Lloyd De Vos, Oral History

Recorded: May 3, 1995
Interviewed by Sandra Perlman Halem
Transcribed by Athena Salaba  

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.

[Lloyd De Vos]: I attended Kent State University from 1966 through 1970 and I served as a student senator in 1968 and ran for student body vice president. The year following the events of May 4, 1970, I gave various interviews to the FBI at their request. I do not know whether those are part of the archives or not, but in the event they are not somebody should probably get them.

[Interviewer]: Good Idea.

[Lloyd DeVos]: Where I was on May 4th, was that I was attending classes. To the best of my recollection some twenty five years later, I was attending class at the Music and Speech Center, I believe it was, actually now that I remember, I think that it was Music 285H.

[Interviewer]: That's a good one.

[Lloyd De Vos]: And Sandy Scheuer was in the class -- this was my senior year and I had an Art and Music requirement in order to graduate, and this was the music class that I was taking in order to satisfy my Fine Arts requirement. As I recall, I left Music class with a bunch of the other people who were in the class, and we were all walking and talking together -- a number of us had a class over at Bowman Hall.

Sandy Scheuer was in that group. I didn't know Sandy all that well, but since we were both members of the Honors College, we had a passing acquaintanceship. We all walked out of the building and we walked over in the direction of Bowman Hall. We went across the street between -- ah, what -- between Prentice and Music and Speech, -- I forget what it is twenty-five years later -- and we began going through the Prentice parking lot. When you go past Prentice Hall there is a stairway that leads down to the right, that goes down to the tennis -- around behind the tennis courts over to where Engleman is. And from there we could see, or I could see, there was a large commotion on The Commons, there was tear gas or some type of smoke coming up from The Commons and people milling about and a great amount of noise.

At the time I was dating a nice girl named Laurena Bering, who lived in Engleman, and when I walked immediately past there, for some reason a thought came into my head -- that I don't want to go that way, and to this day I do not know why the thought came into my head -- that I didn't want to continue along with everybody else, and walked down around behind Taylor Hill and overpassed the gym to Bowman Hall. I decided to cut class and go join my girlfriend for lunch in -- in Terrace. I should add, at the time, because I was a former student senator, I had an all campus meal ticket. So, I could eat in any of the cafeterias that I wanted.

I turned back, I went down the stairway by -- I think it's Prentice Hall -- going down towards the tennis court. And I just reached the bottom of the stairway, about the point where the handrail ends going down there, when I heard -- something. I have no clear recollection as to what I heard, whether it was rifle shoots, backfires, or what have you, and I simply kept on going. I ended up in the Engleman lounge, and it was there that I learned of the events that took place on the campus.

Immediately afterwards came the announcements of the -- the campus curfew and I think it's all generally known what took place afterwards, we were all more or less told to grab what we could grab, and, and get out. I went back to my room in Leebrick -- I think it was Leebrick, but that's verifiable. I grabbed what I could grab and then my girlfriend and I caught a ride with two other people and ended up at her home.

The other interesting anecdote about this, is that my parents were home on May 4th, 1970 in New Jersey, actually -- they were not at home. They lived there and they'd gone down to the University of Maryland, where my brother was being considered for admission. And of course, when the news of what happened here reached the University of Maryland, then that campus went up. And they were driving down Route One, by the University of Maryland, when -- to use the words of my father -- all hell broke loose and the National Guard and the State Police started pouring onto the University of Maryland campus. And they turned on the radio, and heard what happened at Kent State. Meanwhile, a doctor who lived below us, had heard what happened here, came up to my parents' home and, by sheer accident or coincidence, they had left the front door open. Finding no car in the driveway and the front door open, he concluded that they had gotten news of something happening to me, and headed for Ohio. I eventually got in contact with them about a day and a half later from my girlfriend's home in Warren.

[Interviewer]: The doctor headed for Ohio?

[Lloyd De Vos]: No, my parents had headed for Ohio.

[Interviewer]: Oh, your parents had headed.

[Lloyd De Vos]: Excuse me. I, eventually, contacted them about a day and a half later.

[pause]

Shortly thereafter, -- again, I am not sure of the time -- but I was leaving Cleveland going down to Washington, and this was in the month of May or June of 1970, and I happened to be seated on an airplane next to then Congressman Charles Vaneck. Who I think -- I forget -- I think was a Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, and when he heard I was at Kent State -- I was discussing this with him.

And what I told him was what I'd heard at the time, which was both from the newspaper account that appeared in one of the local papers about -- actually the newspaper account said it was a reporter from the student newspaper who was photographing people and was carrying a thirty-eight pistol. The way that I heard the story was that it was not a newspaper reporter, but it was a gentleman who had press credentials from the Akron Beacon Journal, who did not have a pistol but had a starter's pistol.

And that this starter's pistol had been discharged and that that was the event that caused the soldiers to believe that they -- or the National Guardsmen -- to believe that they were been fired upon and started the shooting. In any event, I told the story to Congressman Vaneck and he explained to me that this was not the story that he had been reading in the national press. And I said, well that's -- in the brilliance of youth -- I said well, that's fine, I know the truth. And he looked at me and said "Son let me teach you something. There is a difference between reality and apparent reality. Reality may be what happened, but apparent reality is what people believe and it's what the nation is going to take action based on," and it's a lesson I've carried with me through the rest of my life since that time.

[pause]

OK, we just took a short pause here and the interviewer asked the question of when I knew that Sandy Scheuer, someone whom I knew, had died. The first news that I'd gotten as to the identities of the students, I think, was really sometime the next day, after we'd already left the campus, and I'd been hitching rides across to Warren, Ohio. And I seem to recall getting to my girlfriend's home and either seeing a newspaper or a television program, or something, listing the names of the people. I believe -- and again memory, memory is bad after this many years -- but I believe that, I'm not sure whether Allison Krause was in the Honors College or not, but I believe she was.

[Interviewer]: I don't know, I have to check that.

[Lloyd De Vos]: Check that. But you know, the Honors College at Kent State at the time was a relatively small program and we all knew who each other were even, because we all attended the same Honors classes together, the "H" designations, and they were only open to Honors College people. And I recall hearing about it -- and thinking to myself, "oh my God" -- but also, frankly my recollections as I sit here today, is that the entire series of events was just such a shock and such a disruptive event, that it was just simply one more thing into an entire turmoil of everything else that was going on at the time. And I don't recall thinking "oh my God this is somebody I knew that was killed, perhaps I should have," but just it was "oh my God, this whole thing happened and this, and this, and this, and this."

And then, of course, that was graduation year and then came the problems of trying to actually graduate because I'd been admitted to law school, and then of course came the graduation ceremony, where I did come up to graduate, and I do have the recollection of IDs being checked and only being allowed on campus with positive identification and positive -- it was a rather constrained graduation.

[Interviewer]: When was the graduation? I'm not ...

[Lloyd De Vos]: Sometime in 1970, I think it was sometime in June. We received notices -- or July -- we received notices that we could come back, the graduation was this day, we are limited to the number of guests, that we had to have our campus IDs with us in order to be admitted onto the campus to graduate -- that the people with us had to have positive identification -- of course the term at the time was not "positive identification" -- but identification as well in order to be on the campus to attend, and it was a rather muted event to say the least.

I also recall -- I don't recall whether it was the time of the graduation or some other time -- that we were allowed to come on campus, I think there were two days that the campus was open and we could get our things out of the dorms, because on May 4th we were told "pack up, pack what you could grab and go." And I remember the campus -- I have a visual memory of the campus being filled with moving trucks and U-Hauls, and anything that anybody could get on to get their stuff in and get it out of there, because the campus was being closed down again. And it wasn't the way that I'd envisioned ending university experience, but actually the other thing that comes to mind is that I, [pause] excuse me for a moment, excuse me if this rambles slightly, but twenty-five years later it's not necessarily coherent -- yeah, two other things.

First, during the evening of May 3rd -- I mean the campus was under curfew and the campus was being patrolled by National Guardsmen, they had the helicopters flying around with search lights, which was a highly disconcerting experience, because the helicopters were flying around the buildings and they were checking the rooms and every once in a while the search light would beam by a room, and frankly it was something out of a war movie. We were all watching the helicopters go by and, I guess, even today I hear a helicopter coming too close and there is a definite memory feedback that brings me back to this time, a thing of helicopters. Of course I've read since, and I've seen since the movies of people who've been in Vietnam and I was fortunate in that, or unfortunate as the case may be, in having a sufficiently high lottery number that I wasn't asked to go. But there is a definite association that I have with helicopters and it does bring me back to May 3rd.

And finally, there came an occasion a couple of weeks ago, when I was discussing some things with a gentleman in the government, in the US government today, and the question was asked to me "if you had to take a point in your life, which changed your life, what was it that made the change?" and instinctively, and I suspect without even thinking about it, I said being at Kent State on May 4th and discussing it, and frankly when I saw this, and I saw that the oral history was being taken after having said and thought about it, I could not -- not come in and do this.

We took another pause and the question was asked "if I could elaborate on how it did change my life."

During the period prior to the events of May 4th, I was involved in student government on the campus and I had viewed status quo as simply being a status quo without a lot of concern, and frankly without a political consciousness. Watching from the outside, but believing that normal political processes inevitably, without the necessity for thought, would lead to a correct result. Believing that perhaps policies that had been in place for a substantial period of time, necessarily should. This may sound like political rhetoric or perhaps a speech, and if so again I, I do apologize for, to anyone that is going to listen to this -- but frankly, as a result of what happened, I decided that I had to remain involved and become involved.

And afterwards I did become involved in the 1972 political campaigns in Washington, and I have continued to remain involved in trying to see that the processes that we have and the form of government we have, does accommodate change and not simply to accept something that simply is a status quo without necessarily challenging it and trying to see -- in my case within the system -- whether the reasons that existed for a policy, or a law, or something to come into being, necessarily remain in place at the time when it's being re-examined and re-questioned. I've done that and I continue to do that, but I also try to be open to the idea, and that's something also that this teaches, that just because somebody is challenging something or raising question, that doesn't make them a bad person or the idea that they have a bad idea and you have to be open and listen. And all that comes out of this experience.

 

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