Roger DiPaolo, Oral History

Recorded: June 13, 2015

Interviewed by Rennie Greenfield

Transcribed by the Kent State University Research and Evaluation Bureau

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 Rennie Greenfield speaking on May 4th, 2015 at Kent State University, Special Collections and Archives, as part of the May 4 Oral History Project. I will be speaking today with Roger DiPaolo and before I begin I just want to get a couple of biographical questions out of the way. So where were you born?

[Roger DiPaolo]: I was born in Ravenna, Ohio, but, of course, lived in Kent from the time I was a baby.

[Interviewer]: And so does your family have a history here in the city of Kent?

[Roger DiPaolo]: My father was an attorney and later was a judge. He practiced law in both Kent and Ravenna. My grandparents settled in Kent in 1913.

[Interviewer]: So from the area definitely at the time.

[Roger DiPaolo]: Yeah, my mom was born in Kent.

[Interviewer]: Do you remember what the university was like? Or what were your memories of the university when you were growing up, when you were very young?

[Roger DiPaolo]: To be honest with you, my memories of the university were the places that you passed on Route 5 on the way to Ravenna. I didn’t grow up as part of the Kent State community. My parents weren’t affiliated with Kent State so we really didn’t come on to the campus that often. Although a real childhood memory was any time--my dad was a Kent State alum, he’s very proud of Kent--anytime we had out-of-town visitors or family we would pile into the car and take a ride through the campus because when I was growing up there was always something being built and that’s when you used to be able to drive from Main street all the way to Summit street. You could drive through the campus and he would kind of be the tour guide and point out what building was going up, what dorm was going up, and so those are my earliest memories of Kent State.

[Interviewer]: Did you have a sense at that younger age what the relationship was like between the students and the people in the town here at Kent?

[Roger DiPaolo]: I don’t know if you had a sense, I think you kind of took for granted that the students were going to be around. It was no big deal for me as a child to see a woman dressed in a sari who was from India or to see Chinese people. You know, later on, when I got to know kids that grew up in the Cleveland area and in the suburbs and they were all white, that was the first time they were dealing with people that who were from other countries and other cultures. So I think you had that, I think the other thing too--you know, the mid- to late Sixties, Kent had a very flourishing hippy community and if you’re a kid growing up in Kent, you knew what hippies were and there were head shops and you knew you weren’t supposed to go in there. So I think there’s a part of growing up around that that makes you a little more tolerant. It was no big deal to see somebody who was dressed oddly. They weren’t necessarily role models but they weren’t all that--you know, it wasn’t all that extraordinary.

[Interviewer]: Did you parents, especially your father as an attorney and then later a judge, did he say anything about the Kent students? Were you not to interact or was there--

[Roger DiPaolo]: I think my dad became more and more conservative as time went on. I think my mom always felt that the campus wasn’t part of her life, although later on, after she raised us, she came to Kent State to work and she retired from here, so she was on this campus for I think close to ten years. I think it was the idea of “I didn’t raise you to be that,” you know? I went to Oberlin College for one semester and I can remember telling my dad that I was going to get a “D” in philosophy and he told me that any other grade, any other subject, he’d be upset but he said if you’re going to get a “D” or flunk anything, I kinda won’t feel bad if you fail philosophy.

[Interviewer]: So you were fairly young then in 1970? In the spring of 1970, what do you remember about the climate? Were you aware of the protests?

[Roger DiPaolo]: I can tell you very vividly. I was one month and one day from my fifteenth birthday. I was in ninth grade at David Junior High School. I had gone to the previous eight years to Saint Patrick School, so that was my first year in a public school and what I remember vividly, I had an incredibly gifted English teacher and we had to give an opinion paper, an opinion presentation on anything that we wanted and I can remember that week and that class doing my opinion paper on why we had to get out of the war now--and I guess--and for me that was a big, big step because that was breaking totally with the way that I was raised. But that’s what I very very much remember. I’ve always been a newspaper reader so I follow the newspapers, I had followed the 1968 election.

You know, there were two kids that had gone to Saint Pat's, to the school and the church, who were killed in Vietnam in the summer of 1969 and I went to school with the sister of one of them and that very much brought the war home, they were both killed within the same month and that was--one’s last name was Picelle and the other one was Mark DeFrange and I remember my dad going to Mark DeFrange's funeral and coming back from Bissler's [Funeral Home] and saying “Oh my God, he was only ninteen years old" and they hadn’t like found him for a while and he had like some kind of net over the open casket and my dad was horrified by it. This was an incredibly good family. Ironically, Mark’s dad died on May 4th, so the death of Nick DeFrange is very much part of my May 4th memory. That family was doubly bereaved in the span of about nine months. They lost a nineteen year old and they lost a dad.

[Interviewer]: Do you remember--so you had become more politically active as you read the news and after the '68 election?

[Roger DiPaolo]: Yes.

[Interviewer]: So you were--I mean, for fifteen, sounds like you were, or not quite fifteen, you were very well informed about what was going on.

[Roger DiPaolo]: Yeah.

[Interviewer]: Had you ever yourself or with friends gone down on the Kent campus to participate in any of the teach-ins or sit-ins or protest?

[Roger DiPaolo]: No, the only thing that I very much remember was being on the school bus and passing Fred Fuller Park and there was one of the teach-ins and I think it was the yippies and you know the bus kind of went past a little bit slowly and it’s like oh wow, look at them, how cool that is, but we knew we weren’t supposed to go anywhere near there.

[Interviewer]: Did you find your friends were in much of the same boat you were or were you unique? I mean were most of the people your age informed about what was going on?

[Roger DiPaolo]: The people that I would’ve called my friends were informed. The people that I started to interact with at Davey, as opposed to Saint Pat's, that’s where I met kids whose dads were college professors and who had kind of grown up on the campus. That’s where I met kids that, this is 1970 and they’re trying to read Karl Marx but that’s where I met really politically aware people for the first time.

[Interviewer]: And did you have the sense that if this keeps going on that you would be drafted at some point?

[Roger DiPaolo]: Yes.

[Interviewer]: Or were you aware of that?

[Roger DiPaolo]: I very much had that sense and I very much had made up my mind there was no way in hell I was going to serve in the military, period. I had friends that were already talking about trying to seek conscientious objector status, I didn’t know what it was but it sounded like a good idea. There was no way I was going to fight in that war.

[Interviewer]: So that was your plan?

[Roger DiPaolo]: Yeah.

[Interviewer]: To go as a conscientious objector?

[Roger DiPaolo]: Or, barring that, literally to find some way to go to Canada. I would not have a part in the war.

[Interviewer]: Do you remember that weekend? That May 4th weekend, Friday April thirtieth, Nixon announces that he’s going to invade Cambodia.

[Roger DiPaolo]: Yes.

[Interviewer]: Do you remember where you were or how you found out about that?

[Roger DiPaolo]: I remember listening to him on the TV, I was in the family room of my parents’ home, my dad wasn’t around, and I think my mom was ironing clothes. We had the TV on and we’re listening to Nixon and even by then I didn’t like Nixon and all I could think of is, “Oh God, he’s made it bigger.” And I very much remember listening to that and then, the Friday night was when the disturbances took place on Water Street and I remember getting up the following morning and my mom saying that there was trouble in downtown Kent--and I think that it had rained in that night--and she said let's go for a ride. And we went for a ride through downtown Kent and the thing that I vividly remember was on the side of the Portage National Bank, somebody had spray painted “End Imperialism” and they spelled imperialism wrong. I remember telling my mom, I was like, “Wow, they didn’t even know how to spell it.” And seeing, you know you could see where windows had been shattered and things were boarded up and my mom was angry, but I remember that that morning it had rained, that would’ve been that Saturday morning. It was weird and strange.

[Interviewer]: You said your mother was angry? Was she angry at the students?

[Roger DiPaolo]: My mother was angry at what they had done to her town. My mother is very much a townie, my mother was literally born in a house on Summit Street, she spent her entire life in Kent and she was very angry. My mother never went to college. My mother viewed college and education as something that was privileged that she could never afford and her family could never afford. My mother was the first member of her family that graduated from high school, the others all dropped out and she was the fifth of ten. She thought--she was very irked at “them trashing her town.”

My dad, at the time was an attorney, my dad was chairman of the Portage Country Democratic Party. My dad was a good friend and acquaintance of the mayor of Kent who was Leroy Satrom. The Friday night that all hell was breaking loose, my dad was playing cards with the mayor. The mayor and a group of lawyers, it was Law Day, and they had--I think it was at the Aurora Treadway Inn, which was kind of a nice hotel. And after their formal event, they retired to a room and were playing cards and the mayor started getting phone calls from the police chief and the police chief was telling him what was going on and finally the mayor left. So my dad was very much part of that element of that Friday night. You know, the mayor had only been mayor for five months, it’s kind of a perfect storm, but that’s kind of another part of my story that kind of personalizes it or localizes it.

[Interviewer]: Did he come home that night and tell you what had happened? Or was it only later that you heard the story about it?

[Roger DiPaolo]: He came home, he got home way after I had gone to bed because his card games would go on until midnight or one o’clock and that following day he said hey this is what was going on. That would’ve been that Saturday, this is what was going on, and then later he talked about the mayor getting the phone call and wondering what he was going to do and the police chief was on the phone and finally the mayor decided he had to get back over to Kent.

[Interviewer]: And do you remember what your father’s attitude was like? Was he angry? Was he much like your mother, or...?

[Roger DiPaolo]: My father was very conservative. My father was a Democrat, he didn’t like Nixon but he still supported the war. My father again viewed college as a privilege, he only was able to attend college because of the GI Bill of Rights because he was a World War II veteran. When he went on campus he had fought a war and he didn’t have time to screw around and get drunk and trash stuff so he was not a happy camper.

[Interviewer]: Do you remember then what you did for the rest of that weekend? Were reports coming in constantly or was it in the background?

[Roger DiPaolo]: I can remember the Saturday. Saturday’s weather was halfway decent. I had a cousin that turned sixteen years old on May 2nd, I think we did something at his house, and then I remember that Saturday night and I don’t remember if it was on the radio or the TV or whatever, I remember one of my parents saying “Oh my God, they burned the ROTC building” and I can remember blurting out “Good!” And my dad was not happy, but I was glad it was burnt.

That I remember vividly and then on Sunday which would be May third, Sunday May third was a beautiful, beautiful day. It was beautiful, it was very much like the weather is today. It was warm, it was sunny, the trees were out and everybody in Kent wanted to go to Kent State to see what was going on and I remember my dad piling the four of us into the car. I don’t know where we parked but I remember driving along Hilltop Drive, I remember seeing Guardsmen. I remember seeing students talking with Guardsmen. I remember vividly in the front yard, there were houses across from front campus, like where Wendy’s and all those drive-ins are, I remember in the front yard of what I think might’ve been a fraternity or student rental was a life-size cut-out of an American solider that I think had been from a military recruiting office and it was hanging in the tree and that I very much remember and I can see that right now. I remember we swung around to the site of the ROTC building and, there were two things: I remember seeing the ruins of the ROTC building, which were still smoldering, and that was the first time I had ever seen Taylor Hall, because that was a part of campus that we wouldn’t have gone to. Taylor Hall was about five or six years old. I remember remarking to my dad and my mom, “Wow look at that building, how unusual it looks” because it was up on the hill, you had these ruins at the foot of hill and we were in the Taylor parking lot, I know we were in the Taylor parking lot which would have been about twenty-four hours before all hell broke loose, so that’s May 3rd.

[Interviewer]: Were you stopped by the Guards on your way into town or were they just letting people like you?

[Roger DiPaolo]: No, we had free access, there were no--on May 3rd nobody was stopping anybody. I mean we were driving around on that campus. The campus was like a great big party except there were soldiers walking around with guns. Nobody really felt any fear, everybody was kind of like--when Kent had a number of fires when I was growing up and when there was a big fire everybody would like turn out because it was like cheap entertainment. Everybody wanted to see the ROTC building, just like everybody had wanted to drive through Kent to see, you know, what had happened. Everybody was curious and we were on the campus and again, I do remember being in the parking lot on May 3rd.

[Interviewer]: Was your family--did they speak to any of the other families who were there? Were there conversations going on or was it more just I wanna see?

[Roger DiPaolo]: It was just we want to see, we’re gonna take a ride, we’re gonna drive up there and see what’s going on. Yeah.

[Interviewer]: So that Monday, you had school I take it?

[Roger DiPaolo]: Oh yeah, it was a totally--well it was quote unquote normal, but of course that was what everybody was talking about because we had left school on that Friday. That Friday was the day that I gave my speech about Vietnam and that was the Friday that we had left the...

[Interviewer]: Do you remember how that went?

[Roger DiPaolo]: There were--the kids that I respected really liked it and I felt really good about it and I think I got an “A” on it. But, you know, Friday we left school and it was normal and all hell had broken loose on Saturday and Sunday so we go back on Monday everybody is talking about, “Oh, did you go up to Kent State?”, “Yeah, we went up there, we saw this...” “Did you see what they did downtown?” It was alway “they” but yeah you talked about it and it was normal, it was a normal Monday. I remember it was a beautiful, beautiful day, it was a pretty day and it was kind of hot and I had gym class before English class and that would’ve been I think like about one o’clock or 1:10 and I hated gym and we were having to run laps on the track behind school which I also despised and I remember being out there and we had just gotten onto the track and the gym teacher, Mr. Gallagher, came down from his office and he said, “Hang on. Hold on. We’re not going to have class today, get inside, get dressed.” And I was kind of curious, he said “something happened to Kent State, get inside.” And we get dressed and class broke up and of course nobody knew what was going on.

And I’m a little bit hazy as to where I ended up next, but I remember being in the office at Davey, which was on the ground floor, and the office was filled with kids, they were very anxious, everybody was nervous, everybody was scared, and parents started flooding in and I remember a woman--this girl named Michelle Smith that was in my French class and Michelle’s mother was there and Michelle's mother was a large, large African American woman, she filled the entire doorway and I could remember being in the office waiting for my mom and Mrs. Smith standing in the doorway and telling Mrs. Love, the secretary, “I want my Michelle right now.” I’ll never forget that. My mom had heard what had happened at Kent State or heard that there was quote unquote was trouble. We lived about a mile and a half away on the west side of Kent and she hopped in the car and said, "I gotta get my kids," and ended up in the office and they were going to send for us and we ended up, my sister is a year younger than I am, she was in eighth grade, I was in ninth.

I ended up with my mom and we go out into the car--totally bizarre, we’re driving on old Route 5 which is Main Street and we go over the railroad tracks and there’s warehouses there now, those were before city buildings and we’re passing the tracks and we are literally within walking distance of my house and we get hit by another car and it’s some guy that has gone left of center and he side-swipes my mom’s car. We’re all upset to begin with and he was a drunk and I could remember my mom is terrified to begin with and I remember her saying “Oh my God, oh my God, he’s gonna hit us,” and he did and you know my sister was in the front seat, my mom was driving, I was in the backseat and you remember the strangest things and, of course, nobody wore seatbelts then. And it wasn’t like a real big impact boom, it was like, “Oh God this fool has like side-swiped us.” I remember the book that I took home with me was was Six Plays by Arthur Miller, and I remember it had a yellow cover and brown lettering and my memory of impact of that crash was seeing Arthur Miller’s book slide on the floor of the back seat. It flew off of the seat, on to the floor of the back seat and went under the front seat where my sister was sitting. So you remember just the strangest things.

So we have all hell breaking loose in downtown Kent and my mom has got to get an accident report from a cop and so we’re waiting for police on Main Street, there is no traffic. That’s the other thing too, the two other things I remember--it was kind of like one of those movies like The Land that Time Forgot where there’s no traffic at all on that stretch of Main Street and the other thing that I remember was the sound of the sirens and the sirens had started and you could hear them. So she’s waiting for a cop and there’s another neighbor who has a son my age and has a daughter my sister’s age and she’s driving past on Main Street and she stops because she sees we've got issues and my mom says, “Don’t worry, I’m ok. I’m waiting for the policeman, I just really want to get my kids home.” She goes “Oh, have them come with me,” because she lived right up the street. So we got in Mrs. Jacobs’s car and she said you’re gonna be all right and she drove us to our house.

I don’t even remember how I got into the house. The thing that I remember--this is the middle of the day--and I remember men in the neighborhood standing in their front yards with their hands in their pockets, all in circles, just talking to each other, which was really, really strange. Go ahead, you were going to ask a question.

[Interviewer]: I just wanted to ask at this point, were you at all aware of what had happened or just that something had happened?

[Roger DiPaolo]: Just that something had happened, quote “There had been trouble at the campus.” My mom indicated people had been killed. I remember then feeling probably the most incredible sensation of fear I had ever felt in my life and the only thing that I can compare it to now is watching the TV on 9/11 and watching the second plane hit the tower and then hearing about the Pentagon and not knowing what was going on and being out of control--and but that was on TV, this was like reality and I remember being scared to death. Andof course the stupid accident didn’t help matters. I remember being scared to death, coming home, seeing the men on the front lawns.

My mom, I think, ended up going to the Kent Police station. They basically handed her an accident report and said go home and fill this out, come back later, we’re busy. So she eventually got home with the car, the car wasn’t seriously damaged. I mean it was damaged and she was irked about that.

I don’t quite remember when my dad got home, because my dad worked in Ravenna. I remember my dad telling me-- he worked in downtown Ravenna. In downtown Ravenna, there was this rumor going on that students were going to march from Kent to Ravenna so all the businesses were closing. They were like boarding up windows, it was totally crazy. So my dad always had a loaded gun that he kept in the top drawer of his desk at his law office, he knew he couldn’t get through Kent on Route 59 through Main Street so he took Brady Lake Road which he used to call the back way. It would take you through Lake Street and over the Crane Avenue bridge and out to the west side of Kent, you could bypass all of the traffic and he said that he drove from his office to our house which was about a half hour drive, with a loaded gun on his front seat, and he said “And I just dared anyone to stop me.”

And so he got home and you know my mom got home, the other thing that I remember was trying to call somebody on the phone and all the phone lines were gone. You couldn’t call out, you had no phone service, so you’re like totally isolated and, of course, the thing that you immediately want to do was like oh gosh something horrible is happening, I have to tell somebody, so I remember that from that afternoon. I remember finally we were together, we were all safe, I don’t remember what we had for dinner. The thing that I remember before dinner was laying on the bed in my room and I had a radio, it was a bookcase bed and the radio was there, and I had the radio on and I think it might’ve been WKNT from Kent and the radio announcer was broadcasting saying that four students had been killed and I remember bursting into tears and I think part of it was it was such a crazy day, it was such a scary day and we had this stupid accident--and then realizing that four kids were killed and, you know, and then drying my tears and having dinner.

I don’t remember what we ate. We always ate--the funny thing is as long as the war was going on we always watched CBS evening news with Walter Cronkite and that was always on in the background, even while we were eating. We were eating and trying to make sense of that just crazy, crazy day and my mom says, “Oh God there’s Kent.” It was Ike Pappas who was broadcasting from Kent, Ohio, which was such an incredibly big deal for us and he was on Water Street and he was interviewing people and then he said that today the National Guard--four students were killed and a number of others were wounded and that’s what happened in Kent, Ohio, that day. So that’s kind of May 4th in a nutshell.

[Interviewer]: Did you have any sense, the men that you talked about standing around with their hands in their pockets, did you have any sense of what their conversations were or were you not...?

[Roger DiPaolo]: I don’t know what they were talking about but what I would imagine was, like my dad, they couldn’t make sense of what had happened. They were all talking about what happened and there were all such incredible rumors going on but I think this was something so alien, just so incomprehensible and that it had happened in Kent and that it wasn’t an accident and that four people were dead and a whole bunch of others were wounded. It was unbelievable.

[Interviewer]: Do you remember- did your family’s reaction change at all when they heard that four students had been killed or did they still consider them “they,” “those.”

[Roger DiPaolo]: I think both of my parents pretty much sided with the Guard, yeah I think they pretty much sided with the Guard and you know, I know I was upset. They knew where I was after I blurted out about the ROTC building and you know so much of that time, so much of that time just sort of like turned in to dinner table arguments where eventually we couldn’t keep the news on because I’d be arguing with my dad. So I think they were on one side and we were on another.

[Interviewer]: How long before they sent you back to school? Were you back the next day?

[Roger DiPaolo]: We--I think school was canceled on Monday.

[Interviewer]: And did they mention at all when school was canceled and they were sending the students home what had happened or why?

[Roger DiPaolo]: Just that there had been “trouble” at Kent State. I think we had Monday off, I think we went back on Tuesday.

[Interviewer]: The next day?

[Roger DiPaolo]: That would’ve been--or no actually I know we had--it might’ve been Wednesday. I think we might’ve had Tuesday off and Tuesday was Election Day. Tuesday was Election Day, my dad was a member of the Board of Elections. So my dad had to make his way to Ravenna to like go oversee the canvass and come home violating curfew because the election returns weren’t--that was when they used to hand count, those were paper ballots. So the election returns wouldn’t be done until midnight or 1:00 or 2:00 and he is basically violating curfew and his attitude was, "Well, I am a government official and I have a job to do and it’s not going to apply to me," and he’s driving through downtown Kent at Main street and Water Street with an old lady who worked for the Election Board, who was terrified, but you know, had to be there for her job and he was going to take her home to Kent and they get stopped at Main and Water and there was a Guardsman that's got a loaded rifle stopping him and "Tell me what you're doing," and it's like, "This is exactly what I'm doing." "Don't you know there's a curfew? I could arrest you for a curfew violation." He goes, "You certainly can and you're very welcome to do so. And I'm also an attorney and I strongly suggest you don't arrest me." And this poor old lady is in the backseat and she goes “Be careful, be careful, he’s gonna shoot us” and finally he said--he told her, “Would you calm down, you’re not helping matters.” But that was Tuesday night. So we went back to school probably that Wednesday.

[Interviewer]: So when you did go back to school, did teachers address what had happened or...?

[Roger DiPaolo]: I don’t remember teachers addressing, I do remember kids--everybody had an opinion on May 4th. Ok, I remember one guy who I wouldn’t really call a friend, was an acquaintance, he was a classmate and he was very, very conservative and he was talking about, “Oh well you know the Black Panthers are going to march into Kent” and you know and then the--I think that probably would’ve been the first time I would’ve heard "they should’ve shot more of them." So that element was very much there. Junior High School was a city-wide school which meant yeah, you had kids that were middle class, you had kids who were college professors’ kids, you also had kids that were very blue collar and redneck and they made it very clear which side they were on.

[Interviewer]: Do you remember what the days and weeks were like after that? Was there a sense that something had changed in your town or...?

[Roger DiPaolo]: Yeah.

[Interviewer]: I mean obviously most of the college--the college was evacuated, the students were sent home. What was it like then when you got in the car and went to Kent?

[Roger DiPaolo]: Kent was like a ghost town because you know Kent was still on the quarter system and you would have students around until the beginning of June. This was the beginning of May, there’s nothing on the campus, the campus is empty, the campus is shut down, it’s closed, it’s weird, and it is very, very silent. You think twice about going downtown because you know downtown still bears scars. You’re not going to go onto the campus. The next time that I set foot on the campus was two years later in 1972. I had a summer job and we ended up going to--I think it was Memorial Gym and there was some program there and that was the next time I ever set foot on the campus which was two years later.

[Interviewer]: You seemed like you’re a fairly politically active person even before this. Did you become more politically after--active after?

[Roger DiPaolo]: Yeah I became- for a high school kid, Roosevelt High School was very political. Roosevelt High School had its own chapter of the SDS. There were some very politcal kids. Those were kids that I gravitated towards, and those were kids I hung out with. We were like the radical kids but I was still a good kid, but we were the ones who were antiwar. We were the ones that had the quasi-underground newspaper. The only presidential campaign I ever worked on was George McGovern’s and I did that in downtown Kent doing phone canvasing at Klein’s--above Klein’s Market and that was- I couldn’t vote because I was seventeen years old but it was my senior year so yeah, I became more politically aware.

[Interviewer]: How would you say that it’s affected your career and life since then? I mean...

[Roger DiPaolo]: I think I am a student of history, the older that I get- and I’m going to be sixty years old next month. The older I get the more important I realize May 4th is. I don’t come to the campus every May 4th but there are times when I’m drawn to it. I was here last night, I saw Dr. Warren carrying lanterns and standing where Allison Krause died. I met Arthur Krause who is an incredibly angry man and if I had been a parent of one of those kids that would’ve been me. I knew and called Martin and Sarah Scheuer my friends, I got to know them as a young reporter. Martin Scheuer had the saddest eyes of any man I have every looked into and he was so kind and gentle, good good man, and she was a mom and their daughter was killed on their wedding anniversary, I can’t imagine what that day must’ve been like, day in and day out for them. Sarah Scheuer died two days before the 40th anniversary of May 4th, she hung on for 40 years. She had 40 reminders of that horrible wedding anniversary. So May 4th still resonates with me, it is incredibly important, people need to remember it.

I think this university initially hoped it would go away, hoped it would recede, literally hoped to bury it with the Gym Annex, which I hope to God I live to see torn down. It’s an incredible turning point in American history and people say it did bring the war home, it brought the war home. Unlike my acquaintances Mark DeFrange and the Picelle boy who were in military uniforms. These four kid--and they were kids--weren’t wearing a uniform and they were shot with bullets that my tax dollars paid for and that’s just so incredibly wrong. I think what really brought May 4th home to me was, you know, I started as a student here in 1974, so that was four years later and I think I went to the 1975 gathering but I remember what really brought May 4th home was when I realized that I was the same age as Jeffrey Miller and then I was older than Jeffrey Miller and Allison and Sandy and Bill Schroeder and realizing okay, that could’ve been me. I still remember one of my friends, a couple years later were sitting in the Student Center talking about May 4th and one of my friends is like, “Hey, if we were sitting here right now and somebody said wow there’s some strangeness going on in The Commons, you know we’d all be up there.” And he was right.

So I think there’s like part of me, at least as a kid, or at least as a student here that identified with it. My son is twenty years old, we were up here last night, you know, I’ve walked him through that site repeatedly, he’s a history major. He needs to know the story because I’m not going to be here forever and that story needs to be told. It needs to be told on the 50th anniversary, it needs to be told on the 100th anniversary, because it is that important in history. It’s way more than just an asterisk in the antiwar movement. It’s when America turned on its own kids and then recoiled in horror and said, “Oh my God, what did I do?”

[Interviewer]: You said you became a student here at Kent State in 1974?

[Roger DiPaolo]: Yeah.

[Interviewer]: Were you here in the later Seventies to protest the Gym Annex?

[Roger DiPaolo]: I didn’t protest it, but I covered it. I covered it as a young reporter, that was my first assignment.

[Interviewer]: Working on the Kent Stater or with the Record Courier?

[Roger DiPaolo]: I worked on the Kent Stater in 1976 and I remember covering a student caucus meeting where the location of the gym, proposed gym, came up and the caucus was very much waving a red flag. It’s like this is going to alter the site and I remember reporting that in 1976 and then, in 1977, I remember being here on May 4th 1977 listening to Ron Covick who gave the most incredible speech I’ve ever heard. And he got up and he challenged the audience and it was a rainy, rainy cold day, we were inside Memorial--or we were inside the Ballroom I think, either the Ballroom or Memorial Gym--but he challenged the students and said, “Get off your asses, they’re gonna like bulldoze that site. What are you going to do to stop it?” And he really, really rallied the troops and, of course, after the memorial observance, it turned into a march on Rockwell Hall where the trustees stupidly were having a Board of Trustees meeting on May 4th. So, basically, you had about 300 people that Ron Covick had rallied and they marched to Rockwell Hall and they surrounded Rockwell Hall and they basically had a sit-in that continued for about seven or eight hours and that’s what kicked off the protest on the gym.

The gym protest in incredibly important, the gym protest is the coda to May 4th historically and that’s something that somebody needs to write a book on. Yeah, the gym got built, it’s not used, and yet they altered the site, but the protest was pushback. The protest was, yeah you’re gonna build this building but dammit, you’re not going to bury May 4th. We are going to force you to acknowledge this and it is important and God help you if you alter any more of this site and I think that’s incredibly important. That’s 1977. 1977 the Board of Trustees is still meeting, classes are still being held, they’re not even giving off news, it is very much business as usual. There is no formal acknowledgment of May 4th until the May 4th Task Force formed in 1975. There was no formal observance or commemoration of May 4th. Kent State wanted it just to go away and plopping the gym right on the edge of the site and obliterating the practice field was part in parcel of a decision, well we’re literally going to bury this and it’ll go away, nobody will remember it anymore.

The gym protest changed it all. You had six months of people saying, “May 4th matters. May 4th matters so much we’re gonna be arrested, we’re gonna do civil disobedience and at times it turned violent, and, yeah, the gym got built, but boy they will think twice about ever doing anything and you ended up having a memorial. I just came from The Commons and Bev Warren became the first Kent State president to speak at one of the May 4th student observances and I saw her last night carrying a lantern and standing where Allison Krause was killed and bravo, it’s about time, and Bev Warren told the families and the wounded, and there are seven of the nine wounded that were there today, “I’m sorry. I know the passing of time doesn’t make this go away” and again, that’s part of, you know--going and circling back to the gym, the gym was very, very important. It’s the coda, it’s basically--we're going to push back, you’re not going any farther and we will remember May 4th and its very--it’s important, it’s gotta be remembered.

[Interviewer]: The students who were here at that time were obviously not the same group of students who were here in 1970. There’s a reporter covering that in the Tent City and everything like that. Would you say those students were very aware of the legacy and history of what was going on?

[Roger DiPaolo]: I think it educated a lot of students. What is really kind of strange, I remember that summer covering protests and classes were going on and protests were going on simultaneously and it was kind of like, “Oh that’s the Tent City people and they're doing their thing and people are going to classes.” So it was disruption, but it wasn’t disruption, there was still in some respects business as usual. It was incredible, it was an incredible experience. That’s probably one of the most important stories I ever got and I see a lot of people that I knew from 1977. I mean Dean Kahler is one of my friends, Alan Canfora is one of my friends. I’ve known these people for thirty-eight years. We’re already talking about well, in 2017, that’s the 40th anniversary of the gym struggle that needs to be marked. There’s graffiti on the side of the Gym Annex today that says, “Remove the gym.” I hope to God I live to see that building torn down. I have never set foot in that building, that’s my personal protest. I’s not necessary, it’s an encroachment, it destroyed history, it destroyed an historic site and I hope to see it torn down.

I think what’s incredible, I remember covering that story in 1977 and calling Jimmy Carter’s White House because they were attempting to get it declared a historic site in what was only seven years past and there’s no way that was going to happen and they said you have to wait at least twenty or twenty-five years. It took forty, but I go past that plaque that it’s on the historic register and it’s like ok, you’re not gonna like screw around with this, you don’t have a blank check to obliterate this site.

[Interviewer]: That's well said. Going forward in the future, as we approach the 50th anniversary and, as you said, even past that, is there anything else other than tearing down that gym that you'd like to see happen? How do you think it should be remembered as we...

[Roger DiPaolo]: I think restoring the site is important, it is a historic site, the practice field was very much a part of the story of May 4th. The Guard circled around, the Guard aimed from that site, that has to be restored. I think Brinsley Tyrrell's daffodil memorial has got to be restored, that’s just stupid gardening. There’s supposed to be 55,000 daffodils there, there’s not even 500 and that was beautiful. It was a beautiful tribute. That’s a memorial to Americans who died in Vietnam and that’s very much part of the site, that needs to be restored for the 50th. I’m happy that it’s part of the curriculum, there is a May 4th experience class, my son took that class this semester. May 4th is acknowledged.

Anybody that becomes president of Kent State, it’s no longer a choice of, "Oh, what do I do with May 4th or what do I do about May 4th?" Acknowledging history does not celebrate it. Bev Warren today said, “I am very much aware of our history and we cannot afford to forget it.” There were presidents that were her predecessors that wished it was forgotten because it was an annoyance and it was bad publicity. I think that’s a turning point that I’m fortunate to have lived long enough to see where a university president stands vigil, a university president acknowledges it and Dr. Lefton did too and arguably Dr. Cartwright and to an extent Dr. Schwartz. But realizing that--that’s part of Kent’s story, you can’t undo it, you can’t walk away from it, you can’t forget it, you can’t explain it the way it happened, it’s history. May 4th is Kent, Ohio’s 9/11. It’s our Columbine, it’s our Oklahoma City. Nobody invites tragedy to happen in your hometown. It happens and you need to acknowledge it and you need to formally make--it’s part of your history, you can’t deny it.

[Interviewer]: Is there anything we didn’t get to cover that you’d like to talk about?

[Roger DiPaolo]: No, I appreciate you letting me tell my story. I realize I’ve written about May 4th, I’ve reported it, I’ve come to any number of these events. I also realize that I’m going to be sixty years old, this is forty-five years ago. It was good to relive the memories, it’s good to have them somewhere that people can access for whatever value they are. I like the idea that I was able to tell my story. I did a video clip over at the [May 4] Visitors Center. The Visitors Center is wonderful. The Visitors Center is in my first news room. That was the Stater office. That’s where I wrote my first news story forty years ago, so I don’t like the idea of closure. Good closure means an ending. I think this kind of put things into perspective and I’m glad I did it.

[Interviewer]: Roger, thank you so much for speaking with me today.

[Roger DiPaolo]: Thank you so much.

[Interviewer]: I very much appreciate it.

[Roger DiPaolo]: Thank you very much.


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