Gayle Berman, Oral History

Recorded: July 27, 2012
Interviewed by Stephen Paschen
Transcribed by Amanda Faehnel

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]: Okay. This is Stephen Paschen speaking on July 27, 2012 at Kent State University Special Collections and Archives as part of the May 4 Oral History Project. I will be talking with Gayle Berman this afternoon and we will talk about the circumstances of May 4, but first I'd like to ask you a few biographical questions. First, can you tell me where you were born?

[Gayle Berman]: Cleveland, Ohio.

[Interviewer]: Did you grow up in Cleveland?

[Gayle Berman]: I did. I grew up in Brecksville.

[Interviewer]: High school?

[Gayle Berman]: Yeah, graduated from Brecksville High and then spent my first year at Tri-C [Cuyahoga Community College] and then transferred to Kent. I moved down the summer before--I think I came in August, July or August--and started that September. It was my second year.

[Interviewer]: So would that be '69?

[Gayle Berman]: Yeah, yes.

[Interviewer]: Okay, so 1969. What was behind your decision to come to Kent State?

[Gayle Berman]: Honestly, my friends and I, my girlfriends and I, had been coming down to Kent a couple years previous, to go clubbing, to go dancing, and so we would frequent the night spots. We would go to JB's and we would go to The Cove and we would go to--I can't think of the other place but I can see it--and met people and just decided I felt very comfortable and I decided to make a move then.

[Interviewer]: What did you decide to major in here?

[Gayle Berman]: Well, I majored in elementary education and had some thoughts about changing the major, and went to the education department and was talked out of leaving the education department. I was a little naive then. So anyway, I graduated with a degree in elementary education.

[Interviewer]: How would you characterize the atmosphere on this campus when you arrived? What kind of a place was it?

[Gayle Berman]: Well, at that age, I think we're all really very idealistic, but it was a very involved campus, I think. You know, everybody was caught up in the movements. It was 1969, so everybody was very aware politically and culturally, and wanting to be involved. I mean, we all participated--not myself directly--but we all had all kinds of idealistic ideas about how the world should be.

[Interviewer]: So you're including yourself in this group, thinking--

[Gayle Berman]: I'm including myself, but I don't want to put myself--I was more of a bystander, but I learned, during that time, that bystanding was contributing, and they made that very clear to me, and I thought that was the best part of my education.

[Interviewer]: Would you say was there conflict between students or between students and other--

[Gayle Berman]: I do remember, as time went on, yes, those different factions, the SDS and the black community, and there were just different groups that were starting to evolve and become very controversial. It would be written in the Kent Stater, different articles, and so it evolved over those three years and you could see it bubbling up and I'm not surprised that it came to a head that weekend.

[Interviewer]: So it sounds like maybe you witnessed some of the other demonstrations in the fall of '69, even before this happened.

[Gayle Berman]: No, I can't say that I witnessed any demonstrations, I just noticed that there were these people on campus and there was, you know, rumblings of, oh, the SDS, and how radical--just these radical factions. I personally wasn't quite sure, you know. I would read about them. There was a lot of people that thought they were evil, that you just didn't want to be anywhere near them or associated, you know, you wanted to go down the middle, but these were some of the interesting people.

So, yeah, I wanted to be exposed to a lot of different thoughts, like every campus student. I remember going to transcendental meditation meetings and my dad came down to see me one night and my roommates told him that that's where I was. He was, oh my goodness, you know? I came from a very conventional home, and so I was looking for all kinds of answers in all kinds of places, besides just my elementary school curriculum.

[Interviewer]: Can you recall how you felt about some of the issues of the times, like Civil Rights, or the war?

[Gayle Berman]: Yeah, I certainly was against the war, Civil Rights I certainly was for. I had a very idealistic view of all of those things. Even in high school, I remember kids that I graduated with, there was the lottery then, and they would run away to Canada because they didn't want to be. My boyfriend at the time, we sat in front of the TV and his number was eighty-one and we panicked. It was just horrible to think that your lives were going to change in a second because you were going to be drafted. So yeah, I was really aware of friends and just people around. None of us wanted the war.

[Interviewer]: Well let's turn and talk about the circumstances around the week or so around May 4, 1970. What can you tell me about your experiences, beginning on Thursday, April thirtieth and the next day and the next day and so forth?

[Gayle Berman]: I don't have a good memory of Thursday, although when you just said that Nixon was on TV that sort of rings a bell but I don't have a strong memory of that. My memory started probably that Friday and I remember being invited to a party across campus at College Towers and I remember going by myself and somewhere I knew that I wasn't supposed to be out and about. I don't have a good memory of why, except that I knew before going that there was tear gas going on and there was a chance that I could get tear gassed, which is what happened.

I don't know if it was around nine o'clock at night, I want to guess, but I was crossing campus from East Summit [Street] going toward College Towers, so going through that open area and I remember it being in the air and feeling the tear gas. And I never did go to College Towers. I turned around and then I started back and then that's when someone said that the ROTC building was burning. And so I went over there.

I guess I have to preface this by saying--I don't know if that's when they called the Martial Law or they asked us to stay inside, or if that was Friday or Saturday night. But I lived in a home with thirty-two girls on East Summit. It was owned by--she was a nurse, and she was raising two kids and this income was very important to her. I remember I paid three hundred dollars a month for a bedroom that was probably this big, with bunk beds and a single bed. So we were crammed into this house. And I remember her saying and being very fearful. She didn't want us to go out.

And she said, "Oh girls," she said, "Bring your boyfriends over and I'll make pies and we'll stay in." And so she was very adamant that we not leave. And I can't remember, as I said, if it was Friday night or Saturday night that she made that statement, but I left anyway.

So then when I came back and the ROTC building was burning--I'm sorry, I'm way out of order here.

[Interviewer]: That's alright. You're probably talking about Saturday, May 2. That's when the Guardsmen appeared.

[Gayle Berman]: Okay.

[Interviewer]: That's when the fire was.

[Gayle Berman]: But you know, I remember--well, the night that the people came up from Columbus, from Ohio State, and started burning downtown, what night was that?

[Interviewer]: Well, there was some trouble downtown on Friday night. The Guard wasn't here.

[Gayle Berman]: Okay. So Friday night, my best friend and I had popped popcorn and somebody came in the house and said downtown was burning. We grabbed the great big bowl of popcorn and her and I went running down Main Street with this bowl of popcorn to watch downtown burning. And we got there and just saw that it was on fire and I guess we went back. I don't remember anything after that. So then it must have been they declared the Martial Law, and that's when she said that, "Bring your boyfriends in and I'll make pies."

During the day, it was really noticeable that there were helicopters and there were tanks coming up. I can't think of the street right off of Summit--the main street, the first street--what is that one called? I can't think of it now.

[Interviewer]: Water Street?

[Gayle Berman]: No, the one, you know, where the main gate is, by DuBois [Book Store].

[Interviewer]: Lincoln.

[Gayle Berman]: Lincoln. So Lincoln, there were tanks lined up along Lincoln and I remember calling home and my parents couldn't hear me for the tanks and the helicopters overhead and that's when she wanted us to stay in. That's when I decided to go to the party. But before, earlier in the evening, my best friend and I walked up and down and talked to the National Guard that were sitting in these jeeps and tanks--not tanks, probably, but I thought they were tanks. And we were just chit-chatting and flirting with the guys because they were our age and they were saying they didn't want to be there and they had to be there and they were making excuses for why they were there.

So it was like a circus atmosphere. We were just walking around and everybody was kind of like in shock that they had invaded our campus, and like I said, there was army green everywhere. And then that's when she wanted us to stay in and then I crossed campus and then that's when I heard that the ROTC building was burning. And I got pretty close, and there was a crowd of us, and they were just really angry, and they kept saying, "Disperse! Disperse! Disperse!"

And we were just staying there, you know. So all of a sudden, I remember this National Guard with, I don't know, a long kind of a weapon, all of a sudden chasing me. Yeah, and for the first time I started to take it serious because I thought, Oh my gosh! He's chasing me personally. I don't have any weapons.

And what I learned later, this professor grabbed me and we were really close to Franklin Hall, and so he ushered me in Franklin Hall and kind of to safety, and that's when he told me who he was and I told him where I lived, which was right across from Franklin Hall, so I was able to get home very easily that night. But it was surprising to me that he would chase me personally, because I guess I was being defiant in not moving, but still.

So then, I'm trying to remember Sunday, and I don't have much memory of Sunday, except that it was pretty quiet, I think. And then Monday, I went to classes, and I had a class in the education building. So at 12:30, I was crossing campus and just happened to step into it.

Now I do remember. I think it was Sunday night that a bunch of us went down to the Robin Hood [Inn] and we were sitting in a booth, and I wasn't with this guy, but my memory is that there was this guy and he was talking kind of loud and he was mad and he said, "You know, I don't want my education interrupted and I don't want to go to war."

So he was just spouting off, and he just looked like your average kind of a guy. And the next day, when I was crossing campus, I swear, that was the guy with the red bandana that was ringing the bell, which was so surprising to me because he looked so different. I mean, the night before, he was just this regular guy saying, you know, "I don't want this war interrupting my life. I want to get an education and I want to go home." And, like I said, I thought it was him ringing the bell the next day.

So naturally, I just stood there and watched the guy in command and they had bullhorns and they were saying to disperse and nobody did and it seemed like minutes, and everybody was very defiant and they weren't doing anything. And then they threatened to throw tear gas and I remember it being almost like taunting, the kids were taunting, like laughing and here's this big military machine and so what?

And the taunting escalated and I felt like he was in his mind forced to react because the kids were being so defiant that he was threatening and nobody was paying any attention to his threats and so he had to escalate because he had to save face.

[Interviewer]: Are you speaking of the Guardsmen?

[Gayle Berman]: I'm speaking of--I can't think of his name, if you said his name, I'd know it--the guy that was doing the commands.

[Interviewer]: It doesn't matter.

[Gayle Berman]: The main guy--I can't think of his name, but anyway, because I don't remember the Guardsmen speaking--but whoever was doing the speaking and saying, "Disperse," and threatening us, and the more they threatened, the more everybody kind of laughed and taunted. So when he didn't get results and people weren't going away and the bell was ringing, he stepped it up and then he threatened to throw tear gas and everybody laughed at that, and so then he did, so then he threw tear gas and then the kids started throwing the tear gas back at him. It was just such a mockery, and he was so humiliated, I--

[Interviewer]: Were you on the hill then? I didn't ask to remember where you were.

[Gayle Berman]: I was by the bell. Very close to the bell because, like I said, I remember the guy's face from the night before. And I remember being very close. I don't remember feeling the effects of the tear gas like I had that night when I was crossing campus, but like I said, I saw them throwing the tear gas back and forth. They'd throw it out and the kids would throw it back at them. So the more he got humiliated, the more it escalated, because he didn't know what to do. I mean, he had this whole machine of people and he's in command and the kids aren't minding and what's he going to do? So that's when I think he didn't know what else to do but fire, and that's when he started to fire.

We heard shots and then somebody said in the crowd that somebody had been shot at the top of Taylor Hall, and I was at the bottom of Taylor Hall and all of a sudden--they called an ambulance and I remember the ambulance going up the hill and you know, like not on a road or a path or anything concrete, it went right over the grass and right up Taylor Hall and so I followed it and there was a guy laying face down with orange bell-bottoms. To be honest, I don't know who he was or what happened to him, I never did look into that.

But then I decided, after they put him in the ambulance, to come down the hill, well, not realizing that when I came down the hill I was surrounded. There were National Guard on the other side of Taylor Hall and then there were National Guard marching up the hill, and they were coming, squeezing me in the middle, and it was becoming really apparent because there was a crowd of us that were spread out over the hill, so it was quite a few people but all of a sudden the seriousness of it was there. I mean, we were like trapped because there were National Guards on all four sides.

And I remember a professor--my first thought was to kind of run, but I didn't know where I was going to run--and this professor grabbed me by the top of the head by my hair and slammed me on the ground and said, "Stay down." He was trying to save us, literally. And so we were all sitting around and it seemed like a very very long time. I don't know, it probably wasn't, but it seemed like it because we felt so trapped.

And I don't know--this is my memory, I don't know if it really happened--but I thought somebody had a guitar and somebody was starting to play music to calm the crowd because we were all really upset. And we just waited and waited and waited for an opportunity to get off the hill and I don't remember how long that was. I want to say twenty minutes, but I don't remember. And then somehow, I guess we got up and walked off and I don't remember how that happened but all of a sudden, the danger was over. I don't remember hearing that anybody was dead until later. Like I said, I don't even know the guy that I saw laying face down. I don't remember.

And then we went home and we were all like in shock and that's when they closed the school and told everybody to go home, and my best friend and I, that's when we decided to stay. Like I said, they barricaded the streets and they wanted everybody to leave--and it took a couple days for everybody to leave, but it became a ghost town very quickly. You didn't see many residents and there was not much going on and we just felt--I think we were there maybe two or three weeks after--as the weeks went on, we felt pretty unwelcome, even at the grocery store. Nothing real overt, but just a feeling that we better go home.

[Interviewer]: When did the Guardsmen leave?

[Gayle Berman]: I want to say the next day or so because, like I said, I remember the streets being barricaded. Pretty quickly. If not the next day, boy, the following. I don't remember them being there much after that because the school was closed down and they hadn't decided how we were going to finish our classes for a while. We were there a week or two and it wasn't until after I got home that we got a letter in the mail saying that we could--it was going to be a pass/fail system. For some reason my art class stuck in my mind and I had a sculpture to do and so somehow that got accomplished and we passed and--

[Interviewer]: Did you do all your work at home in Brecksville from then on?

[Gayle Berman]: Yeah, we did, but there--

[Interviewer]: So you stayed in town here at the place you lived on East Summit for a couple of weeks?

[Gayle Berman]: Right.

[Interviewer]: And the landlady didn't have any problem with that?

[Gayle Berman]: No, I don't remember that, because it seemed to me that things were in limbo for weeks about how they were going to handle, if we were going to finish or how we were giong to finish, and I was home before I got that letter, so it was a couple weeks, was my memory.

[Interviewer]: What happened that summer? What did you do that summer?

[Gayle Berman]: I don't remember. I'm sure I worked. Usually a friend I went to high school with would get me jobs. She didn't go on to school and so she was working in an accounting firm and I probably went to work with her. Or my dad worked at Republic Steel and there was a couple summers that he got me a clerical job, so it was one of those two, I don't remember exactly that summer where I was, but I worked. I always worked summers, Christmases, (laughs) because my dad helped me, but I worked my way through school too.

[Interviewer]: Did you come back to the campus in the fall?

[Gayle Berman]: Yep, and I went back to the same house, the same woman owned it, and finished the whole time on East Summit.

[Interviewer]: What was it like, what was the atmosphere like when you came back in the fall, do you remember?

[Gayle Berman]: I don't have a strong memory, no I don't. I guess, I don't know if it's specifically campus, but I know from being home that summer, and just in general from the news reports, you know, everybody was so divided. There were certainly kids like me that didn't believe in the war and being there first-hand, it was such a lesson in life that this--and I wish I could remember his name--it was just out of humiliation that the whole thing happened, at least that was my perspective. That we weren't minding and it just kept escalating because he was getting more and more embarrassed and he didn't know what to do and he had all these men looking for him for leadership and so he reacted in that way, not thinking that the kids weren't armed or that the kids were, I don't know, really believed in what they were demonstrating against.

I guess I did go to some other demonstrations, now that I think about it on campus over that weekend. And everybody really genuinely felt strongly about it, what they were believing, and I don't think the guy in command or the governor--because that governor, when he came on and made his statements that were so offensive. It was just this big war machine and they weren't thinking about us or the people in Vietnam. We'd been there so long and we felt that we didn't belong there to begin with.

[Interviewer]: Did things change when you came back? You mention that even in those few weeks you were here after the shootings that you felt unwelcome in the community--did that sort of thing continue after you came back?

[Gayle Berman]: I don't know that I remember that. I just remember people being divided. There was people that maybe came from a military background family and so they would take the National Guard's point of view. Or they had a brother or somebody that was in the National Guard, and so they would get their perspective and they would feel like, Well, they deserved it. They deserved it. It was Martial Law and they weren't minding, and so it just depended on your politics, so even students on campus were very divided.

There were people that were sympathetic and horrified by what happened and then there were other kids that had that political slant or maybe had been raised that way, and whether they were there or not, just took the stand that they deserved to die, which was horrifying, horrifying. Or they took the stand that, Oh, you know, it was just a bunch of hippies trying to draw attention to themselves and they didn't have much substance. And who are they? They're dirty and the sexual revolution and all the connotations at that time conventional society didn't want to accept with the hippies and the kids that were very socially conscious so it was a discussion for sure for a long time. It was something that I was so glad I participated in even though I wasn't--I was just standing there watching, but I still to this day am so happy I didn't mind and stay in and bring a boyfriend in and have pie.

[Interviewer]: Well, how about right afterward and the years since when you meet people and they find out you were a Kent State student and you were here, what has that been like for you?

[Gayle Berman]: People are very surprised. I guess surprised how much of an eyewitness I was, and very quickly I can sense their politics, and then I know very quickly how far to go with it. I certainly don't hide my feelings but there are some people's minds you just don't change. They have their mind made up and their politics are that way and you're not going to change their mind even though you tell them you saw the humiliation, you saw why that day happened and it was a lesson in life and yet they're still not going to believe it. They see it from a different perspective.

[Interviewer]: Now since then, looking back at this, would you say that your views about the whole thing, have they changed over time?

[Gayle Berman]: You know, surprisingly not in the least. I'm really proud.

[Interviewer]: Alright. Well let me ask you this. While we've been talking, you've told me about a lot of your experiences. Is there anything that you thought of or you thought I would ask you and you haven't been able to talk about that you'd like to add?

[Gayle Berman]: Just that the past month, I was aware of, maybe an article in the paper, where they're trying to engage the National Guard to come forward and share more of their feelings, and I always thought that wouldn't that be a good idea, with hindsight and with some perspective, for them to be a little more open, and yet they feel some loyalty to their stand, but I think it was described as they were victims too and so can we all get together and relook at this. I'm finding that real interesting and hope that that could continue.

[Interviewer]: Well, I think that's a nice way to conclude.

[Gayle Berman]: Okay.

[Interviewer]: So I just want to thank you for coming down to see me today and to tell me about your recollections. We're very glad to have your interview. Thanks again.

[Gayle Berman]: Thank you.

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