Steve Sharp, Oral History

Recorded: May 3, 2000
Interviewed by Sandra Perlman Halem
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]: This is Sandra Perlman Halem. It is 2:30 on May 3rd. We are in the Alumni Center doing an interview. We will begin. Would you like to tell me where you were on May 4th?

[Steve Sharp]: Well, yeah. But I think I want to start with April 30th or May 1st. I was 19 1/2 years old living in a dormitory on campus. And it was my second year up here. And most of us were spending a lot of time worrying about keeping our grades up, so we didn't get drafted. I kind of think my major was staying out of the draft. I changed it a lot of times but that seemed to -- but anyway, that day on April 30th, Nixon decided to escalate the war which made us all figure, "Man, now we're probably, we're going to end up going!" And so they organized a burial of the U.S. Constitution the next day at noon. And I attended that. And there was a ROTC kid came over and tried to stop everybody from doing it and they kind of booed him away. And that was pretty much that and we went about our day. And I went to a party downtown in some house Friday night. And there wasn't much going on. And all of a sudden some people came running in the door and said that all hell had broken loose downtown and the revolution had begun. I had no idea what they were talking about really except it sounded like something was going on. And so we were sort of watching out the window. And we saw police chasing people with billy clubs up and down the streets. And so we figured we better sneak our way back to campus -- our safe haven -- which my friend and I did. And we stayed up, everybody stayed up almost all night in the dorm.

And the next day, Saturday, pretty much exhausted from the whole thing. And wondering what's going on. And everybody talking and wandering around. And then I took a nap in the afternoon. I just had to -- I had been -- and anyway, my parents called and woke me up worrying about me. Wondering what's going on up there. And all I could think of is I had heard there was going to be a...they were going to burn the ROTC building in demonstration that night. And my first reaction to what time it was was, "Oh gee, I overslept. If you hadn't woke me up, I would've missed going over for the burning of the ROTC building." And they said, "Wait a minute." And then I said, "Well, I'll be careful." And anyway, I was, I had my priorities and I said I was fine. And I got off the phone and I went over to The Commons.

[Interviewer]: Now when you said they were going to, someone said they were going to burn the ROTC building, this was a rumor that had ...

[Steve Sharp]: Yeah. Actually it had, by early in the afternoon, I'd heard it from a number of sources that it was going to happen that night. And so, I went over. And there it was; just a bunch of standing around and yelling at the building for a long time. And we were all on the, what would be the north side of the building, the demonstrators. And I remember some of the marching around that went on but I don't remember it clear enough to recollect all of what went on up until this point. But what they did, what ended up happening is some people threw some rocks and broke some windows. And finally some guy ran up and with a lighter or something and lit a drape. And it poofed and was gone. And the place didn't catch on fire or anything. It didn't look like it was going to go the way I had heard. And then somebody threw something else in a window and nothing happened. And then somebody finally got something burning on one corner of the place. And the fire department arrived. And then it started getting interesting. Some kid thought of, after the firemen had their hoses all out, thought of going up, 'cause there was a big length of hose right by the students, go over and cut it. And that went over real big. Everybody got a kick out of that. And then the fire department didn't know what to do. They backed off. And then finally police came and helped them. And the way I remember it, the building was barely burning at that point. And they chased us, everybody away. And I was chased up the Blanket Hill passed the ... actually I went directly up where the old archery shed was. And a couple guys standing there on the hill 'cause when we were on the hill, we didn't have to keep running, they decided it was time to fight back already. And they broke into the archery shed and were going to get the bows and arrows out to distribute to fight back with the police. And a couple of wiser students, three or four of them, heard what was going on, and threw everything back in the shed, dragged the guys away from the shed and burned the shed to keep the students from arming themselves with bows and arrows. Which I've never heard anybody tell why that little shed was burned. But thank God it was! Because if a bunch of eighteen year olds start shooting bows and arrows at the police ... So anyway, then, that was ... then we all just ended up finding our way back towards our dorms. And since I lived on, in the front of the campus, we stood out in the front and watched the National Guard coming down the Main Street, in all their splendor. Or whatever you want to call it. It was kind of scary. It was -- anyway, break, can I?

[pause]

[Steve Sharp]: After the Guards appeared to be coming right through campus, we were up for quite awhile. But I remember eventually I went to bed and we got up Sunday morning to this eerie strange new place we were at, were a military-occupied campus. And there's already been tear gas that we could smell. And anyway, we wandered around campus. It seemed they were posted everywhere. We weren't allowed in groups of more than four. So we wandered around in groups of four, four friends, not too far from another group of four friends. And anyway, some people were trying to buddy up to the Guard up by the Administration Building. And some of the Guard were nice. But still there were these troop carrier-type things - they looked like tanks to me but without guns on them -- wandering around the campus. And there was jeeps and -- it was, anyway, it was for me, it was quite a traumatic experience to have like a war zone here on Kent's campus. So anyway, the day went on by and in the evening there was some people started demonstrating again a little bit over on The Commons. And by this time now tear gas seemed to be a common ingredient. We'd already learned if we carried a handkerchief and kept watering it down we could put it over our face and it wasn't too painful. But anyway, they started chasing, the National Guard starting chasing people some. And anyway, I ended up in a group that ended up down on front campus. And we ended up having to sit down on the street. And we were saying that we'd get back on the campus when the Guard got off campus. We were going to draw the line and challenge them to get out of here and let's get life back to normal. And anyway, we heard that somebody said something about that the President of the University was on his way and it was going to get straightened out and all of this. And then they kept ordering us off the street. And everybody ignored and everybody was pretty much fed up. They were willing to just get run over already at this point. They didn't want this military thing going on at our school. So, after a while, these three, two chrome-helmeted generals - I don't know who else they would be with, but the ones who were in charge had chrome helmets - they picked three or four of us out of the crowd to come up and talk to them. And they were telling us, they started trying to tell us how that yes they were going to do this. That if we could get these kids back off, they'd make arrangements to have the Guard off campus. They'd just keep them off campus and as long as we stayed on campus. And they would get the President of the University out here. And they basically were pretty convincing. They kind of convinced us to assist them in getting the people off the street. And so we didn't go for it immediately. But they kept, you know, promising and acting like genuine people. And then, so we decided to turn around and walk back over. We weren't very far, ten feet from the people sitting on the street, and started lobbying to get off the street. And most of the people were saying, "Nah, they're just lying to you!" and "Don't believe them!" And finally we got probably half the people started getting off the street. And then a number of people just absolutely wouldn't. There wasn't that many that absolutely wouldn't. But most people would stood up at least. And as soon everybody but maybe a dozen were standing, all of a sudden the Guard and police ran into the double-time charge on us. Bayonets. And I call double-time by some, you know, some kind of trot, not quite a run at you. Well, we all freaked and just ran for our lives. And while I was running, there was a girl running along side me. I saw her fall down. I stopped to reach back to help her up. And as I did, as I turned around, I watched a Guardsman with his hideous mask, take his bayonet and go down like he was bayonetting her. And then he pulled back out of the ground or her and went like that at me and start continuing to charge. So I wasn't able to help her. I just had to keep running. Well, they chased us up to what we thought was the old library building. And they divided the group, the building divided the group. And I was in the one that ended up heading east on campus. And we ended up -- they chased us clear over to Tri-Towers. I didn't -- I lived on front campus. But anyway, a good friend of mine and I ended up in Tri-Towers. We barricaded -- they said they were going to, anybody who didn't, they were going to do a room to room search. And the Guard surrounded the whole building. And they had guys out there in their uniforms laying on their bellies with their rifles. They had trained on Tri-Towers. And we were looking out the window and they said that they were going to come in and go room to room. So my friend and I decided to barricade ourselves in one of the TV lounges. And we piled the furniture up by the door and saved two little sofas for ourselves. And the two of us had that room to ourselves. And we ended up sleeping in there for a few hours. And we woke up just a few hours before dawn and there was no sign of anybody anywhere outside or anything. So we decided to try to make it back to our Moulton Hall where we lived. And we started across, I got out of Tri-Towers. And as soon as we got out, maybe a hundred yards, not even that, a few hundred feet, we started seeing these platoons wandering the campus. These little ... two rows of men. I don't know how many. And they just seemed to be coming up over every different hill. There was one here, one there. And we were diving behind trees. And we even, one of those practice football fields, not the one where ... not that one, but the one over closer to Tri-Towers. We ended up having to belly our way across it in the predawn hours, lie still, because another group of platoon goes over that hill. But, all in all, we made it. And they didn't find us. And we got back to our dorm.

And now we're on Monday morning. And we both went to sleep. And he woke me up and said, "Hey, we're going to miss that noon rally on campus, or on The Commons." So we hurriedly got dressed, or I hurriedly got dressed. And we ran over from our dorm over to The Commons. Got over there and wondered where our friends were. My friend rang the Victory Bell. And I went -- and we heard that my other dorm friends and good friends were on the other side of the hill, on the other side of the architecture building. So I went running up the, while my friend was ringing the bell, I went running up the side of the south side of the architecture building's hill. And as I got almost, almost about half way up, I was along the wall of the building there, and the National Guard came up the other side and crested the hill. And what was the, what would have been the rear of this group, basically the whole group started to turn around, but the front, looked like the front row turned around all in unison. And some of them squatted down so the other guys behind them could shoot over their heads. And one of the guys didn't turn around and just trained his gun on me. And I just stood there looking at that guy. And he just stood there looking at me. Although I guess you can't see them with those masks on anyhow. Those gas masks make them look like ... Well anyway, O.K., so I could see what was happening. They were shooting at where my friends were supposed to be. And so I stood there until that guy took his gun off of me. And then they kind of looked like they were starting to mill around just a bit. And so I went running down to The Commons yelling, "They're shooting! They're shooting at us!" And anyway, something to that effect. And somebody, a couple people grabbed me and shoved me and somebody punched me in the ear, which ended up bleeding, telling me, "Nobody's shooting anybody!" Well, I decided it might be safer to go back up over the hill. So I turned around and ran back up over the hill. And I got to the top of the hill, I had to go right by the Guard. And the Guard, now they were definitely just milling around. And these two girls came over by me, and as I was coming up the hill, and said, "We got to get them to get help, get ambulances! A lot of people hurt!" So, they kind of dragged me over with them towards the Guard. And the Guard said, "Nobody's hurt! Nobody's hurt!" And then the girl said, "Do you have any dimes? We'll go call ambulances ourselves!" And so we frisked my pockets and I happened to have dimes. I don't know why. So they dragged me into, these two girls dragged me into the architecture building and I was just shaking, giving them my dimes. And they're trying to call ambulances. And then we went back out, I went back outside. And we tried to keep people back away from some of the wounded, so not too many people over them to give them air. Kind of forming a ring to hold back. And then we went back down the hill into The Commons and sat there. And decided it was time that now we weren't going anywhere. And it was time for them to leave our campus. And we sat there. It was the most emotional time of my, well, one of the -- [tape ends].

[new tape] -- over and kind of telling the National Guard that, asking them to leave and this kind of thing, we thought. And anyway, at some point, he would come back, professors would come back over to us and then go back over. And finally we watched one of the National Guard hotshots shove one of those professors. And he came back over and he was like almost in tears. He started begging us to get off campus or get out of there because they'd probably kill us all. And we were sitting there and some of us really didn't care at that point. But people did start getting up a little bit. But really what got us to get up was the Guard started this fancy charge formation. They started out as one big long line and it broke into a whole bunch of little lines. And they started twisting and turning. And it seemed like they were coming from every direction. And we all fled for our lives. I can just remember some girl I held onto. And just so, she couldn't run fast enough. And I don't have any idea who she was but she was, I was almost dragging her to help her get out of there.

And we went back to our dorms then. And as soon as we got back to Moulton Hall, they told us that the University was already closed. And that we had to leave immediately and we couldn't take any of our stuff with us. So they took me, put me in a station wagon and took me out to the interstate and dropped me off to find my own way home. And --

[Interviewer]: Who dropped you?

[Steve Sharp]: Head of the dorms set this up. They had vehicles, people who had cars. I didn't know the people in the car. I wasn't the only one taken out. There were some other people taken out to the freeway exit.

[Interviewer]: Just dropped off at the freeway?

[Steve Sharp]: Yeah, at the entrance out at 43 there. And I hitched back to Columbus where -- ran into a whole lot more interesting things from people saying, "Wished they'd killed them all" to, I don't want to even talk about what the next few years were like with people's opinions. But I did get out of Ohio! I think I'll stop there.

[Interviewer]: Great.

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