Linda Cooper-Leff, Oral History

Recorded: May 21, 2008
Interviewed by Craig Simpson
Transcribed by Shannon Simpson

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 morning. The date is May 21, 2008, and my name is Craig Simpson. We are conducting an interview today for the May 4 Oral History Project, and could you please state your name?

[Linda Cooper-Leff]: Linda Cooper-Leff.

[Interviewer]: Okay. Linda, where were you born?

[Linda Cooper-Leff]: I was born in [the] Cleveland area, and lived in South Euclid all my life.

[Interviewer]: What years did you go to Kent State?

[Linda Cooper-Leff]: '66 through '70.

[Interviewer]: So you were a senior in 1970?

[Linda Cooper-Leff]: I was a senior, yes.

[Interviewer]: What made you decide to go to Kent State?

[Linda Cooper-Leff]: I was in education, going into education. And of course Kent had an excellent reputation for education.

[Interviewer]: Education was your major?

[Linda Cooper-Leff]: Mm hm.

[Interviewer]: How would you describe the University prior to the events of that year? Just some of your general impressions.

[Linda Cooper-Leff]: It was interesting. There were people who were totally apathetic and then people who were big anti-war people, but nothing--I think that--it was a good party school.

[Interviewer]: You're not the first person to have said that.

[Linda Cooper-Leff]: And, in retrospect, I see a lot of what transpired--at least the beginning of what transpired on May 4th--rooted in the fact that it was a beautiful sunny weekend.

[Interviewer]: What was your point of view regarding the war at the time?

[Linda Cooper-Leff]: Well, that was interesting. I was against the war, but I wasn't vehemently against the war because I was engaged to someone who had just gotten back, two years before, from Vietnam. So I understood the full perspective of everybody's views.

[Interviewer]: Take us through your memories of the events of that weekend, and you can start wherever you like. Some people start on the day [of May 4], and some people start before that.

[Linda Cooper-Leff]: Well, what was interesting was that I had been married. I had lived in Prentice Hall for three years prior to the May 4th incident, and I had been married about a month before. As a matter of fact, I had gotten married on April 4th. And, so I was then--I began commuting. I had many friends at Prentice, and I had called them to find out what was going on, what was transpiring, and they filled me in. They were mostly education majors, there were people who were art majors who were going to be teaching art, and there were people who were early childhood majors. So I was calling back to my friends at the dorm and just kind of finding out what was going on.

And they said, "Well, it was really strange. We had walked over to the library and an armored personnel carrier came up" and told them that they had to disperse because there were more than three people walking across campus to go to the library. I said, "Ooh, that's not too cool." They said, "No, it's really strange." But, it was interesting. They said, you know, and on Saturday and Sunday, they said, the whole--how can I put it?--the whole atmosphere was, everybody was bringing the kids from out--you know, the children, small kids, to come to see the burned-out ROTC buildings. And they had picnic baskets and they were having their picnic lunches and it was like a carnival. It was a just "everybody come and see the Guard." And they said, "However, we can't walk across campus to study for finals and get ready for that stuff, because that would be construed as a group gathering of students." So I said, "Well, what's your take? Will there be classes on Monday?" They said, "Yes, there's gonna be classes." I said, "Great."

So, I had a ten o'clock creative writing class. I went to the creative writing class, and we had gone into the classroom and the professor at the time said, "You know, we are in a creative writing class and basically we need to see what is transpiring around us." These were mostly seniors, okay, and so they weren't radical people. So he said, "I want you to walk around and look around, and your next assignment is to write about it." And so that's what we did. Interestingly enough, as we walked by--we were at Satterfield at the time--as we walked by the people who were standing guarding the burned-out ROTC building, one of the students quipped, "Boy, I really bet you'd really have--there's other places I'm certain you'd rather be right now, more or less, and we apologize for your having to be here." And, with that, the Guardsmen next to him said, "[unintelligible grumbling]." And we said, "Oh! Sorry, sorry, sorry. I'm sorry we touched a nerve. We'll go away." And that's exactly what we did.

[Interviewer]: So he was yelling at you?

[Linda Cooper-Leff]: Oh, he was yelling. And the professor said, "Okay, well, we'll disperse now." Nobody was out to make any points or anything like that. I'll never forget, though, they said, my friends had said, "There's tanks! There's tanks!" Of course, they said, "Oh, those aren't tanks, those are armored personnel carriers." But, [unintelligible], okay. And as I came up along Summit: "There's tanks! Tanks on campus!" It was mind-boggling. It was totally mind-boggling to see what was going on.

[Interviewer]: So, just to clarify, there were actual tanks that you saw on campus?

[Linda Cooper-Leff]: No, they were armored personnel carriers.

[Interviewer]: They were armored personnel carriers. Okay.

[Linda Cooper-Leff]: Except I--

[Interviewer]: You just identified them as tanks.

[Linda Cooper-Leff]: They were very large and quite awe-inspiring.

I had normally my break at lunch time after creative writing class. I was in an education class after that which would take me directly across campus right through the heart of everything going on. But I usually joined a number of friends from sailing club down in the Student Union. And, I thought to myself, Wow, that's going to take me right through a demonstration area. I think I'll go back to my friend's dorm, and, where I lived, and I'll have my lunch there. Which is what I did. Well, one of my friends was working the desk at Prentice. So she was going down there, and I sort of hung around and was talking with her, just trying to stay out of harm's way. And we heard stuff going on and we heard yelling and everything else. So I decided, well, I'm going to go upstairs and see my friends who were upstairs. I lived on the second floor. I thought, well maybe I'll just go down to the study hall at the end of Prentice to see what's--if I can get a perspective.

I walked down to the study hall--all hell broke loose. There [was] tear gas rolling through Prentice, which was directly back at the Guardsmen, not at the students. And I'm looking down, and I saw someone get shot, right under the window, right below the window. And, I--it was like--I can't even tell you how aghast I was. So I went down to see how my friend was doing. She had had a heart condition, and I figured with the tear gas rolling through she might not be doing too well. She was trying to get a line out, which was impossible. A gentleman ran through the door and screamed, "Call an ambulance! Call an ambulance! Somebody's been shot! My friend's been shot!" And she was trying to get a line out and she couldn't she couldn't get a line from the dorm at all. Just moments later, he came back through the door and said, "Don't bother. She's dead." Oh, boy. That's when I lost it, and so did a lot of other people.

At any rate, after the, the ambulances--they got people, finally got to the center. And, of course, they were keeping people away, but in some instances they were keeping the wrong people away. I had a, I can't even remember what year it was, but it was a Volkswagen Carmengia. And first they weren't letting anybody move, on campus. Of course parents were calling, or trying to call. They didn't know what was going on. When we finally managed to get a line out we called, we got through to one of the parents, and we said, I said, "I have a Carmengia that seats two and a half. We're bringing five people out." So they didn't, so the parents didn't have to try and come in through the curtain that they had put up. And so, literally, I took, I did take five people back to Cleveland, anybody who was going to the eastside that could fit in the car. Thank goodness I was a lot thinner then and so was everyone else. We got everybody back to Cleveland and then dispersed from there. And, I mean, it was, I couldn't believe it happened.

[Interviewer]: How did you handle your remaining course work?

[Linda Cooper-Leff]: I did some of it by correspondence. I had contracted--"contract grading"--for an "A" in my education course. I completed that, which was good. It was my final education course prior to my [unintelligible]. I didn't have a real heavy load, I had a history class and I had the creative writing class, and I had one other thing. So that was it.

[Interviewer]: What was your family's reaction to the event. Did it differ from yours at all?

[Linda Cooper-Leff]: Actually, my family was very sympathetic as far as what happened. The interesting perspective was from my Vietnam Veteran husband. I thought it was just incredible. He shook his head. He said, "You know, when I was in Vietnam, and I was stationed on guard duty"--now this was not, this was, some of it was in Saigon, and some of it was other areas. He said, "I was given one round." He said, "I wasn't allowed to have bullets!" He said, "I was in a war zone!" As we came to find out, the Guard had been on the truckers' strike and all that stuff. But he said, "I can not believe that they would give"--he called them "Sunday Soldiers"--"[a] lot of live ammunition for crowd control." As I discovered later on that day, if I had been standing in the study lounge below, that window was shot out. Along with most of the cars in the, I mean, there was a Volkswagen that looked like, it looked like poor Herbie. It seemed like there were a lot of bullets flying around that day for crowd control. It was, as I said, my Vietnam Veteran husband said, "No way this should have happened."

[Interviewer]: What years was he in Vietnam?

[Linda Cooper-Leff]: He was in Vietnam in '67, '68.

[Interviewer]: Was he a student as well in 1970?

[Linda Cooper-Leff]: No.

[Interviewer]: No, okay.

[Linda Cooper-Leff]: No, he was not a student.

[Interviewer]: Are there any other thoughts you would like to share?

[Linda Cooper-Leff]: Hmm, I don't know. There are so many of them come just rushing back to you. I mean, reminiscenses of friends and things like that, and it just, it still boggles my mind that it actually happened. Especially at a sleepy little town like Kent, where the kids were--there was some disruption, they turned all the students out of the bars on a warm summer night, instead of saying, "Stay here and get drunk." Because that's what everybody wanted to do.

[Interviewer]: That was that Friday night?

[Linda Cooper-Leff]: That was that Friday night. I had been here Friday, and of course there was no hint of anything that would be transpiring. And it was incredible. Incredible.

[Interviewer]: Thank you very much for taking the time to talk to me today.

[Linda Cooper-Leff]: Thank you.

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