it’s kind of exciting, seeing all this stuff go on.

[Interviewer]: So you were there --

[Denny Benedict]: I wasn’t there Friday night, but Saturday morning.

[Interviewer]: But you were in Kent that weekend?

[Denny Benedict]: Yeah.

[Interviewer]: So were you on campus at all on Saturday, or --

[Denny Benedict]: Yeah. Saturday night they had closed the downtown area. I lived in a dorm, and they wouldn’t let anybody go downtown. But they’d opened up the cafeterias, and they had movies going on, and things to keep people entertained. So we were watching -- they had a movie, Thunderball, James Bond, Thunderball -- going on in the dorm. Basically right in the middle of the movie, they stopped the projector, and one of the dorm directors gets up and says, “The ROTC building’s on fire. The National Guard’s taken over the campus. Nobody leaves the dorm.” Which it’s like, where’d this come from?

Of course I’ve got to see what’s going on, so I went back to my room and got my coat, went to go out the door, but every entrance was blocked. You couldn’t get out of the dorm. They didn’t want anybody out. So I went to the first floor into the laundry room, jumped out a window and went over. You could see a glow from across the hill: the ROTC building. So I walked over, well, where the [Student] Union is over here -- this was just being built at this time, the Student Union Library -- and there was an old staircase going up, so I started going up the staircase, and here’s a cop car come screaming down the hill. Puts a spotlight on me. Tells me to stop. I ran as fast as I could up the stairs. By the time I got to the top of the hill there was hundreds of kids up there, so I just blended in with them. It was the Kent Police, so they weren’t going to chase me anyways.

But it was just all kinds of kids scattered around the hill, cheering the fire. Not that I agreed with burning the building, but it was an old World War II, 1940s, old wooden barracks that should have been torn down. It was built in the 40s that had a five year life, and here it was thirty years later it was still there. There was, like, three of them. But it was quite a fire.

[Interviewer]: So then did you go back to your dorm, or what did you --?

[Denny Benedict]: Well, not exactly. But the fire, the kids were throwing rocks at it and chanting. There was really no police presence around. But it was where the firing range was for the ROTC. So the fire died down, and then some of the ammunition would blow up, and there’d be sparks. It was quite a fire.

There was a rumor that something was going to happen on Front Campus. So I go, “Well, I better go down there and see what’s going on.” It was pretty well blocked, so I started going through the town trying to get through. Every corner there was a cop or National Guardsman. I was trying to go through people’s yards, and I just couldn’t make it. I thought, okay I’ll go back to the dorm. And I’m just walking back up by where the Business School is, and I just hear this rumbling noise. And here’s a tank-like vehicle with treads, two National Guardsmen on top with their guns, and the guy with the machine gun and they’re going, “You need to get back to your dorm.”

I went, “Yeah, right.”

So I took off back to the dorm.

[Interviewer]: So then, what’d you do on Sunday?

[Denny Benedict]: Sunday it was pretty quiet most of the day, and we knew there was going to be something going on that night. Like I said, I was still an onlooker through this whole thing. Sunday night, I knew they were going to be blocking traffic on, what is it, Main Street down by Robin Hood? So a couple of us went down there, and by the time we got there, there was maybe 25, 30 kids in the street, blocking traffic. The Guardsman and the police were on the downtown side, and the kids were in the street. And they had, the kids -- I was just kind of watching -- they had a list of  demands, you know: we want to talk to talk to the mayor, we want the National Guard off campus, I can’t remember what all of them were. So there was give and take, back and forth between the students. That went on for about an hour. Traffic was diverted. There was really -- it was peaceful, just not a lot going on.

One of the student leaders came back and said, “The mayor’s coming.” Everybody was happy, he’s agreed to meet with us, and take our demands, and stuff. Next thing you know, National Guard putting on their helmets, putting on their gasmasks, fixing their bayonets. So basically they lied to us. They start clearing the area. There’s one or two helicopters just above the treetops, and it was just chaos. They had bullhorns, trying to tell us who knows what -- you couldn’t understand them because they’re so loud. The guards come, and the kids are scattering. People were more mad, and basically chased us all the way back to our dorms. They were shooting tear gas at us -- the helicopters. We found out later that a couple of students got stabbed by the bayonets that day. I didn’t witness that, but heard that later. And they chased everybody back to their dorms, and just kind of scattered. That was 10, 11 o’clock at night. And the helicopters just flew over all night long. It was just --

[Interviewer]: Did you hear them from your dorm room?

[Denny Benedict]: Yeah. They were just out there all night. Tear gas smells in the air. Just didn’t make any sense. That was Sunday.

[Interviewer]: Okay. So Monday, were you on campus?

[Denny Benedict]: Yeah. Monday I actually in the morning had a tennis class. And tennis was real hard to get; they had it the second half of the semester, so I was good in tennis class. That was supposed to be in Memorial Gym. So I go over to the gym, and just filled up with the National Guardsmen. So I think they were camping there, sleeping there. I’m just kind of walking around going, “I don’t think we’re going to have tennis class today.” And I ended up talking to one of the privates about just what’s going on, just his feelings and mine about the whole deal. And one of his sergeants or superiors comes up and just starts yelling at me, telling me, “Get the hell out of here. We don’t need you here.”

Yelling at the private, “Don’t talk to these citizens. Don’t talk to students.”

And I was getting mad. I was, like, “Hey, I’m just trying to talk to the guy. You’re part of the problem.”

Maybe I was getting a little loud with him. And then a couple more of them come over and I go, “Well, once again, time to leave.” I was way outnumbered, so I went back to the dorm. Ran into a friend of mine, and he goes, “Oh, there’s something going to happen at noon today.”

And I go, “Well, I think this thing’s dying out.” I go, “Ah, no, go on, get out.”

He goes, “Ah, let’s just go. Maybe something will happen.”

They cancelled classes. I didn’t have any classes later that day, so I go, “Okay, I’ll do that.”

So Monday, 11:30 or so, we went over there. There was a friend of mine -- can’t remember his name, he was from Dayton -- he actually might have saved my life. So the National Guard was by the burnt out ROTC building, and the students were sitting on the hill by the Victory Bell. So that’s quite a distance. There was chanting, “Pigs off campus.” Just a peaceful protest. They buried a copy of the constitution, symbolic of stepping on Vietnam and all that. But there was a jeep going around with a bullhorn saying, “This is an illegal assemble.”

We didn’t think that, because one of your rights is freedom of speech, freedom of assembly. I think that’s where the mistake was made. Somebody decided to clear the area. If they would have just let it go on, it would have just been a protest, petered out, and that would have been the end of it, in my opinion. But they fixed the bayonets, put the gas masks on, started coming up the hill. There were maybe 40 people really protesting, the hard core protesters. Most everybody was onlookers, because it was at noon, right in the center of campus, change of class. You might see pictures of hundreds or thousands of kids, but really was maybe 40 or so really hardcore people involved in that.

So they come up the hill. They’re shooting tear gas, and the kids are picking it up and throwing it back. And the Guardsmen are picking it up and throwing it back. There’s some rocking being thrown, and swear words and all kinds of stuff. So they go out past Taylor Hall down over the road, and there was a practice football field where that gym extension is now, and there was a fence at the end. So they ended up on this -- the National Guardsmen -- ended up on this practice football field, because they couldn’t go any further. So they were just there, kind of talking amongst themselves. One group of them aimed at the students, and then put their guns down.

And I told my friend, I go, “Let’s go over to the parking lot. We can see it better.”

And he goes, “No. Why don’t we just stay on this side, and when they leave, we can get behind them.”

And I go, “Okay. I’ll do that.”

Which might have been the best thing that ever happened to me. So I think that went on for about fifteen minutes that they were on the practice field. It looked to me like they ran out of tear gas, or they decided to go back. So they went back down the road, and they were going up the hill towards Taylor Hall. And everybody was happy, like, “We won. You lost. You’re retreating, going back to where you came from.” And still some rocks thrown and swear words. But the one group that had pointed their weapons, they kind of looking back, this one group of Guardsmen, which I think was Company G.I. found out later. But they looked back. They -- the Guardsmen -- went up the hill. Right when they got to the peak at the Pagoda and the corner of Taylor Hall, they turned in unison and fired.

Thirteen seconds, it’s kind of a lifetime. Doesn’t sound like a lot, but it was a lot. When they fired, we thought they had blanks. We knew they had live ammunition, we never thought that they would use live ammunition. We always thought they used rubber bullets or knee-knockers or blank something. But the second they fired, we hit the ground. It was just instinctive. It was just, I don’t know what it was, it was just, that’s what happens. And we were on the ground, and it was like -- we got hit by something, by either a scatter gun or rocks -- it wasn’t to hurt or anything, but you could just feel something hit us. We were right in the middle of the practice football field.

But their leaders, they were halfway down the hill. They were running back up, hitting these guys, telling them to stop and pushing their riffles out of the way. Trying to get them to stop.

[Interviewer]: The other National Guard [company]?

[Denny Benedict]: The other National Guard [company]. Whoever was in charge was pushing on these guys going -- trying to get them to stop.

[Interviewer]: Is that why you think they eventually stopped shooting?

[Denny Benedict]: Well, that was part of it, and that’s why I think maybe there was a conspiracy amongst the group of them. Because they were -- someday we’ll get the truth. That’s what this is all about.

[Interviewer]: Well you said you noticed a group of them had been looking back.

[Denny Benedict]: Right. It was the same group that had pointed their riffles originally on the field, and had also been talking amongst themselves. Pictures show that.

Now, after the shootings -- of course, we didn’t know it was live ammunition -- we got up, and was going “Man, that was unbelievable.” There was smoke. Then there was just, like, a quiet. Then you heard people scream, people, “We need a doctor.” “We need an ambulance.” And we’re going, “Something’s wrong here.” So we looked around, and you noticed in the parking lot, there’s -- some of the kids weren’t getting up. And it’s just amazing, a life changing in an instant. Some people, their lives change when maybe they get married, or the first time they see their kid. Mine changed the second I realized that people were shot.

So we went over. There were kids doing whatever they could to help them. Jeff Miller was the first one I saw, and he got hit in the head with an M-1 riffle. His face was gone; half of it was just literally gone. Pool of blood. It was just an image I’ll never -- I’ll never get that out of my mind. So kids did what they could. The ambulances came. Some were taken into the dorms. I mean, we didn’t know how many were dead or wounded or anything. It was just chaos, because it was just -- the Guardsmen, they were long gone not long after that.

After awhile -- after everybody was taken care of -- it started to sink in what happened. I had a feeling that I’ve never had, this feeling of hatred that was so overwhelming. I’ve never had it. Since that day -- which I’m glad -- but it was just -- just wanted to do something. And people were scattered just all over the place. There wasn’t really a main group. And people were going down that hill towards the National Guardsmen. We didn’t know what we were going to do, but they were from all directions just walking down the hill to confront them and do whatever. Luckily, when it got to about thirty yards, Dr. Glenn Frank -- who's well-known on campus -- he was down there, he was crying, he was begging kids to stop. He’s going, “These guys are murderers. They’ll kill you. They’ve already killed people. Because if you’ve ever listened to anybody in your life, please listen to me. Just stop. Sit down. Just don’t confront them. They’ll kill you.”

It was amazing. And it worked. He got the kids to stop, and people [saying], “We want justice.” Just screaming. And he was going back and forth between them. There was really nothing you could do. He was negotiating with them, trying to get kids to leave. Of course nobody wanted to leave. But there was nothing we could do. Finally, I don’t know, after twenty minutes, they started to put their gear back on. They were going to clear the area again, which could have been a total massacre, let alone after what happened. And he was begging with them, “You’ve already killed people. Don’t do this again.”

[Interviewer]: So Glenn Frank was begging with the National Guard?

[Denny Benedict]: The National Guard. And we’re looking around, and they wanted everybody to leave, but the other troops had basically surrounded the con -- there was no -- they didn’t leave an exit. And he finally goes, “Look, there’s no way out.” And they finally realized their mistake, and they opened up some areas. Then just slowly, one by one, people started to leave. It was just over, there was just nothing you could do. You wanted to do something, but it was just over.

So I went back to my dorm, and had to leave. I just packed what I could.

[Interviewer]: Did you go home?

[Denny Benedict]: Yeah, I hitchhiked home. Just tried to make sense of what happened.

[Interviewer]: Had word gotten back to your family about what happened?

[Denny Benedict]: No. The phone lines were down, as far as I know. They didn’t have cell phones in those days. No, they didn’t really know. I think the initial part -- report -- that first went out was that two Guardsmen were killed, and two students were killed. I think that was erroneous, just to take the heat off of the Guardsmen. Then the truth finally came out later.

My dad had just got home from work by the time I got home, and he goes, “What are you doing here?” -- because it was the middle of the quarter.

I go, “Well, I got thrown out of school.”

He goes, “Oh yeah, how many others?”

I go, “About 20,000 others.”

Then I told him what happened. When my mom came home, I told her part of the story -- my dad could handle it, and I didn’t --

She goes, “You weren’t there, were you.”

I go, “Ah, no mama, I wasn’t.”

My dad goes, “Yeah, you were there.”

[Interviewer]: When more stories started coming out with it, did you have the support of your family? What was their perspective of it once more --?

[Denny Benedict]: Our dad, I was actually surprise by his support. He was a World War II Veteran -- Purple Heart, got shot in the knee -- but he was against the Vietnam War. It was a different time, not like the war now is just kind of us against them. It was a different generation. There’s a lot of problems. But he supported me. He wasn’t into the violence; he didn’t like the burning buildings and all that. He didn’t understand it all, but he knew the war was unwinnable and a mistake.

[Interviewer]: What did you do that summer?

[Denny Benedict]: They didn’t really let us, well, we didn’t get to come back for quite awhile. I’d had four or five -- I’d figured it’d be good, I’d be able to get a job because I’d be back before all the other college kids came back, but I couldn’t get a job. I went to the -- a guy that knew me my whole life, that [was in] job services, he goes, “Oh, yeah, well, you’re pretty early.”

And I go, “Well, you know, I went to Kent State.”

And he goes, “Oh, we don’t have any jobs.”

I go, “What do you mean, you don’t have any jobs?” I go, “Before you said there’s all kinds of jobs, and now you find out I went to Kent State, and now --“

He goes, “Nope. Sorry.”

To him, I was like an evil person. I went to Kent State, so I was a radical, one of those crazy college kids. So I couldn’t get a job that summer. I just did all kinds of different part-time jobs. I don’t know, that’s just the way the town was, held it against me.

[Interviewer]: Did you experience any other kind of discrimination for being a Kent State student?

[Denny Benedict]: Yeah. I went to a graduation party for a girl, was a couple years younger, in May. Her aunt was there -- I think I might have had a Kent State shirt on -- and she goes, “Oh, yeah, I know all about Kent State. Those students, they should have shot more of them.”

I go, “Well, that’s not exactly right.”

She goes, “Yeah, the students were all at fault, and they started everything, and they were shooting at the National Guardsmen.”

And I go, “Well, that’s not true.”

She goes, “Well, I know it’s true, because I read it in the paper.”

I go, “Well, I was there, so I can tell you what happened.”

She goes, “I -- that doesn’t mean anything.” She goes, “I know what I read, and I know the students were wrong.”

And I go, “I’ve got to leave.”

I know I was going to say something to her, and I didn’t, you know, this was a graduate party. And her sister, the mother of my friend, she apologized later. I’m surprised she didn’t say anything to her. I just had to leave, I was just so mad.

[Interviewer]: So did you end up going back to Kent State after they --

[Denny Benedict]: Yeah. I didn’t take summer school, I went back that fall. There was this different type of atmosphere here. There’s all kinds of rumors. They were checking I.D.s -- I think they were doing that during the summer. But the students were armed when they came back. Kids brought back their hunting rifles. You know, if you go into the rooms, there was -- kids were armed. They were going, “We’re not going through this again.”

[Interviewer]: In the dorm rooms, they kept them?

[Denny Benedict]: It was pretty intense. There was a lot of rumors flying. They even had a rumor hotline, they had a phone number that you could call, you know, “Is it true that they’re going to turn this into a psychiatric hospital? Is this true?” The rumors were flying.

Kent was the least radical school in the world. Before May 4th -- the week before, when Ohio State was having the riots and tearing things up -- we had a campus-wide water fight. For this to happen in Kent just didn’t make any sense. But we became the eye of the nation, and schools like Berkley and Columbia waited until Kent did something, and then they would do stuff. All of a sudden things changed. It was quite amazing.

[Interviewer]: You mentioned earlier that what you saw obviously changed you for the rest of your life. What do you think it changed in you? How do you think your future was shaped by your experience?

[Denny Benedict]: Well, it changed the way I felt about government. When I left here, I graduated, I didn’t pursue a job with, like, the State of Ohio, which turned out to be a mistake later on. But Governor Rhodes, I go, I’m not going to work for the state. These people tried to shoot me. I held quite a bit of grudge against them. [My] political views changed from being really having no views to becoming quite a liberal. Anybody who knows me hears the Kent State stories.

[Interviewer]: Some of the students that were on campus, like you were on May 4th, were interviewed by the FBI for one reason or another, just being spotted in the crowd. Where you interviewed by the FBI?

[Denny Benedict]: I got a questionnaire from them, but I wasn’t contacted by them. A couple guys I know were. In fact, they had donated a couple things at a historical center: one of the bullet casings and a tear gas canister. I just happened to be there and I looked down, and go, “Hey, I know these guys. They lived right across the hall from me.” Yeah, I was interviewed by a couple TV stations and all, not by the FBI or the police.

[Interviewer]: Are there any more thoughts you’d like to share about the event, how it’s affected you, Kent State in general?

[Denny Benedict]: I think one thing: there’s more victims to this. There was first girlfriend I had on campus -- she was eighteen, Sue Phillips from Chardon, just wonderful, beautiful girl. When they shut the school down, everybody had to leave. She was a passenger on a motorcycle, the week after was in a car wreck and was killed, which wouldn’t have happened. But I think there’s other victims like that. Other things happened to other people besides the four that were shot. Nine others were wounded. I had talked to Dean Kahler -- who's paralyzed -- but I talk to him a lot. About eight years ago I asked him if he had forgiven the National Guard, and he said he had. He goes, “Yeah, I made peace with that years ago. What happened [is] what happened. I’ve forgiven them.”

[indistinct] Even to this day I haven’t forgiven them. I’ll never forgive them. In my mind, it would be a disservice to the kids that were killed. That’s my burden to bear, but I -- the hate's gone, but the forgiveness, that’s not going to happen. I’ll never forgive them.

[Interviewer]: Well, if that’s all, thank you so much for your interview.

[Denny Benedict]: Thank you. I appreciate you letting me.