James Stroh, Oral History

Recorded: November 16, 2016

Interviewed by: Lae’l Hughes-Watkins

Transcribed by: 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 Lae’l Hughes-Watkins speaking on November 16th at Kent State University Special Collections and Archives as part of the May 4 Oral History Project. I will be talking with James Stroh. First, I would like to begin with a few biographical questions, where were you born?

[James Stroh]: I was born in Massillon, Ohio.  

[Interviewer]: Where did you grow up?

[James Stroh]: In Massillon, Ohio.

[Interviewer]: What brought you to Kent State University?

[James Stroh]: Oh, you’d have to ask that one. I graduated from high school in 1964, I started at the University of Cincinnati and then, that spring, I dropped out of school and enlisted in the Marine Corps in the spring of 1965. Parenthetically, there was the first Vietnam protest was at the University of Cincinnati in 1964. Went into the Marine Corps for four years and the reason why I did it was because they instituted the GI Bill. Now at the time, in 1965 or four [1964] when they instituted it was that you had to serve overseas to be eligible for it [the GI Bill] and the only place you were going to go was to the Far East. So, everybody knew where they were going and when I graduated from high school in 1964, people were afraid of the draft, because most kids in high school graduating at 18 had to sign up for the draft and that was either before they graduated or shortly after they graduated. I was 17, so I really didn’t have anything to worry about until the following spring.

When I dropped out of the University of Cincinnati, the very first thing they would do would be to send your name to the Selective Service Department which means that by the time you got from one school to the other to register for a student deferment, you’d get a letter. So, as I tell everybody, I beat the draft by enlisting and the reason, it was an ends to a means or a means to an end is what I should say, is that it was the GI Bill. My father worked in the steel mill, it was a lot of a burden on him to send me to school and I just felt that I wasn’t doing that well so why should I waste his money when I could be doing something else to do that and so I enlisted in the Marine Corps and, four years later, when I got out, it was in March of 1969, I came back to the spring quarter at Kent. I actually started back at Kent in the spring of 1969.

[Interviewer]: So what were you majoring in?

[James Stroh]: Physics.

[Interviewer]: What were the prevailing attitudes among the students, if you can recall, in the spring of 1970?

[James Stroh]: Oh, that’s very vivid. When I came back, most of the veterans that I knew that were on campus, no one would talk to us, and you could tell a veteran. They were older, they dressed fairly neatly, and they kind of stayed to themselves. But students wouldn’t talk to us, because they all thought we were baby killers and, so you couldn't--trying to get a date was horrendous.  

[Interviewer]: Were there any efforts to try to change?

[James Stroh]: No, no there wasn’t. It’s not like it is today, back then, it was--well, the country was somewhat conservative, but it was different. The protests and all that kind of good stuff kind of changed the attitudes of people. So when I came back it was, for me, it was just--I was going to go back to school and I thought nothing of it. I mean, so what? I was in the service, I came back, was gonna go to school, but it was different. My only saving grace was that I was 23 years old, 22 years old and I didn’t have to go to the bubble-gum bars downtown. There was a couple of bars, the Town House, which was across from the theater, or was, and there was another one out here on 57 [i.e. 59], there was a 21-and-over bar. You had to be 21 and over to get in, and so that’s where most of the guys went to socialize and like I said, when I lived over on East College Street, at first I lived in the attic and then when I came back, I lived up on the second floor with another veteran and then in another bedroom on the second floor was another veteran, so we kind of had our own little get together.

[Interviewer]: So that-- so was that area or those housing considered veteran housing?

[James Stroh]: No, no, no they were just cheap.

[Interviewer]: Oh, okay.

[James Stroh]: They were just cheap, okay. I mean that was when I came back, the GI Bill provided $127 a month to the veteran. Now, today, it’s a little bit more than that. I think it’s about ten times that, but my rent was $127--no, actually there it was like $30. I could get by with tuition. $127 paid for all my classes for a quarter. They were $9 a credit hour.  

[Interviewer]: Big difference.

[James Stroh]: So I figured I was taking 15 that was a hundred and thirty-some dollars. And then the $127 covered my expenses for the three months. So we didn’t eat out a lot.

[Interviewer]: I can’t imagine that you did. Were you--so, would you consider yourself politically active at that time?

[James Stroh]: No, most of the guys that I knew that came back, they could’ve cared less about the politics of the Vietnam War or any of that. All they wanted to do was come back to school, at least the ones I knew. For example, on May 2nd, when they burned downtown, all the guys I knew just said, “Man, why would we want to go down there? It’s gonna be a total chaos and a mess. We’re not going to get involved in it.” So we just stayed in the house--on the porch actually--and watched all the people come back. So, most of the people I knew were not politically involved at all during that time. There may have been a few, but, you know, Vietnam Veterans Against the War and all that good stuff, but I wasn’t, no, and the people I knew weren’t.   

[Interviewer]: Do you remember having any specific views about the Vietnam War?

[James Stroh]: Having been there, yeah, I had a lot of them, but you know most of them were--

[Interviewer]: As far as the protests...

[James Stroh]: As far as the protests, well, that’s strange, because the protests--we considered the folks going and doing that stuff a bit naive, okay? I don’t think most of them knew what they were protesting. And the ones that were there, I mean again, when I lived in a house and there were three rooms up in the second floor and the one room was a student and he was actually a student activist and his roommate was a non-student activist, okay? And they had their little red books and all that kind of good stuff, you know, "Yay Mao," and all that kind of good stuff and all we did was harass them. I mean they were nice guys, I mean reasonably nice, we talked to them and we asked them questions--but they were so young. So, from that point there was no real political activism about the war.

Today, the war, as far as I’m concerned, was sort of useless. Fifty thousand lives died. At the time, I was--I’m still conservative. At the time, my leanings, I was for the country and there was a phrase, it was “It’s my country, love..,” you know? No, what was the phrase again? It’s not, “My country, love it or leave it,” but it was--you felt patriotic doing it, okay? And I still do and you know people ask me would you do it again? Probably. I would probably do the same thing again for a lot of reasons. One being that I wouldn’t have come to Kent, I wouldn’t have worked at the Liquid Crystal Institute, I wouldn’t have met my wife, and a number of other things. So, you know, that whole thing. Would I do it again? Yes, I’d do exactly the same thing again.

[Interviewer]: Well, then can you remember what your family may have or may not have felt about the protests on campus?

[James Stroh]: Oh, I remember that vividly, yes. My roommate lived in Canton so, after May 4th, we decided to stay in Kent. So, the day of the 4th everything was pretty much locked down, they had the roads closed and all that kind of good stuff and then we thought, well, we’ll just wait and see what they’re going to do. Whether or not they’re going to have classes or leave, or whatever, you know. So we just decided to stay. And, on Tuesday morning, there was actually bright and early around eight or nine o‘clock in the morning, there was a knock on the door and there were two fellows that were nicely clean cut, black suits, black ties, white shirts, and they were FBI agents, they flashed their badge and all that kind of good stuff. And they said, “Do you know where so-and-so is?” And I can’t remember his name, but he was the guy that lived across the hall from us, or in the room across from us and I suspect, I have a fairly good feeling, that he torched the ROTC building on May 2nd, that evening. During May 4th, after it happened, I went back to the house and we were just waiting to see what was going to happen when he returned rather--

[Interviewer]: The person--

[James Stroh]: --in a panic, he was in a panic. My car was behind his and in no uncertain terms he told me to move my car or he was driving over it and he was gone within an hour of the shootings he was back at the house and gone. He was out. And I think he was from--somebody said he went back to Port Huron, Michigan. And the other guy, who was the student, I think he just went home. So, and then I think, let’s see that was on Tuesday. Wednesday, we decided that--they said they weren’t gonna open the school, so we just sat down and let's pack it up and I took my friend home and then I went home myself. When I got home, my father was very upset. I mean totally upset. Matter of fact, the words were such that my mother started shutting windows, because it was getting loud and she didn’t want the neighbors to hear. My father’s only comment was they should’ve shot them all and I said, “Well if they did, they would’ve shot me too.” And he goes, “Well if you were there they should’ve.” That was in 1970.

In 1980, he actually admitted that it was all wrong, okay, that what happened here was wrong and so we finally agreed, because at the time they just did everything wrong. Especially the governor, the National Guard, everybody, they just did it wrong, and the students too, I blame a lot of the students, because I think a lot of the students that were here, that were in that protest, at least the ones that were screaming on the--well at least a few of them were the quote unquote “outside agitators” and I know they had them here. And so they just, like today, they stir things up just for the sake of stirring them up and getting everybody else all riled up. So that’s what happened when I went home. Now I came back in June, so summer session opened up and we came back.  

[Interviewer]: So can you expound a little bit more on what you remember as far as the aftermath of May 4? What you experienced.  

[James Stroh]: The aftermath? Aftermath in what sense? In attitudes or--

[Interviewer]: Yes.

[James Stroh]: Well the attitude was a bunch of hippy kids, you know. They burned down buildings, they burned down the city, and yeah, they should be in jail, they should’ve been shot and all that kind of good stuff. And shooting them was taking it a little bit too far. As far as what they did to South Water Street, that was totally ridiculous. Why would you do that to the place where you live? So, for me, that was totally wrong, absolutely wrong. Burning the ROTC building, yeah, they shouldn’t have done it, but it was a building they were going to tear down. They announced that they were going to tear it down. There was nothing inside of it. So, looking at it from that standpoint, I was like, so who cares? So you got some people out there that broke the law, they should be handled, they should be taken care of and they should’ve been arrested for burning the building. No one has a right to do that. As far as other folks in the city, the city folks were not too happy with the university, because it disrupted their lives a lot and I don’t blame them. I mean with all the law enforcement and everything else, it restricted their movements and a lot of other things.

And then going home, I didn’t have too much contact with other folks outside the immediate family when I got home, because I knew it was May, it was going to be the end of it, and I was coming back so it was just like I’ll just bide my time and come back to school. But people were upset. My wife was student teaching at the time, and she took quite a bit of flak from people that were away from this area, a distance away. So yeah, it was kind of rough for people that were students at the time to go home because everybody thought, "Oh you’re from Kent State, you must be a trouble maker and or one of these hippy protestors," or whatever. So yeah, from that it was rough for a lot of people.  

[Interviewer]: Yeah, we’ve heard that several times as far as the statements your father made from several of the people we’ve interviewed. With the sentiments that you just expressed, would you feel that you’ve kept those sentiments the same or do you think your views have changed over the years back and forth about May 4?

[James Stroh]: Oh no, at the time of May 4th, you have to remember that I thought it was all wrong. My outlook on what May 4th was and how it happened, everything hasn’t changed. It was wrong at the time, both sides, the kids who were trying to protest and the government. It was wrong. I believe that the big thing there was they’re gonna call for a student strike. We're sitting there going like, "What? You wanna close down the campus? Right, okay." So why not let them do it? Let them get up there and shout, as long as they did it by shouting and not destroying something, then who cares? Well, the governor cared and the generals cared and all that kind of good stuff. So no, I mean it was wrong then, it’s wrong now. My opinions of May 4th haven’t changed in forty-six years.

[Interviewer]: Is there anything that you feel you should add that I didn’t specifically ask?  

[James Stroh]: No, I don’t think so. No, other than on May 3rd, which is where all my pictures come from. We knew that the National Guard was coming in, that was all over the radio and a bunch of, you know everybody was going, “Oooh,” and that was because of the Teamster strike and they were on Route 76 in Akron because there were shots fired so they put the National Guard on Route 76 to protect the truckers and so that’s when the governor ordered them from there to Kent and, I think it was on the evening of May 2nd, is when they moved everybody to the shopping center, the National Guard into the shopping center as a staging area for them. So, we knew that was happening on May 2nd and then, that was a Saturday, that’s when the downtown kind of caught fire, South Water Street, and so that kind of riled everybody up a little bit, especially the police and what have you, and I don’t blame them.

And then, on Sunday, that’s when the National Guard moved up into Kent on the campus itself. So, that was when my roommate and I decided to walk up to campus, it was in the morning of that Sunday morning and I grabbed my camera and I started coming up and the fellow that lived in the other room asked if he could come up with us. I wish I could remember his name, but I can’t. And we said, “Hey, free country. You can, you know, if you want to walk on the sidewalk, walk on the sidewalk." Well, come to find out, it was in, I think, the Akron Beacon Journal did a timeline on it, what happened, I think it was about a month or two later, and it said so-and-so, a known campus agitator was seen taking pictures on campus on Sunday.  

[Interviewer]: The one that lived with you?

[James Stroh]: Yeah, and I went no, no, no, they saw me taking pictures and they saw him, so it was guilt by association I guess, because he didn’t own a camera, he didn’t like to have his picture taken. So that’s where a lot of these [photographs] come from. But, on the 4th, I was coming out of Satterfield and there was a walkway that goes up, I think it’s Van Deusen’s path, it went behind Van Deusen up into, I forget what the other building is, it was a small paved path, it was a shortcut and that’s where--I think they called it Lilac Lane or something like that--and they had National Guardsmen there and there was a lot of students that came up and they were watching The Commons from there, because you could see, it was the back end of The Commons, and the protestors at the other end which you could see and you could hear them and the thing that got me most of all was that the National Guardsman that was in front of me, he wasn’t much older than me, if not the same age, maybe a little bit younger. They were issued M1 rifles. In my training in the service, that’s what they used for training purposes. So, I knew what they looked like, how they functioned, and everything else. And when I looked down at him, the receiver was open on the rifle because he was standing there holding it port arms--configuration to block everybody for whatever reason. When I looked at it, he had a clip of five bullets--rounds--inserted in the rifle, you could see the one round. So, an M1 carries five bullets in it at any one time. And I also looked down at it, and his safety was off and, what was going through my mind at the time was like, well, to be polite was, “Oh crap, this isn’t good, because this guy’s got a rifle with live ammunition in it.” So, I was looking for ways to get away, to get out, okay? Because nothing good can happen with anybody like that.

So, when the protest--when it all started, well it had already started, I was coming out of a German class over there and so, we were listening to them talk about Cambodia and all this kind of good stuff and, “Rah, they’re gonna shut the school down. Yeah,” and all this kind of good stuff. And then the National Guard, for whatever reason, they decided to form a skirmish line. Now, they were all dressed with helmets, gas masks, field jackets which are heavy cloth, canvas-type jackets, boots, most of them were wearing their gloves, so it was a bit of a warm day that day. So, I was sitting there thinking they must be really uncomfortable, because that stuff is not comfortable to wear to begin with. And it was strange, because then somebody down with the National Guard decided that, well not decided, they were ordered, to fire a tear gas canister. Fortunately for me, the wind was blowing at my back, so it was blowing away from me. Tear gas is not nice. And I’m sitting there going, "Why are they doing that?" So, the National Guard started to move forward. Now, when you’re trying to do crowd control, you do it in an orderly fashion. They were not orderly. They were not trained properly. You could tell they weren’t trained just by what they were doing.

[Interviewer]: You feel you could sense that because of your training?

[James Stroh]: Yes, well, before I got out of the service, we had to go through riot control training, because the base I was on, they said, if it comes down to it--this was in early '69--they said, you know, you’re gonna have to possibly do crowd control and so they trained us how to do that: how to walk, what to do, what not to say, or nothing at all. So, it was like, why are they doing that? So, what started out trying to be somewhat of a semblance of a straight line, started to be a zigzag line, but it was still marching towards this group of people and they were still shooting canisters of tear gas at them, the protestors picked it up and threw it back and, you know, like they normally do, like you see today, okay? And then, they just kept walking down trying to do whatever they wanted to do, and that’s when it was out of sight when they went up the hill. What I heard, which sounded kind of like fireworks, but I knew it wasn’t fireworks. There was no way that somebody could’ve lit some fireworks and bang, bang, bang, okay? Because I’ve heard that sound too many times before that. That’s when I decided that, “Oh, exit stage left.”

That’s when the State Police came up this path in wonderful formation, organized, and rather than guns they had night sticks and they were quite organized. I mean it was, in my opinion, it was--they should’ve used the State Police to control these people or at least keep them corralled. The National Guard was useless but, so, that’s why I say the whole thing was wrong.

On that Sunday, going back, we went up to the Administration Building, my roommate and I, and out of the Administration Building, the student president came out, and he was friends with my roommate. So, he walked up to us and said, you know, Governor Rhodes has gone a little crazy, he was shouting, screaming, pounding on the table, he said he threw a couple chairs and he said, "This is my university and nobody’s gonna take it." And what he told us was they’re contemplating Martial Law. So, any more than three in a group will be considered an illegal gathering, so he suggested that we kind of pack up and go home, go back to the dorm, or wherever, and that’s when my roommate and I decided, well okay, maybe we should go back. So, I've subsequently learned, which I thought there was Martial Law, but apparently there wasn’t. It wasn’t instituted, because it required some kind of a law or something and they just threatened to use it, it was never implemented.   

[Interviewer]: So you’re saying that there was never any Martial Law?  

[James Stroh]: Implemented, right. Now, I thought there was, but apparently not. I have been corrected on that one from several people that actually knew. So, to me it was wrong then and it was wrong now. You know what kids are doing today is the same thing they did back then. It was wrong then and it’s wrong now. I don’t care how much you dislike something, it doesn’t condone destroying property--of anybody’s property--be it their car, their buildings, or anything else. It was wrong then, it is wrong now. Now, I blame the governor, the general--Del Corso, and the university, and certainly the main group of protestors that--the leaders. I’m sure there were kids in there that, you know, truly believed what they were doing, but I can incite anybody.

[Interviewer]: Well, if there isn’t anything else you would like to add, I’m going to conclude the interview.

[James Stroh]: Very good.

[Interviewer]: Thank you so much, Mr. Stroh.

[James Stroh]: Thank you.

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