Steven Crabtree, Oral History

Recorded: May 4, 1995
Interviewed by Connie Sickels
Transcribed by Lisa Whalen and Kate Medicus 

Okay. My name is Steven R. Crabtree. I currently am a student at Kent State, about to graduate in May. Also I am a reporter for the Record-Courier. I'm thirty five years old, and May 4th, 1970, I was ten years old. I have pretty vivid recollections of that time because I was living in Canton, which was close enough -- close enough to -- for people to be concerned, yet not close enough for people to be scared out of their wits. But I can remember the -- the tension of that time really well and -- and my strongest memory of it, is riding in the car with my dad. Now, I don't know what day this was, it could have been a couple days after the shootings, but I'm really not sure. But there was a report on the radio about the students being killed. And my immediate reaction, I mean -- I -- in fifth grade that year, I had organized a "student power" protest. In fact, it resulted in me like, leaving the public schools and going to a private school. Because, you know, my parents didn't want me to feel stifled. It wasn't because I had problems, but because my mom looked at me as a gifted child and -- and felt like I was expressing frustration in that.

But anyways, I was -- so I was really sympathetic with the students. Of course, being young and -- and I was just horrified that they would shoot somebody, just for -- for protesting. And -- and my dad, his reaction was, "Well, they had it coming." You know, they were going to burn down the school, they were threatening -- basically they were threatening society, and that they had to be stopped. You know, that something had to be done to put a stop to it. And to me, that was -- that was when I first realized what the generation gap was. I'd heard the term before, and -- but the concept had always eluded me until then. And I realized that -- that there was such a distance between myself and my father, in terms of years and -- just that, we could be oriented on something like that so differently, yet be part of the same family, and have everything else about us so similar. That's all I have.

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