Henry Mankowski, Oral History

Recorded: May 18, 2010
Interviewed by Craig Simpson
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]: Good morning. The date is May 18, 2010. My name is Craig Simpson. We are conducting an interview today for the Kent State Shootings Oral History Project, and could you please state your name?

[Henry Mankowski]: Henry Mankowski.

[Interviewer]: Alright Henry, where were you born?

[Henry Mankowski]: I was born in Bradford, England.

[Interviewer]: And where did you go to college?

[Henry Mankowski]: I went to Kent State University. I was a freshman in 1969--fall of 1969, 1970.

[Interviewer]: Okay. When did you come to the States from England?

[Henry Mankowski]: In 1958.

[Interviewer]: Okay. And where did you live between then and when you came to Kent State?

[Henry Mankowski]: In the Cleveland area.

[Interviewer]: Oh, in Cleveland, okay. What made you decide to come to Kent State?

[Henry Mankowski]: I don't remember. I don't remember. I was accepted at Ohio State also and it seems like I flipped a coin and decided to come to Kent State.

[Interviewer]: Okay. What was your major?

[Henry Mankowski]: History.

[Interviewer]: What were your impressions of the campus prior to the events of 1970? Just the general atmosphere.

[Henry Mankowski]: It was fun. I mean, it was, you know, a college campus. It was nothing more than going to school and on the weekends going drinking, you know, on that three-two [percent] beer--

[Interviewer]: I've heard of that one before. What bar was that at?

[Henry Mankowski]: Well, that's all you could drink at that time. I had turned eighteen after I got here, so I was the--I lived in Clark Hall; third floor, the short corridor--and on that corridor, I was the second youngest. So up until October, the person who was younger than I, the two of us would be the only ones on the floor on any given weekend, up until the middle of October, and then I left, but it was like, three-two beer, you had to drink gallons to get a buzz. So it was what I thought college life would be like.

[Interviewer]: What were your impressions of the protest movement that year?

[Henry Mankowski]: I don't think I really paid much attention from the fall--I don't recall any involvement or any even notice of them, then started noticing in the winter quarter because they were on quarters that year. And then got involved a little more late winter and the early Spring quarter.

[Interviewer]: When you say involved, could you give me some examples?

[Henry Mankowski]: Just listening to speeches, reading the literature that was being distributed, and just becoming more aware of the whole anti-war movement.

[Interviewer]: What are your memories of the events leading up to May 4, 1970, and you can start wherever you like. Some people start that weekend.

[Henry Mankowski]: Right. We would always go downtown in a group from our floor, and so--I don't even know how many of us were there--we went downtown and we went to J.B.'s, which no longer exists, on Water Street, and oblivious to what was going on outside. When we went, there was nothing going on. We weren't even aware--I wasn't aware of any call for any kind of rally or anything like that.

So we went drinking. I believe--I'm trying to remember who the band was; it was either Glass Harp or--I don't remember right now. And we were just sitting there, minding our own business, and all of a sudden the Ohio Highway Patrol comes in at--I don't even know what time it was--it was definitely after one in the morning--one o'clock in the morning, maybe 1:15. "The bar's closed, everyone has to leave."

And so we got out on the street and then saw the debris on Water Street and we were told we couldn't go down towards Main Street, so we had to go up--we were closer to Crain [Avenue], and so we had to go through the back roads that way to get back to campus and I think, if I remember correctly, the Highway Patrol had cordoned off the areas and so basically, we were just like cattle being followed, driven back to campus.

As we were leaving the bar, one of my roommates, Roger Hedges, said something to one of the Highway Patrolmen and said he got hit in the back by his billy club. So, we all get back to the room, to the hall, to our floor, and Roger is having a fit. He is extremely upset--of course, he's drunk--and how he's going to find that guy and give him a piece of his mind, because he had a big welt over his shoulder, I mean, you could see that he got hit, and so he was pissed. So he put his coat on and took off to go find the Highway Patrolman.

So, you know, my other roommate, because there were three of us, Joel Richardson, kind of thought, Well, he's an idiot, we should probably try to go find him and bring him back before he gets into any trouble. So, we waited to try to see if anyone else was interested in going and so a group of about six or seven of us went looking for Roger.

So at this point, we get to the corner of Lincoln and Main and we're looking for Roger everywhere and there's Roger at the very corner of the street on the campus side. So we all meet him and go and try to convince him to come back and no he doesn't, he's looking for the guy. And of course, right across the street--I don't know what was there then and it's totally configured differently now--there's a cordon of Highway Patrolmen--masks, shields--just like this gauntlet, right across the street, across Main Street going towards town.

So all of us are now at the corner and I don't know how long we were there, and just got into the feel, you know, the crowd was chanting and telling them to go away and all of a sudden, there are jars being thrown from behind us at the Highway Patrol, and rocks, and so they shoot tear gas and so we're hit with the tear gas, but we're still standing there because I didn't want to leave Roger, because you could tell that he was drunk because he was really fluid, and normally he was very stiff. And so he's shaking his fist and all of a sudden the Highway Patrol starts to move forward and we all, all of us, moved towards the Robin Hood [Inn] across Main Street towards Robin Hood. As we're running across the street, that's when our picture was taken and that's what was shown on the front page of the Cleveland Press.

[Interviewer]: Okay. So this was a picture taken Friday night that was in the Press Saturday, May second, right?

[Henry Mankowski]: Yes. And so we ran across the street in front of the Robin Hood and we all then started to make our way--I don't even know what direction that is--towards Ravenna. Whatever that is, is that west?

[Interviewer]: East.

[Henry Mankowski]: Is that east? Okay. So we're trying to go east and all of a sudden, Roger breaks loose and runs back to this group of--I don't even know how many Highway Patrolmen, maybe ten--and he starts yelling at them and they just come in a mass and go away and Roger's gone. So they took him. And it turned out that he was one of the people who was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct for that night.

And in the meantime, now this is Saturday, my father called me because he saw the paper and he thought that--and it was Tony Tyson who was the guy that he thought was me on the front page, who lived down the hall. And he was very upset. He was very upset, saying that he didn't send me there to participate in anything. I'm supposed to be studying and nose down, in the books, and that's it. I better not do anything else.

So Saturday, we all were curious what happened to Roger and we all stayed in the dorms. And it was windy that day and we heard and we were getting word what was going on on front campus from somebody, I'm not sure, somebody kept--and then we got hit with tear gas. I mean, the tear gas drifted--and we lived in Eastway and Clark, close, and so we could smell the--we got the tear gas down here in the building from what was going on on the Commons.

And so, you know, they burnt the ROTC building down and then--

[Interviewer]: Did you witness that at all or--

[Henry Mankowski]: No, no. We did not go out. We had enough tear gas from the night--from Friday night, Saturday morning--that was enough for me at that point. And then on Sunday, with the National Guard being deployed to Kent, you know, they came in and we--I remember going up to front campus and I don't remember if anybody was with me or not, but walking and seeing the Guards and talking to them and they were very friendly and, you know, just, "Hi. We're here to make sure that nothing happens."

Fine, okay, so and then there was a call for a rally that evening, and they were protesting, in addition to protesting the war, protesting Guard presence on campus. I believe we were, although not really--they said that we were under Martial Law, but we weren't under Martial Law actually, and that we weren't allowed to go into the city. So we were basically--not sequestered--what's the word I'm looking for?

[Interviewer]: Quarantined?

[Henry Mankowski]: Quarantined, basically to campus. So I remember trying to organize on our floor people to go to the rally. So there was a group of us that went to the rally. We got to Kent, it was evening. I remember going down, marching down Main Street--I was close to the front, but not--I was maybe fifty feet from the front, but there were a lot of people behind us. And my other roommate, Joel Richardson, was with me and some other people from the floor.

And the Guard--I'm not even sure if the Highway Patrol were there anymore, if it was just the Guard or if they were acting on their own--I do remember the tanks coming up, and seeing the tanks across Main Street coming in from downtown. And so we couldn't march. I remember I guess there was a buzz in the crowd that we were going to get permission to march into town to show that we could protest orderly, in an orderly manner and that the Guard was going to let us.

So we all stayed there. And then we were told we had to leave. Then chaos broke out. The Guard came up front, although at that point, I got separated from Joel. Joel ended up in the back of the crowd and I then made my way onto campus and it was dark, and that's when the helicopters--the swooping helicopters--I think I was with another, who turned out to be my roommate my sophomore and junior years, Gary Pollack--we were together, running from trees, hiding from trees in the shadows of buildings because the helicopters were swooping and there were search lights all over the grounds and so we were kind of like zigzagged. There was no direct way to get back to this side of campus.

But we made it back. I made it back, but Joel didn't make it back, and I didn't know what had happened to Joel. And then the morning of May fourth, I got up, I mean, by 6:30, and there was a pool hall, I don't know if it's still there, in Eastway--

[Interviewer]: It might be.

[Henry Mankowski]: On the bottom, the lower level, and I went with, I think it was my RA, Ken Berry, and we were playing pool and the news came on because it was being broadcast over the speakers and that there were I think two students injured and Joel Richardson of Oswego, New York, so--

[Interviewer]: This was from--

[Henry Mankowski]: This was Sunday, the third. He was bayoneted in the back and ended up at Robinson Memorial [Hospital]. Yeah, he was by one of the Guardsmen, didn't give him a chance, told him to get up and then he didn't get a chance to move fast enough and he lunged and so he stabbed him right in the back. And so he ended up in Robinson Memorial.

But I didn't see him again until--and I didn't see Roger again--until we were allowed to come back to get our stuff from our rooms. We were told, whatever specific day, I think it was in June, sometime in June, that our floor, our section of the floor could come back--so that's the next time I saw the two of them.

So then I was with Ken, and Ken was pledging Sigma Alpha Epsilon and so he was, I don't even know what you would call it now--this was Monday morning now--so he had to go to the fraternity house to clean up after the weekend, clean up after his brothers or brothers-to-be or whatever. So I went with him and so after we were done there we came back to campus and I know there was a rally called for 12:30 I think, or was it twelve? I don't remember now.

And so we were--I was going to the rally. I was definitely going to go to the rally and I think he was going to go also, and so we got back to campus at about 10:30 and so we got to The Commons and the Guard had cordoned off the burnt out part of the ROTC building. They basically had set up camp all the way across the back of The Commons. So Ken and I walked, slowly, walked all the way down and watched and they were loading their rifles and we saw them loading their bullets and at the time, commented on the size of the bullets. I mean, they were three inches long. Substantial. Of course, once we went down and saw that, totally just forgot about that, that they were using live ammunition and the size of the bullets.

And so then we stayed for the rally. The rally started and we were like in the middle of the hill, Blanket Hill, and watched everything transpire. And then the Guard started to march across The Commons up the hill and so--Ken and I stayed together through most of this and so the Guard, so we came up Blanket Hill across Taylor and then into the Prentice parking lot. And the Guard came also and then we stayed in the parking lot and the Guard went on to the practice football field. And then they realized that they were stuck because there was fenced in, at least on two sides, and the fence ran along the length of the football field, on two sides, I don't remember. They would have had to go all the way to the back of the field to get away. And when they knelt and aimed, Ken and I were at the point where they were aiming at us. Because I remember I turned to him and said, "Who are they aiming at?"

And there were, I mean, a handful of people in that area, and I mean they were single individuals and the two of us were together, close together, so we were obviously a nice target. And then they got up and they started to run towards back to Taylor Hall, to the building, and we started to walk forward, back to them and they got to the Pagoda and I saw that they stopped and they turned in a group and started to shoot back to where they had just come from.

I don't remember if there were any cars up close to the edge of the parking lot, the spaces that abutted right up to the practice football field. There were cars--intermittent cars--in the rest of the parking lot. Because Ken was in front of me, maybe about ten feet, and all of a sudden, as the shooting started, he ran towards me and tried to pull me down to get me out of the way, and I could hear the bullets whizzing past my head. I mean, they were just whizzing past my head, and I pushed him away, I pushed him down, and so he laid--fell down, or rolled down and stayed, and right off to my right, I saw someone get hit in the chest, and it turned out to be [William] Schroeder.

I mean, the impact of the bullet just picked him up off the ground and thrust him backwards, arms and legs, I mean, it's burnt--burnt into my mind and my memory. And I saw him fall. And I just picked up and fall and then it was over. And I was standing and by that time, I just couldn't believe, I was in total disbelief of what I witnessed and what had happened and I went over to Schroeder and by the time I got there, there was a group of people around him. And someone was calling to stand back, to give him room to breathe, and you could--big bloodstain in his chest, and he was having a hard time breathing, and you could--just like wet--and I got up and then I saw--and at this point I don't remember all my movements, but I was walking around.

I did see Allison Krause. And I had known Allison briefly, and I don't remember how I met her, but her--there was a group of us, maybe like six of us--her, Barry [Levine], and Allison and some other people, we went sledding down in the winter. We had gone down to front campus and we went sledding together. So I was stunned that I knew someone that had gotten killed.

I just remember roaming and saw Jeffrey Miller's body and by that time, there was the guy with the black flag who was dipping--who had the flag into his blood--and started jumping into the blood. And was jumping up and down in the blood. And I had to move because by that time the blood started to coagulate, and instead of splashing, pieces were flying. It was gross. I mean, I just didn't want to get hit by blood, it was just--and I remember there was tear gas in the air, so my eyes were burning. Just walking stunned through all of this and remembering Glenn Frank's plea not to do any more, not to--I don't even remember now what he said.

And then I went back to the cafeteria at some point, that's my next memory, and I remember I was by myself sitting there and just--stunned. And at some point then we got the word that campus was closed and that we had to leave. And I left with--I didn't take any clothes with me other than what I was wearing. I'm sure I took some books, because we had to end up finishing the quarter at home. But what I wore--I had taken all my clothes to school--what I wore on May fourth, I wore for like six weeks because I didn't really realize, it must have been maybe three weeks later, where we got letters telling us what day we were to go back and retrieve all our belongings.

[Interviewer]: Did you go back to Cleveland?

[Henry Mankowski]: Yes. I lived in Garfield Heights at the time. So I went home. And sometime during that period between May fourth and whatever it was in June that we got back, I had a visit from the FBI asking me if I had known anyone who was throwing--did I see anyone throwing stones, rocks, did I know anyone? Was I aware of any non-students on campus? Of course, I always wondered how they got my name, but then I figured, well, if I had two roommates who--I had one that was arrested and the other one was bayoneted, they must have figured there was some connection somewhere, or they saw me, or they had pictures, photos of me, which I just last year found a photo of me after the shootings, wandering.

[Interviewer]: Did you see either of your roommates again after that?

[Henry Mankowski]: Not after--Roger, never again. He lived in the Dayton area and I never saw him afterwards. And Joel came back. He lived in Kent the following fall and I think the winter, and I saw him occasionally after that, and then after sophomore year just lost contact with him totally.

[Interviewer]: So did you take correspondence courses that summer?

[Henry Mankowski]: Yes.

[Interviewer]: Okay.

[Henry Mankowski]: Yeah, we had to in order to finish. I think we had an option of accepting pass/fail in all of the courses, but I opted to in my history and English, I went for a grade, and some of the other stuff I had, so I did mostly correspondence. And I had taken art history also, which is probably why--that's probably where I met Allison, because I think she was an art history major--

[Interviewer]: Another narrator told me she was in the honors college but she may have taken an art history class or something.

[Henry Mankowski]: Because after that I had started to pursue a double major--history and art history--but that didn't work out because I still needed drawing, never took any drawing, so I never graduated with two degrees.

[Interviewer]: What was the atmosphere like on campus in the fall?

[Henry Mankowski]: Oh my god, it was bleak. Well, I came to school that summer.

[Interviewer]: Oh you came early.

[Henry Mankowski]: I came for summer school and summer school was bleak and everything was--that's when they instituted the ID cards. So that's the first time we got ID cards, they had no ID cards prior to that. Everything, you had to show your ID, sections of the campus were blocked off by National Guard--they were still here for a while. And we had limited access to--I mean, you couldn't go across campus, you had to go around to get to classes. All the students were living in small group housing. Those were the only dorms that they were using at that time.

And then the fall, it was rumor after rumor that something was going to happen at Kent again. The weekends, everybody left that could. We had fire alarms constantly--two o'clock in the morning, four o'clock in the morning, we all had to evacuate and then someone would go through and find out it was just a false alarm. So you know, you get back in. Classes were disrupted by fire alarms or threats. It was bleak. It was pretty bleak. But I stayed.

[Interviewer]: How long did you stay at Kent?

[Henry Mankowski]: Well, I graduated.

[Interviewer]: What year was--

[Henry Mankowski]: December 1972.

[Interviewer]: Okay. And you had mentioned before we started this you had interacted with Glenn Olds?

[Henry Mankowski]: 1972, after school was out, Kent sponsored a trip to the Soviet Union and it was very inexpensive. It was like five hundred dollars to--plane fare, hotel, everything, all the arrangements. And Glenn was on the plane and he was schmoozing, trying to figure that most of the people there were alumni and were willing to give money, I mean, that's what his role was, trying to get money. And we did not have a pleasant conversation because he was asking for money. I mean, I just graduated, I had no job, that wasn't even in my purview to even think about contributing to school and he was kind of upset that I was taking a spot where someone who could have been a contributor would have given money, so I didn't have any high regard for Mr. Olds.

[Interviewer]: Did you go to any of the early commemorations?

[Henry Mankowski]: Yes. First one in 1971. I remember Julian Bond and Jane Fonda were here to speak. And we blocked the entrance to the ROTC office which then had moved to Kent Hall, I believe, is that--

[Interviewer]: I think so.

[Henry Mankowski]: So I did make the news, but fortunately, neither of my parents watched it. They didn't say anything, but I saw afterwards that we made the news. They panned across the front of the building--we were there, and my roommates at that time, Gary Pollack and Tom Truitt. Then in'72, and then I didn't come back again, I think I made the tenth, definitely the twentieth in 1990 when they opened up the plaza there and when Governor Celeste made his admission that--he apologized for what had happened. I came in 2000. I know I came on the twenty-fifth, 1995, and 2000, and I don't remember if I came between the thirtieth and the fortieth. And in between, my son had started at Kent also, so when I brought him here, I came by myself to the spot and walked around.

[Interviewer]: So you weren't here for the Tent City events of '77, '78?

[Henry Mankowski]: No, no.

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

[Henry Mankowski]: There isn't a year, even though I'm not here or did not come for any of the commemorations for May fourth, there isn't a year where I don't relive that whole weekend and that year, it was warm, sunny, warm, it was a nice spring, and I always compare every spring to the spring of 1970. Because by May fourth, I had a tan. At that time, I was young and foolish, so I went up on the roof of Clark Hall during off hours, when I wasn't going to class, and I would study up there, sunning along with everybody else. Because it was warm, it was a beautiful spring. So it's like every year, I just relive that weekend.

[Interviewer]: Henry, thank you very much.

[Henry Mankowski]: You're welcome.

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