Phyllis O’Connor, Oral History

Recorded: May 2, 2019

Interviewed by Kathleen Siebert Medicus

Transcribed by the Kent State University Research & Evaluation Bureau

 

[Interviewer]: This is Kathleen Siebert Medicus speaking on May 2nd, 2019 at Kent State University Special Collections and Archives as part of the Kent State Shootings Oral History Project. Today I will be talking with Phyllis O’Connor. Welcome Phyllis, thank you for coming today. 

 

[Phyllis O’Connor]: Thank you. I’m glad to be here.

 

[Interviewer]: I’d like to begin with some brief information about your background. Could you tell us where you were born and where you grew up?

 

[Phyllis O’Connor]: I was born in Akron, Ohio, and I lived my entire life in Akron, Ohio, in various different places. In 1962, my parents bought the house that I was raised in and when—my parents are both gone—and that’s where I lived in 1970.

 

[Interviewer]: Okay. And you were in high school at the time? Could you tell us a little bit about your high school?

 

[Phyllis O’Connor]: I was fifteen years old. Actually, I was a sophomore at Ellet High School, which is in—on the east side of Akron, almost to the Mogadore-Springfield line. Not too far. Actually, as far east as you can get and still be in Akron. Not too far away from Kent.

 

[Interviewer]: Okay. So, I think we’d like to start with your memories of that day, May 4, 1970. And tell us what happened.

 

[Phyllis O’Connor]: Okay. What happened is I was in my afternoon class. It was World History. I remember that, because when my dad who, at the time, was thirty-eight years old. He was a thirty-eight-year-old father of four daughters, who was a U.S. Treasury agent with Internal Revenue Service, but he worked out and about in the field and he came and got me from World History, where my counselor came and got me from World History and told the teacher that my dad was here to pick me up for the rest of the day. I didn’t expect him to come that day and I was—I remember being a little worried thinking somebody in my family was hurt or ill. And so, I went down to high school office and there was my dad pacing. He was a pacer when he was worried or anxious or impatient. In his conservative business suit, which is what federal agents were required to wear at the time, white shirt, never any colors, you know, dark tie. And jingling his change as he paced, because that was another thing he did when he was impatient. And I wanted to ask him why we were there, but he just—he gave me one of those dad looks, like, “Don’t ask me.” And I actually thought maybe we were just going to do something fun because that wouldn’t have been the first time he came and got me out of something to do something he considered more educational and more fun than sitting in, like, a World History class at Ellet High School.

But, when we got to the car, he explained what had happened at Kent State. And there had been shooting. I don’t remember if he told me that anyone was killed or even if he knew that anyone was killed, but he did know, because he had just come in from being out in the field this way, that the campus had closed and there were just tons of students hitchhiking because the campus was closed. It was evacuated and they needed a way home. So, he asked if I minded riding along with him because, he said, two reasons. One, is that he thought students would feel safer getting into a car with a stranger if his teenage daughter was there. And two, he said, “This is a day I want you to remember.” So, we did. We went out. We headed towards 76 East.

In my fifteen-year-old brain, there were just hundreds of people along the side of the road. Now, I don’t know if that’s true or not. Maybe there was only dozens. I remember, I thought, “Oh my goodness, oh my goodness. What’s going to happen to all these people. What would I do, if I were in their spot?” We pulled—they had signs. The students had signs: homemade signs, paper signs, cardboard signs, you know, with their destination city on it. And we pulled over and picked up three, who were together, you could tell. They were standing together, all their hands were on one big sign that said, “Pittsburgh.”

So, we picked up—there were two men and one woman and they got in the back seat and I remember really no conversation. No conversation. It was a quiet, nearly silent, stunned, sad ride to Pittsburgh. Every once in a while, somebody would quietly cry. But there wasn’t any ranting and there wasn’t any raving. There wasn’t any raging against the situation. It was just solemn. We drove to Pittsburgh. The three students were in the back seat. My dad and I were in the front seat. I’m sure he had the window down. I’m sure he was smoking unfiltered Camels because that’s what he did, you know. And we went to Pittsburgh. We got off at an exit where one of the men’s mother met us. How he had gotten in touch with her, I think about that now, I don’t know. I know we stopped a couple times to go to the bathroom and to get drinks on the way to Pittsburgh. So, maybe he called her there, I don’t know. But we dropped them off with her and then my dad and I turned around and we drove back to our home in Akron. Once again, really really quietly. Just thinking. Thinking about how awful the whole thing was.

 

[Interviewer]: That’s a really vivid story, thank you. So, your father, that’s how he knew something was happening initially, he saw students hitchhiking?

 

[Phyllis O’Connor]: He saw students hitchhiking and then he turned on his car radio, you know. That to me is how he knew. There was, obviously, there were no cell phones. You know, there were no cell phones at all. And he found out even more because he stopped at one point for—at a payphone, which is what people did, especially my dad who was a field agent. And he called into the Akron office to say, “I’m not sure what’s going on here.” And he was told by his boss. Then he told them that he was taking the afternoon off and what he was going to do. This could lead into another story because his boss, named Mac—because that was not really his name, that was a nickname.

 

[Interviewer]: Go ahead, go into another story.

 

[Phyllis O’Connor]: He said to my dad, “Well, for heaven’s sakes, don’t turn it in for leave without pay because you already created enough chaos requesting for leave without pay.” And this was when my dad and I attended the two moratoriums against the Vietnam War. So, once again, my dad was a Federal Treasury agent. He was paid by the federal government. And the moratoriums, which were active protests on many campuses and in many cities, but they were also times for quiet reflection and meditation and prayers, if you were a prayer, against the war. And so, places like school auditoriums and churches opened their doors during those moratorium times for anyone in the community to come and sit and think. My dad attended those and a couple of protests against the Vietnam War, even though he wasn’t—how can I say it? He never could be front and center. That would have really jeopardized his job at the time. He was supposed to remain neutral. And so, when he did attend the moratoriums and other events to protest the war, he would turn in for leave without pay. He was very ethical, thoughtful man, and he thought it was wrong to collect a federal paycheck from the government that you were protesting against. Well, evidently this was just an unheard-of thing, because my dad had plenty of sick time and plenty vacation and his turning in for leave without pay to these events prompted an FBI investigation because they were afraid he was subversive, which of course is laughable. You know, my dad, but his boss finally said, “You just got to stop this! You got to stop it, Clarence.” That was his name. “You know you got to stop turning in for these requests. Just go! You have my approval to just go.” My dad said, “I can’t. I can’t be paid by the same government that I’m protesting against. It’s just a wrong thing.” So, that’s why on that day at Kent State my dad called in to say he said was taking the afternoon off. His boss, Mac, said, “Oh please, please, Clarence, do not turn in another leave without pay request.” That was my story. That was my story on May 4th, 1970.  

 

[Interviewer]: You mentioned that there really wasn’t much conversation in the car with the students that you gave a ride. Did they tell you their names or do you remember their names?

 

[Phyllis O’Connor]: I do not think they told us their names. You know and I’ve thought about that a lot, sometimes, over the course of the years. Usually, on May 4th, because I often always think of the story on May 4th and especially in the past week or so, I’ve been trying to drudge up as many details as I could come up with. I don’t remember them saying their names. And I would tell you right now, I don’t think they did. And I don’t think we told them our names because I don’t think it mattered really. I don’t think it mattered.

 

[Interviewer]: And when you got to Pittsburgh, you drove to the home or mother’s home of one of the men that was riding with you?

 

[Phyllis O’Connor]: No, she met us at a place of business. At a restaurant, at a little fast food restaurant. It wasn’t McDonald’s, I don’t know what it was at the time, but it was off one of the expressway ramps. And so, that’s where we met her. And we met her in the parking lot. I knew that she was one of the men’s mothers because they embraced first. And they were crying and then I got the feeling that she did not know the other two students, but I know they lived in Pittsburgh or they said they did. I’m sure they did. And that was the last we saw or heard of any of them.

 

[Interviewer]: So, you dropped all three students off at that convenient meeting place with the mom, with the one mother.

 

[Phyllis O’Connor]: Right.

 

[Interviewer]: When you drove back to Kent, do you have any other memories? You mentioned that you and your father were also pretty quiet. Did you see more hitchhikers at that point?

 

[Phyllis O’Connor]: There were some straggling hitchhikers. The ones that were left, the ones that had not been picked up, were the ones that were very, very angry or either, I think, maybe not even students. There were a lot of agitators in those days, Kate, you know that. And sadly, Kent State was from that—a little bit before that time and for years afterwards—was kind of a magnet for people who wanted to stir up unrest. I’m not saying without warrant or provocation, but that’s what they did. So, I remember driving back and I remember passing quite a few stragglers along the side of the road. But, they were hollering; they were marching. They were angry, angry people. Then they may have been students. Students had every reason to be angry that day, but that’s not somebody my dad was going to pick up with his daughter in the car. 

 

[Interviewer]: Right. So, then at that point you went home. Do you remember conversations at home that evening with your family, your other sisters about what happened or?

 

[Phyllis O’Connor]: No, I—my dad didn’t want me to talk about it much with my little sisters. I was the oldest, you know. And the others were a lot younger. Some of them were a lot younger than I was and my mother came from a very, very small farm town in Tennessee. And this kind of stuff would just get her really worried. Worried that my dad was going to get in trouble and say something he shouldn’t say, you know. He didn’t say keep a secret from her because we would have never had done that. But we just—we watched television. That’s what we did, I mean. We turned on the nightly news every night. Little house, four daughters. But that was quiet time. Every night. We would sit and watch Walter Cronkite and Huntley and Brinkley, Eric Sevareid. I remember all their names. It was just—that’s just what we did. News was an important part of life in our family.

 

[Interviewer]: Even though some of your sisters were quite young at that point, you were still following the news about the Vietnam War at home?

 

[Phyllis O’Connor]: Yes, we did. Yes, we did. He wanted his daughters to know what was going on in the world. I remember lots of instances like that with my dad. I remember when Robert Kennedy was shot, in the middle of the night, really, in Akron, Ohio. And I got up the next day, my dad had been sitting there all night long, just watching television.

 

[Interviewer]: That’s really interesting. My family, that was much more kept from us as younger children. So, I’m curious if you’d like to talk more about your father and his approach to being a citizen of the United States and kind of his activism?

 

[Phyllis O’Connor]: Yeah, I mean, like I said, it was a quiet activism. He was a thoughtful, thoughtful person. He was politically active, once again, quietly because he was a federal employee and there were—there still are—rules against you—what you can and cannot do as a federal employee. I think my impression is they were enforced more strictly back then than they are now. And so, he always had to be careful. He was a liberal. I mean, just—and happy to tell you about it. He was a socially conscious man and a man of action, I think, just like this shows, I guess. You could go to a pub or a friend’s house and just rant against Governor James A. Rhodes or you could just pick up your daughter and go out and pick up some hitchhikers and do something to actually help. That’s the lesson he wanted us all to learn, I think. So, you know, anger doesn’t help. Ranting and raving against what you perceive as an injustice or an abusive power doesn’t help. Get out there. Vote. Support the candidates actively, you think and create the world that you like. Be a good citizen. Take care of people who need to be taken care of and don’t just sit around and talk about it. Do something about it. 

 

[Interviewer]: Could you describe for us more detail about the moratoriums that you attended with you father?

 

[Phyllis O’Connor]: Yeah. We went—the moratoriums we attended were in Ellet High School’s auditorium. 

 

[Interviewer]: At your high school?

 

[Phyllis O’Connor]: Um-hm. At our high school. I think a lot of it, upon reflection now, was to give high school students a place to go to protest the war peacefully and quietly, as opposed to if they had no place to go they may have gotten in their car or gone to a protest at Akron or Kent, probably Kent. I mean, I lived in Akron and I did graduate from the University of Akron. But, at the time it, was called “Apathetic U.,” by the way, because all of the social activism was happening twelve miles down the road at Kent State. Not so much at the University of Akron. Of course, it was a different kind of student, you know, it wasn’t a residential campus. They had lots of veterans attending there, as my dad did, after he got out of the military. He went there on a GI Bill. It was a different kind of a student body, I think, than Kent. The moratoriums were set up, I think, to afford students and other members of the community a quiet place to go. Maybe, I’m not being paranoid, but maybe to redirect their activity, you know, from more active protests. But, we’d go in the auditorium and it was absolutely quiet. I remember it was darkened, but not dark. And this is the same place, of course, we sat for pep rallies and all kind of wild and crazy events, but this, no. The doors were open. One door of the school was open with people there directing anybody who wanted to come in to the auditorium. And you sat—I remember—as I recall, it was a couple of hours, you know. If students in the high school wanted to attend that, they had to, of course, get permission from their parents because that meant that they were not going to class. My case, my dad came and sat with me, gave me permission and then we sat together. 

 

[Interviewer]: So, it was held during the day? During the school day?

 

[Phyllis O’Connor]: Um-hm. During the school day.

 

[Interviewer]: Wow. Were there a lot of classmates there? A lot of teachers? Neighborhood people?

 

[Phyllis O’Connor]: No, I don’t remember a lot of classmates there. I don’t remember a lot of—I don’t remember any classmates there. I remember no teachers there. And I remember a very, very, very sparse attendance from the community. Could almost just say a scattering of people in a large auditorium.

 

[Interviewer]: Is it something you heard about through school? Or through your father?

 

[Phyllis O’Connor]: No, I heard that from my dad. I don’t think the school advertised it, necessarily. So, no, I knew about it because of my father. And I was the only one of my friends that ever went that I recall.

 

[Interviewer]: So, at home and in your neighborhood or with your fellow students, as a high schooler, you were aware, you were quite aware of protests happening on the Kent State campus and that they were happening there and not at Akron.

 

[Phyllis O’Connor]: Right.

 

[Interviewer]: Is that again, something that your family talked about in the evenings?

 

[Phyllis O’Connor]: Yeah, we would talk about current events a lot in the evening. Now, not only current events. You know, I mean with three daughters, you’re going to talk about a lot of stupid stuff happening in our lives, you know. But when big things were happening, yes, we talked about that. We talked about that at the dinner table. You know, I mean it affected most of our lives. I think mine maybe more so than my younger sisters because, well, because I was a teenager in the early 70s. I went to all of the Kent State—May 4th Kent State. The early ones were, I’m sure you know, more protest than memorials. They continued annually. 

 

[Interviewer]: The annual commemorations.

 

[Phyllis O’Connor]: Correct. And I attended those well into my early adulthood. All the way through college. I remember vividly attending, and at that point, of course, there were a lot of my college friends that we came to those. Yeah, so for many years we went to the May 4th memorials.

 

[Interviewer]: You must have, when you were at that age, fifteen, you must have had friends with brothers who were, had been drafted or were subject to being drafted. So, I’m sure that was more in your mind than your younger sisters.

 

[Phyllis O’Connor]: Absolutely, you know. And more than one of our cousins, our first cousins, had been drafted. One was in active service at the time. The age gap between the one sister, Cheryl, and I is not that great, but it’s amazing what a big difference it made. Just being a teenager in those early 70s was big. 

 

[Interviewer]: And you mentioned your father was a veteran. Was he a veteran of the Korean War or World War II?

 

[Phyllis O’Connor]: He was a veteran of the Korean War. He was not in active duty in the Korean War. In fact, he was stationed in Tripoli, Libya for almost the time. He was an operator, an operator on an airplane. That’s what he did during the Korean War.

 

[Interviewer]: He was a pilot?

 

[Phyllis O’Connor]: Nope, he was a radio operator. Radio operator. Yep. That’s what he did.

 

[Interviewer]: And then got his education with the GI Bill?

 

[Phyllis O’Connor]: Um-hm, at the University of Akron. Got the degree in math and history to be a teacher, but, quite frankly, by then he had four daughters and teaching salaries were just not enough, not enough. Not enough to support those four girls and buy a house, you know. And so, he went into federal service instead, was there the entire time. His whole entire career.

 

[Interviewer]: I’m also curious about, for you and your life, when you think back to that day and what your father did that he decided to get you and have you participate in this with him. I’m wondering what effect that’s had on you or what—?

 

[Phyllis O’Connor]: I think it’s made me—well, my sisters say I’m like a clone of my dad anyway. So, you know, maybe it really started that day more than any other day. But like I said, politically active, but not, not maybe loud about it, you know. Maybe not as loud as I should be, but I guess I learned that from him. Just matters more what you do than what you say. I’ll put my time and energy in with candidates I think are worthy of my support and not so much against people, but rather for a better opponent. How’s that? That’s my dad’s way of looking at it, I think. Like I said, just socially active where—people need help, then you should help them. No matter even if you don’t have a lot of money or a lot of time. Because my dad didn’t have a lot of money or a lot of time, his situation in life was very different than mine. But he still gave and did. So, yeah, he affected me.

 

[Interviewer]: That was amazing of him. That was something that he could do and those students really needed to get home before dark.

 

[Phyllis O’Connor]: Yeah. Yep, they did. It was a terrible time. I think maybe empathy, too. Because, like I said, focusing on the horrible actions of that day and whose fault it was and who’s to blame—that was not his focus. His focus was to understand that, boy, there are just hundreds, if not more, students who need actual real practical help today. Let’s just go do that. Instead of just talking about the big picture of something that, at that point, there was nothing you could do to change. You can only hope to stop it from ever happening again.  

 

[Interviewer]: Thank you so much. Is there anything else that you would like to say that we haven’t covered, if you want to?

 

[Phyllis O’Connor]: I don’t think so. It’s been interesting, emotional, but kind of fun to talk about this. Thank you.

 

[Interviewer]: Thank you so much. What an interesting story and I think of this as really a very nice way to have a memorial in memory of your father and what he did that day to have this recorded for other people to hear.

 

[Phyllis O’Connor]: I do too, thank you.

 

[Interviewer]: Thank you.

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