Anonymous, Oral History

Recorded: June 6, 2015

Interviewed by Rennie Greenfield

Transcribed by the Kent State University Research and Evaluation Bureau

[Interviewer]: This is Rennie Greenfield speaking on June 6th, 2015, at Kent State University Special Collections and Archives as part of the May 4 Oral History Project. As we begin, I would like to start out with a couple of just background questions, such as where were you born?

[Anonymous]: In Dayton, Ohio.

[Interviewer]: Dayton. So, you were an Ohio resident. Is your family from southwestern Ohio originally?

[Anonymous]: Yes, they are.

[Interviewer]: Okay. Does your family have any history with the city of Kent?

[Anonymous]: Do we have any history with the city of Kent?

[Interviewer]: Did you know people here I suppose?

[Anonymous]: Well yeah, we know people, we’ve lived here since 1968.

[Interviewer]: What first brought you to this area?

[Anonymous]: Well, I trained in Cleveland at the Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital,  which is now Metro Health, in Pathology. I’m a physician. I graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 1958 and then I did a service stint in the Navy and then I went into pathology at a residency at the Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital from 1963 and I finished up in 1968. I was board certified in 1967 and '68 in anatomic and clinical pathology. I came to Ravenna, or Kent, at Robinson Memorial Hospital to work as a general pathologist. There were two pathologists at that time, myself and Dr. Robert Glasgow. He died in 1976, and there was another pathologist later, but we did some of the coroner’s autopsy work down through the years and we were involved in the Kent State Shootings.

[Interviewer]: Right. So, you had a military background before you even finished your degree?

[Anonymous]: Well I—

[Interviewer]: Or your residency.

[Anonymous]: Well I did, yes, that’s correct. U.S. Navy. I was a general medical officer.

[Interviewer]: Where were you stationed?

[Anonymous]: I did sea duty for 16 months on USS Thuban (AKA-19) for the first 16 months of my tour. The rest, I was at the dispensary at Little Creek, Virginia. That’s near Norfolk at the [Naval] Amphibious Base.

[Interviewer]: And what were your duties in the Navy, were you a doctor?

[Anonymous]: Well, I was a general duty medical officer, so I took care of whoever needed a medical officer. So, I took care of dependents and I took care of service personnel.

[Interviewer]: So, you finished your residency in Cleveland and you arrived in Kent in around 1968?

[Anonymous]: In September 1968.

[Interviewer]: September of 1968?

[Anonymous]: Yes.

[Interviewer]: What was your perception at that time of the college, the campus, the students, or was that even on your radar at all?

[Anonymous]: Well, it was on my radar. We had no official position with Kent State but we felt, when we were in Cleveland, that a university town had some advantages because of the university. Not only the athletics but the music and the theater and the courses that were offered. So, that was in our decision to come to Kent. I live in Kent, okay, in Twin Lakes in Kent, but I worked at the hospital in Ravenna.

[Interviewer]: Were you, at the time, would you have called yourself politically active, or—?

[Anonymous]: I always voted but not beyond that. I tried to keep myself well informed. But no other activity other than that.

[Interviewer]: So a few years after you arrived, obviously the student protest movement was heating up, I mean what was your perception of the protest movement and the students at Kent?

[Anonymous]: What was my perception?

[Interviewer]: Yes.

[Anonymous]: Well, of course, I watched the newspapers with some interest as everything was going on. In my generation, I would have to say, well I wasn’t too supportive of any of the demonstrations that went on. But, that was the way things were, so we accepted things.

[Interviewer]: Did you experience much of them in your day-to-day life or were they mainly focused on campus, I mean did they kind of spread out?

[Anonymous]: No, I didn’t really experience, other than reading in the newspaper and what we heard on the TV and so on. We were not involved really.

[Interviewer]: Okay, do you remember what you were doing that weekend of April 30th, 1970, when Nixon announced that they were going to go into Cambodia. Do you remember kind of the mood or the atmosphere in the town at that point?

[Anonymous]: I heard what was going on and we were very well aware of the movement of troops into Cambodia and we knew about the demonstrations at Kent State and we knew about the demonstrations that went on at the university and in downtown Kent. I was going to mow my lawn that weekend and I couldn’t get any gasoline for my lawnmower because the filling stations in Kent had been instructed not to fill any gasoline in a separate can.

[Interviewer]: Oh, that’s the first I’ve actually heard of that, because they were worried that students would use it to set things on fire.

[Anonymous]: That was from the ROTC Building that’d been incinerated and they were trying to keep that from happening, or anything else from being burned.

[Interviewer]: Certainly. And were you present or did you physically see the National Guard arrive on campus that Sunday?

[Anonymous]: I knew they were there, but that’s all.

[Interviewer]: You weren’t stopped? Because we’ve talked to other people who physically had trouble getting in and out of town.

[Anonymous]: Twin Lakes, if you’re familiar with the area is actually north of Kent, so I did not really—I was not witness to what—the demonstrations going on in Kent at the time.

[Interviewer]: What was the conversation like amongst residents then? Amongst your neighbors and people you knew there?

[Anonymous]: Well, I’d have to say they were—the people I knew were not supportive of the demonstrations. You know, they didn't know anything about it, but that was a general feeling. At that time, I was considerably older than the students that were active, I was 38 at the time. I’m married, I have two daughters, they were just kids at the time.

[Interviewer]: Were they in school in Kent?

[Anonymous]: They were, in time, but in 1970 they were too young.

[Interviewer]: Okay, yeah. So, on that Monday, were you working at the hospital?

[Anonymous]: Yes, yes I was.

[Interviewer]: And the shootings occurred, and how did you first hear about them?

[Anonymous]: In the early afternoon, I was at my desk working and I could hear sirens approach the emergency room and that was the—they were bringing the dead and wounded over from Kent and that was the first I was aware of what happened.

[Interviewer]: How large, and I’m sorry for not being familiar with it, but how large a hospital was it?

[Anonymous]: At that time, I think it was around 250 beds.

[Interviewer]: Okay.

[Anonymous]: This is the old hospital, we built a new hospital in 1977 and it was larger, at that time, but it’s smaller now. This is the number of beds, that is.

[Interviewer]: When you heard the sirens and the ambulances begin to arrive, were you directly involved at all in treating any of the wounded?

[Anonymous]: No, I was not. I don’t do any clinical work as such. I work in the laboratory.

[Interviewer]: Okay, yeah, probably a good time to talk about, what were your general duties at the hospital?

[Anonymous]: As I said, Dr. Glasgow and I, we were the two pathologists, we took care of the surgical specimens and ran the laboratory—that is, hematology, bacteriology, and all the other sections of the laboratory. That was our responsibility. I was sitting at my desk looking at slides when the ambulances were heard.

[Interviewer]: But it wasn’t one of those where they were calling in for outside help because there were a number of wounded?

[Anonymous]: I was unaware of it—I wouldn’t have been surprised if they didn’t, but I would’ve thought they would’ve. But I can’t speak to that, I was not involved in that, until I heard that there were dead and, of course, then I was involved.

[Interviewer]: So, at that time, you would traditionally be one of the two people conducting autopsies at the hospital?

[Anonymous]: Yes.

[Interviewer]: And when did that happen—I understand you performed autopsies on two of the dead.

[Anonymous]: We did. Dr. Glasgow did one, I did the other. I did Allison Krause and he did Sandy Scheuer. Our facilities were taxed beyond what we could handle. The two guys that were killed, they were sent over to the Summit County Coroner’s Office to have their autopsies done over there. It was that afternoon that we started and finished up in the evening.

[Interviewer]: I understand it would have been unusual to have four dead people at one time.

[Anonymous]: Yes.

[Interviewer]: Had you had experience performing autopsies on shooting victims before?

[Anonymous]: Yes, we had been encouraged to do so by [unintelligable name] at the Cuyahoga County Coroner’s Office, and I’ve had several courses at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and Forensic Pathology. Dr. Glasgow had that similar experience, so we were moderately experienced as general pathologists that were not subspecialized in forensic pathology, but we were partially experienced in doing autopsies of this type.

[Interviewer]: But it wasn’t the normal course of events?

[Anonymous]: No, no. We did other coroner’s cases, of course, in the county.

[Interviewer]: What do you remember about that autopsy specifically, does anything stick out, or your feelings going into it?

[Anonymous]: Allison was shot in the left side of her chest and she was pretty well bled out by the time she died and was brought over. That’s about it. Of course, the findings are public record if you want to access those, as all coroner’s cases are of this type, it’s public record.

[Interviewer]: Do you remember thoughts or just emotions having done that or—?

[Anonymous]: Emotions?

[Interviewer]: Yes.

[Anonymous]: It affected us, I’m sure. We were very troubled by it but, of course, you do what you have to do. I can recall leaving that evening, coming home, and driving through downtown Ravenna and the streets were just absolutely deserted. Everybody was home and there was just absolutely no traffic on the roads other than myself. And I’m thinking to myself, “My goodness, this is terrible. This is the United States of America and this should not be happening." I certainly recall that.

[Interviewer]: Do you remember speaking with other doctors at the hospital about their experiences?

[Anonymous]: Oh yeah, oh yeah, we felt we were fortunate because of the surgical schedule. Surgery, non-emergency type surgery, you know, the routine elective surgery is done in the morning at most hospitals, and they had just finished up getting their elective cases done when the ambulances arrived just in the early afternoon. So, the surgeons were there and the operating rooms were open and, of course, the nursing staff was there and the hospital was ready to go. When we felt we were fortunate that things worked the way they did. We didn’t lose anybody that should’ve made it but didn’t. We felt that we had done everything and everybody made it that should’ve made it. And, of course, the four dead were dead when they arrived in the emergency room.

That was a terrible day for us. Mr. Krause drove over from Pittsburgh, he worked for Westinghouse and I think he was an executive of some kind. The poor man came over and identified his daughter, it was terrible.  

[Interviewer]: Did you speak with him at the time?

[Anonymous]: No, I did not.

[Interviewer]: What were the days and weeks like directly after that? Do you remember anything changing attitude-wise especially amongst—I know you were older and not a student here at the time—but amongst the residents and your neighbors that lived in Kent?

[Anonymous]: We were very distraught by what had happened. It was universal, the regret that this had to happen. It was terrible. There are university people that, at that time, lived just across the street from us, whom we knew. We knew these people, of course, but I really didn’t get a good chance to speak to them about what was going on. But, of course, the newspapers, we certainly heard via newspaper, you know, The Record Courier, and The Beacon, and the TV. It was a very regrettable situation.

[Interviewer]: You described the attitudes of the members in the community as not very favorable towards the protests, did those attitudes change after the shootings or were they still largely against the protesting?

[Anonymous]: Well, I’d have to say they were still—they certainly regretted what happened, but they—were very distraught over that it did happen and they felt that people were at fault on all sides. The demonstrations were excessive, it was felt, and—this is just what I heard. The people in downtown Kent, I understand, the merchants were the people that were very concerned about the demonstrations were getting out of hand and they were doing things and they were concerned about their businesses and they asked the state to send in the National Guard. And, of course, those kids, they were very young, too. They were just ill-equipped to take care of the situation. It’s just extremely unfortunate.

[Interviewer]: Certainly. Is there anything else that I haven’t touched on, I regret that I don’t have the medical expertise to really review further about—?

[Anonymous]: Of course I don’t recall all the—everything that—other than to say that, of course, it’s public record if you want to get that. Of course, I had to testify in the civil case. It was just a deposition, that was all that was. I didn’t have to go on the stand and testify with the deposition, the lawyers questioned me and let it go at that.

[Interviewer]: From your perspective, the autopsy was a fairly straightforward—?

[Anonymous]: Yes, it was. Of course, we saved the bullet fragments, they were given to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, they sent a team down and they came out to my home and interviewed me. And, of course, they got the bullet fragments, it was apparent that these fragments came from a M1 Garand, that was very straightforward.

[Interviewer]: That was the rifle that the National Guard carried at the time?

[Anonymous]: The .30-06 is what, or close to it—the Garand—this is the standard infantry-type weapon in World War II, so these were not the latest M16s that were being used in Vietnam at the time. These were older weapons.

[Interviewer]: Did the FBI conduct their own separate autopsy or—?

[Anonymous]: No, I don’t think they did. They came down and reviewed everything with us and that was about it, but they didn’t do any separate autopsy.

[Interviewer]: Is there anything else you wanted to talk about or wanted to say that I haven’t asked you about?

[Anonymous]: No, I think you've covered it—it certainly brings back bad memories for me to go through this again. But no, I think you’ve covered everything.

[Interviewer]: Thank you very much for taking the time to speak with me today about this.

[Anonymous]: You’re welcome. ×