­­­­Amy Shriver Dreussi, Oral History

 

Recorded: May 13, 2020

Interviewed by: Kathleen Siebert Medicus

Transcribed by the Kent State University Research & Evaluation Bureau

 

[Interviewer]: This is Kathleen Siebert Medicus speaking on Wednesday, May 13, 2020, in Kent, Ohio, as part of the Kent State Shootings Oral History Project. We are recording an interview over the telephone today. Could you please state your name for the recording?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: My name is Amy Shriver Dreussi.

 

[Interviewer]: Great, thank you, Do you mind if I call you Amy during the interview?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Please call me Amy.

 

[Interviewer]: Thank you, Amy, so much for joining me today and volunteering to contribute your story to the Oral History Project. I really appreciate it.

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: It’s important.

 

[Interviewer]: Thank you. [00:00:44] I’d like to begin with just some brief information about you, your background. Could you tell us where you were born and where you grew up?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: I was born in Massillon, Ohio, and grew up my entire life there. Now, I only live seven miles away so, I haven’t gotten very far in my life.

 

[Interviewer]: Well, just in that sense, distance-wise.

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Yes. We’d like to think.

 

[Interviewer]: [00:01:15] And when did you first come to Kent State University?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: So, I was a freshman. The shootings happened at the end of my freshman year.

 

[Interviewer]: [00:01:28] And what brought you to Kent State? What made you decide to study at Kent State?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Well, I was a journalism major. I had decided—when I was thirteen years old, I planned the rest of my life out, going to be a journalism major and that meant go to Kent because Kent had such a good program.

 

[Interviewer]: What was that like? When you arrived, was it really exciting? It was a great program.

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Oh, yeah. Well, everything about being in a college was exciting to me because I was raised in the Fifties and the Sixties and my world of experience was very narrow. I was very naïve, very young, very open, though. I mean, I was so excited to be getting out and meeting people from different places. Going to college, for me, was just so exciting.

 

[Interviewer]: Do you have any memories from that fall that stand out that you’d like to share?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: One of the stupidest things that I remember is, as part of our orientation, we had a pep rally, and the cheerleaders were cheering and one of the cheers had the word “damn” in it, and I was standing there and I got to shout that word out loud and I just remember thinking, Oh, the college experience is so wonderful. I just thought it was so exciting that I could stand there in a group of people and shout, “Damn!”

 

[Interviewer]: You hadn’t experienced that before?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: No, no.

 

[Interviewer]: I assume you were living in the dorms?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: I lived in Fletcher Hall on the third floor, second floor, I can’t remember now, but yes. It was so exciting to be among all those girls from all over the country. Like I had never met people like that before and it was thrilling.

 

[Interviewer]: And your roommates, too, did you have roommates from out of state, or, at least from different towns, I’m guessing?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Yes, I went away with one of my roommates. One of my roommates was a friend from high school. But I’m still friends with, well, one of the women that lived up the hall from me, we still get together every year. We’ve been friends for fifty years now.

 

[Interviewer]: [00:04:18] Were you seeing any rallies or protests that fall, or even into the next spring your freshman year? Either Civil Rights, or anti-war protests?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: No, I can’t really say that I remember anything along those lines from the fall.

 

[Interviewer]: Okay. So, that wasn’t really the thing that was front and center on your radar screen, certainly, your freshman year?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: I think especially that first quarter and well into the second, I was just still all about the, Oh my gosh, college. And I don’t think I was necessarily paying attention that much. I mean it’s hard to—my worldview was so small and, all of a sudden, got so big and I think I was mostly about that.

 

[Interviewer]: [00:05:29] I’m curious as time went on your freshman year and you got closer to May 4, 1970, was there a point when that started being more visible for you on campus?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Well, I have to say when I look back, I don’t really remember any kind of—I mean, of course, I was aware of the protests on campus, but I don’t remember really feeling being a part of that really until that day.

 

[Interviewer]: It was college. You were focused on college.

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Not on my classes, necessarily, let’s be clear. But the social aspects were just amazing.

 

[Interviewer]: Are there any memories from the spring that stick out? Before we go into the events of that weekend of May 4, leading up to May 4?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: One thing I remember is one of my very best friends lived in Manchester [Hall] and I remember sitting with him in the lobby, looking out at the construction of the—was it the library or was it the Student Center? No, I think it was-

 

[Interviewer]: Probably the library.

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: It was the library! And just sitting there watching the big earth-moving equipment. I remember looking at him and saying, “You know, that looks like a really fun job.” Of course, that job would’ve been completely unavailable to me, as a female, then, right?

 

[Interviewer]: So, the job of digging or the actual constructing?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Of driving those huge construction equipment. I have no idea what they are. But I just remember looking at that going and thinking, Of course, I can’t do that.

 

[Interviewer]: But you were curious about it and I’ve seen photographs of the construction area building the library and it was massive, huge amounts of mud everywhere. So, it must have been something to kind of watch while it happened. Interesting.

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Yeah. Gosh, I am old.

 

[Interviewer]: Well, none of us are getting any younger.

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: But it is sort of surprising. So, it was fifty years ago, May 4^th was fifty years ago, how did that happen?

 

[Interviewer]: [00:08:07] At this point, would you like to share your memories from that day, or maybe the weekend prior?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: The weekend prior—so, one of the girls in the hall had a sister who was in college at Beaver College in Pennsylvania. And she said, “Let’s go visit my sister for the weekend.” So, that’s what we did. And so, we got back on Sunday night, and we’d heard about the burning of the building and that the National Guard had been deployed. And so, what I remember is coming back into town, on Water Street, and seeing a jeep there with soldiers in it and I remember seeing the light glinting off a bayonet. Like I said, I was so sheltered, I mean guns didn’t really mean anything. I couldn’t sort of grasp that, but a bayonet? I got that. I understood what that was about and it was terrifying to me.

 

[Interviewer]: And that was as you were driving into town on Water Street?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Into town, yeah. It was right by where—what is that freeway that cuts through? I don’t think the freeway was there yet, but it was by where the old Sigma Nu fraternity building was. That’s my first memory.

 

[Interviewer]: Where? Haymaker, or [Ohio State Route] 59.

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Yeah, that sounds right.

 

[Interviewer]: Highway 59 kind of goes through. Okay.

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: I remember then, we got back to Fletcher Hall, and I remember there were helicopters all above. And we were scared and we gathered up our stuff and we ran into the dorm. And I remember looking out of the window of my room and there were kids down there gathering in that street on the side between like Fletcher and Tri-Towers, and they were looking up at the helicopter and their faces, because the helicopters have those big spotlights, their faces were all washed out and their faces all looked like that Munch painting, The Scream. I had just turned 18 a few months before that. I just couldn’t believe what I was experiencing.

 

[Interviewer]: Cleary that image is indelible in your mind.

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Absolutely indelible, absolutely indelible. That and the bayonet, I mean, that’s what I remember about that Sunday.

 

[Interviewer]: Did you call your parents?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: No.

 

[Interviewer]: You guys just hunkered down, I’m guessing.

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: I guess. We didn’t have cell phones. We did have a phone in our room, but we didn’t have that sort of sense of constant contact that we have now. So, no, I don’t think I did. I mean, I may have, but I have no recollection of that at all. But I did go to class the next day. And it was my history professor, whose name, unfortunately, I no longer remember, but he was wonderful. It was really interesting to watch him because, I saw him subsequently, and he went from looking like a really straight guy to looking like a long-haired hippie over that period.

 

[Interviewer]: Over the course of your freshman year, you mean?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: No, I saw him like subsequently that next year. I think May 4^th radicalized a lot of people. And he was concerned. And he really helped me sort of understand what was happening. That our campus had been taken over by a military power and that we had had nothing to say about that. And that that was a cause for concern. I think it was at that point, in the class, that I decided that I was going to go to that rally.

 

And so, I went back after class and had an early lunch and I remember talking to some of the people and some of the other students and they weren’t particularly interested, and I went by myself to that rally. And it was, and I’m sure you’ve heard this before, it was a typical May day in Northeastern Ohio and that it started out freezing cold, so I had on a ski jacket. And I had a brand-new pair of bellbottoms that I had bought that weekend. And I remember going to the rally in my ski jacket and it got warm. And so, I went back to my dorm to leave my ski jacket because Fletcher was close. And so, on my way back, the shootings happened.

 

And so, I mean, you’re familiar with the topography, or the land layout there.

 

[Interviewer]: Yeah, in fact, I’m unrolling my map right now so, sorry, it’s going to be noisy.

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: So, Fletcher and there’s that flat piece, and then there was that incline to go up to the football practice field. Right? So, the bullets went over my head.

 

And as I was walking back, I ran into the teaching assistant who was my botany graduate student assistant from the lab. And I was walking with him and we heard these noises and he said, “Oh, those are bullets, but they’ve got to be blanks because nobody shoots students.” And so, he was older, and I thought, Okay, this guy knows what he’s talking about because certainly, I didn’t. And so, we went up that incline and there was a gate in that fence, went through the gate, I remember his first name was Alison, but I can’t remember his last name.

 

And we were walking and we saw this student laying on the ground. And it was Dean Kahler. And he was laying there and kind of blinking. I just remember him blinking and there wasn’t any blood, but I looked and I thought—and you don’t know if your memory is correct—but how I remember it, and I remember it vividly, he had on a varsity letter jacket and I saw like a burn hole in the side of it. And so, Alison said, “Oh my goodness. This student’s been shot.” So, I looked up and I saw people sort of knowing about him and I started yelling, “This kid needs an ambulance. We need an ambulance.” And other people were calling for an ambulance, ambulances for other people. It all gets kind of fuzzy and surreal at this point, but then I remember the next thing, I looked beyond and there was Jefferey Miller and his—and it was—you know, I’ve never really talked about this.

 

[Interviewer]: Would you like to take a pause?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: No, I’m okay, I’m okay. But his blood was running down. There was a driveway there and there was a gate to get into the parking lot and his blood was running down the street. Kind of, after that, everything just gets like—it’s almost like a dream in my memory, you know. It’s just like—I remember flashes of things, but I don’t remember—it’s not like one continuous memory after that.  I don’t really—sort of the next thing I remember was sitting there—I guess I remember the ambulances coming. But then, I remember sitting there on the other side of Taylor Hall, between Taylor and Johnson, I think it was, Stouffer?

 

[Interviewer]: The closest was Johnson, toward the gym and toward your dorm.

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Yeah, no, no, the opposite direction from my dorm. It was on the other side of Taylor Hall from where the shootings happened. And we were sitting there and people were just milling about, but we were sitting down some of us and kind of trying to figure out what was going on. And that’s when Glenn Frank came and addressed us. He saved so many people’s lives that day, I think. We didn’t know what to do. We really did not know what to do, except we knew that something horrible had happened. And I remember—

 

[Interviewer]: You almost certainly were in shock.

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Oh, I think, clearly. Because, like I said, I was just such a naïve kid, such a naïve kid. And they announced that school was closed and it was just unimaginable. And then, he [Professor Glenn Frank] came and he told us. He said, “You need to leave because they’re going to come back and they’re going to shoot you again.” Or something along those lines. I mean, he warned us because I mean—the whole thing was unfathomable to us and to think that they would come back and do that again?

 

And so, we did, we went back to the dorm and packed up. I remember it was just chaos because we had to get home and we didn’t know how we were going to get home and the phones weren’t working and I don’t know how, ultimately, we made arrangements to get home, but we did. There were quite a few kids from my high school class there and so, I remember that we rode home with the father of one of the kids that I had graduated from high school with.

 

And then, some of my friends who lived out of state, two of my friends lived on Long Island, and so, when they actually closed and said that we weren’t going to go back to school that semester, they had to come back, fly back home, pack up their stuff, and take it back. And so, I remember helping them doing that: picking them up at the airport and keeping their stuff at our house for the summer. 

 

[Interviewer]: And then they flew back home.  

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: And so, we had to finish the semester by mail. One of the classes I was taking was lifesaving, so that worked out well.

 

[Interviewer]:   So, you did everything by correspondence? You didn’t come and meet with any professors? Since you were relatively close.  

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: I was close. I was close enough to have done that, but I don’t recall that it ever crossed my mind.

 

[Interviewer]: And not every professor was able to do that.

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Right. I mean, I can’t imagine having just gone through this semester because I’ve been a professor at the University of Akron and I’m retiring this semester, but just going through that transition of us having to take our classes online was difficult. But I can’t imagine what that was like for professors to do it by mail. It’s hard.

 

[Interviewer]: Yeah. And with no notice, which is also what professors went through during this COVID-19 shutdown.

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Right. Well, lucky for me, I’ve already taught online and I have my classes online so I was able to flip that switch pretty readily, but I cannot imagine what it would’ve been like for those professors back then.

 

[Interviewer]: [00:22:34] What was it like when you got home? Do you have any memories?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Oh, boy. In a lot of ways, because that happened in real time, what happened on May 4^th was just so surreal. The thing that I heard the most from people, because people knew that I had gone to Kent. I remember my dentist, I remember so many people saying to me, “They should’ve shot them all.” And then, I would say to them, “I was one of those kids.” And they would be shocked by that because they had this vision of these Marxist revolutionaries. They had this idea of who those kids were and they were shocked. And it was really hard for me, and so I left. One of my friends from Long Island got me an au-pair job on Fire Island that summer and I got away from it because I just couldn’t bear all the negativity and all the hatred towards kids who were just doing what our Constitution permits us to do. And escaping to New York really wasn’t much of an escape because everybody knew about it there. And after I graduated from Kent in 1973, I backpacked around Europe and North Africa and it still followed me. Every time I would meet somebody and I would say I was from Ohio. I remember that summer I was living in London, we went to see Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young play at Wembley Stadium and standing there in the crowd of thousands of people. When that song came on and when everybody started singing those words, I thought, Oh, you’ve got no idea.

 

[Interviewer]: That was in 1973?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Yeah, yeah. Everybody—and there were quite a few times when people asked me where I went to college and I said Bowling Green.

 

[Interviewer]: Well, I was going to ask if you ever just didn’t say where you were from.

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Yes. I remember one person saying to me, “Did you get any blood on you?” I mean, people had this really morbid curiosity about it. I guess it was a moment in history, so people felt they had the right, or the privilege, to ask about that, but yeah. So, sometimes I just said I went to Bowling Green.

 

[Interviewer]: [00:25:47] Is there anything you’d like to share about what it was like coming back to campus? You came back in the fall of 1970 as a sophomore. Is there anything you remember from those days?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Well, we went—they had those, I don’t call them rallies, I don’t know what they were, the convocations. They had the students all get together and talk about what we were doing and I went with some of the girls who lived on—I lived in Humphrey Hall, small group housing, which is no longer with us. I lived in Humphrey and I remember going to that event with girls who lived on the hall with me, and some of my roommates, and we were in a picture on Life magazine. Well, my eyebrow was in Life magazine, so, there’s my claim to fame.

 

But I remember finding all of that discussion about it was really helpful because, as I was with people who had been there, who had been through that same experience that I had been. I remember thinking that that was really helpful. But then, when the Portage County Grand Jury indicted the students, I just couldn’t believe it. I just could not believe it. I was always interested in government and politics. My minor was Political Science. But seeing that travesty of justice, I—you know.

 

The other thing that I remember, I remember shopping at Woolworth’s that fall, downtown, and being there and seeing people from the community look at me and kind of draw back like I was scary or something. Like they were afraid of me. I’m a pretty innocuous-looking person; it was just bizarre. It was just so bizarre, the perception that people had about the students at Kent.

 

[Interviewer]: And you hadn’t had that kind of experience in downtown Kent prior to the shootings?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: No, no I mean, I just remember seeing the fear and, in my memory of it, they kind of like backed away. Me? Are you kidding? 

 

[Interviewer]: So, those discussions that you mentioned were really not brushing things under the carpet. They were talking about what had happened, what it meant, how people felt.

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: As I recall. But, you know, I remember then, Kent convened—the students convened—the People’s Grand Jury and I went to that. I went to watch that happen. Where we had a much fuller and broader and real-er, if you will, discussion of what happened that day. I think I was like my history professor; I became more and more concerned and appalled and just shocked by the injustice of it all. I was infuriated. 

 

[Interviewer]: So, boy, a lot went on that year.

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: A lot went on that year.

 

[Interviewer]: [00:29:57] I’m curious about what your family was saying and feeling during these times. 

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Well, my father had died my first month of my freshman year. And so, I think my mother wasn’t a particularly emotive person. I don’t really remember. I remember having conversations more with my sisters. My sisters were both quite a bit older than I am, and they had children, married, and all of that stuff. I remember having conversations with them and with their husbands really more than I remember talking with my mother. My one brother-in-law, in particular, was very conservative. I was happy to be able to explain to him my version of it. I don’t know if I necessarily changed his mind, he was stubborn in addition to being conservative, but that’s more what I remember about it. 

 

[Interviewer]: Had your mother heard on the news, on May 4, things about shootings and was she worried?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Yes, I mean, she was, yes, absolutely. The fact that I made it home and she was so relieved and it had been—

 

[Interviewer]: And you hadn’t been able to call her probably?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: No, no I couldn’t get through. Another thing I remember from that day is I was standing on that sidewalk beside Taylor Hall, above Blanket Hill, and this older woman came up to me. I remember that I had—somebody had given me a piece of cloth to put over my face because of the tear gas. I saw this old lady, I mean, she was probably fifty or something, but I thought she was ancient, of course. I saw her and I was concerned because she didn’t have anything. And so, I went over and offered her my cloth and she introduced herself and her name was Ruth Kane. And Ruth was a reporter for the Evening Independent, as it was known then. Which is the newspaper, ultimately, I worked at. And she introduced herself and I immediately bugged out because I didn’t want to say anything that was going to appear in the local newspaper. And so, I told her that story years later when we worked together.

 

[Interviewer]: Did she remember meeting you and you generously giving her your scarf?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Yes, she did. I don’t know what that was, but my inclination was, “No comment.”

 

[Interviewer]: That’s funny. I’m curious about—you mentioned there were a few classmates from your high school graduating class and your roommate was from your hometown. Did you get together with them after campus had closed and you were back home before you left for the summer?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: I left pretty quickly afterwards. No, I don’t really specifically remember. The thing that I remember and, out of all of my friends, I was the person who was the most politically active. I was the person who was the most engaged and the most involved. I mean, like I said, nobody wanted to go to the rally that day. I remember people going to that event, the university-sanctioned event, when we went back and had those “Kent Stay United” T-shirts on. But, other than that, I don’t remember my friends being especially political or being especially involved. I was. I don’t remember any of that.

 

[Interviewer]: Or even just to cry on each other’s shoulders too. But yeah, you were studying political science and journalism, sure.

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: And I had been there. None of my friends had been there.

 

[Interviewer]: Right, yeah. I just lost my train of thought, sorry.

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: No, it’s okay. It is kind of a surreal thing. The other thing is, like I said, I’ve not really talked about it. My husband and I have been married for thirty seven years and he said that. I said a few things about it this year because I just felt like, fifty years, okay. It’s time to talk about this and, for the first time, I really talked to him about this. It’s just—I don’t know if that’s repression. I’m not quite sure what it was, but—

 

[Interviewer]: I can tell you you’re not the only person I’ve had say that to me, by any means. I think it might be—I mean, my guess, I’m not a professional, is it’s just kind of human survival, whatever that means, to deal with trauma in whatever way is best for you. 

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: But I do think my life really changed that day. I think that things that happened to me after that and around that really changed who I was. I was no longer that naïve, just-turned-18-year-old kid.  

 

[Interviewer]: I mean, what a year. First, you lost your father.

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Oh, gosh, yeah, I was very much a daddy’s girl.

 

[Interviewer]: A huge trauma right there in the beginning of your freshman year.

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: I had always had a lot of faith in government and government institutions. Like I said, when Alison said to me, “They’ve got to be shooting blanks because nobody shoots students.” I thought, Well, absolutely. Nobody would do this.

 

[Interviewer]: I mean, a lot of people had that expectation that that’s how they would be dealing with a crowd-control kind of situation.

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Right, right. Tear gas? Sure. But bullets, actual live rounds? I mean, it was unfathomable. The fact that they shot the— 

 

And, you know, Kate, I got to tell you this, the other thing about this fifty years is I’m disappointed, I’m so disappointed. I’m so glad that I didn’t know then what I know now. What have we achieved? Look at where we are now. All of those things that we were all about. What’s happened? Nothing. Women’s rights, civil rights, war, violence—

 

[Interviewer]: Transparency of government probably fits in there.

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Transparency in government and the wrong people getting blamed for the actions of government. That was the thing that I think the fifty-year anniversary resounded most for me. Because, I mean, I made a commitment that day, I am a pacifist. Nobody, nobody can experience that, it would seem to me, and come out of that thinking that guns were the answer to anything. When I look at where we are today, I am so disappointed. Our generation, what the heck? What did we accomplish? I really thought we were going to change the world, I really did. I’ve expressed this to some of my friends and they say, “Yeah, well.” We’ve raised kids that’ll make a difference and maybe that’s it. But that—it’s just disappointing. It’s just disappointing. We shouldn’t have left this world to our kids. We should’ve done more. We could’ve done more. I don’t know what happened to us.

 

[Interviewer]: That’s a lot to absorb.

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: It really is. That’s where I went on this fifty-year anniversary to a state of real disappointment. Because, what have we achieved?

 

[Interviewer]: Had you been planning to attend the commemoration events?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Yes, yes. I had tickets for Jane Fonda. Yeah, I really wanted to go because I wanted to confront it more directly. I wanted to immerse myself and deal with the nooks and crannies that I’ve been ignoring or repressing or whatever. I felt like that was important. Like I said, my friends that I made my freshman year and as well my sophomore year, we still get together periodically and some years we’ve gotten together here and we would go to campus. And honestly, I hadn’t really gone otherwise, but I would see the attempts to whitewash May 4^th and forget May 4^th and the, pardon me, really lame memorial. I mean, the daffodils were lovely and all that kind of stuff. I found that so painful and so disappointing. But this last time we got together, we went to the—what do they call it, it’s not a museum exactly in Taylor Hall.

 

[Interviewer]: May 4 Visitors Center.

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Voila! We went and I was really happy. Carol Cartwright gets a tremendous amount of gratitude from me for addressing it, honoring it, recognizing it, and doing the right thing. I thought the Visitors Center was, we all thought it was just wonderful, beautifully done, spot-on. Finally, finally. That was painful, the fact that the university—what was it? One of the presidents who, “Well, I think five years is enough.” Oh, come on. History is like science. You can ignore it, but it doesn’t make it so it didn’t happen, or that it’s not true.

 

[Interviewer]: Had you attended any of the previous commemoration events?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: No.

 

[Interviewer]: And during your student days, did you?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Yes. The candlelight vigils I went, but I can’t really say I have any specific memories of those, but I do remember I went.

 

[Interviewer]: Do you remember that they were helpful to you, in terms of healing?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: No, honestly, I think they just pissed me off more. I just felt like it was unresolved and I still had a lot of anger and I still was just appalled at the way that the adults, right, in quotes, were dealing with it. There was just so much denial and, by that point, we’d had the Federal Commission, all that kind of stuff, and there was no justice anywhere. There was no justice anywhere and so, I think I just felt a lot of anger. So, standing around with a candle somehow, isn’t that terrible, but it wasn’t really meaningful.

 

[Interviewer]: Yeah, sure. That makes sense.

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: I felt more like we had to live our lives in a way that was a memorial to what happened. Candlelight vigils are nice, that’s appropriate, but that just really wasn’t, to me, especially meaningful.

 

[Interviewer]: [00:44:10] Is there anything you’d like to share with us about how that affected your life over the course of the years? Did you feel galvanized and did that kind of impact your career for example?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: I definitely think it did. I mean, it changed who I was and it gave me a sense of— I’ve been teaching political science and the idea that we need to have a government that is responsive to us. That we need to have a government that is transparent and that respects our rights. I think that is inculcated so deeply in me. It’s been really important to me. I guess I have a sense of mission about that and it saddens me that I’m leaving it because I feel like I have more to give. I feel like I could, but I’m sixty eight years old, hang up the teaching already. Let some younger people take over, but it’s been really important to me. My mission is to let my students know that their government has responsibilities and they have responsibilities.

 

[Interviewer]: Do you have an opportunity in your classes to share with your students your experiences at Kent State? Is that something you talk about with them?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: I did early on. So, my teaching at the University of Akron is really my third career. I was a newspaper reporter in my first career. And then, my second career, I did research evaluation assessment. I did it out of the house as I was working on my dissertation and hanging out with my kids and being a room-mom and all that stuff, so I would teach. I taught part-time for seventeen years, actually, and I did. Early on, I would talk about it. For them, it was ancient history. They weren’t particularly engaged and it was painful for me still, so I just stopped.

 

I wondered at the beginning of this semester, I thought, Well, Amy, you going to talk about it this time? This semester, I had particularly fabulous classes. My students this semester were just so wonderful. They were wonderful. I can’t imagine a better send off than my face-to-face lecture classes this year because they were just great. I thought I might. I thought I might, for the first time in decades, actually, because I felt like they would get it. And then it was in the news so much, they were an empathetic, just a great group of kids. So, I thought I might, but I never got the chance because school closed down.

 

And I thought there might be some value in their ability, going ahead in their lives to say, “Yeah, I had a professor who was there on May 4^th.” So now, it’s like this historic artifact, right? And so, I thought that there might have been some benefit to them going forward, having known somebody who had that experience.

 

[Interviewer]: I think so, definitely.

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: And to also, because I feel like, in a lot of ways, those kids were as naïve as I was.

 

[Interviewer]: They’re young.

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Yup, they are young and, they’re in many ways, as naïve and inexperienced, well, I don’t know if anybody’s as quite as naïve and inexperienced as I was!

 

[Interviewer]: You were not alone, trust me.

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Yeah, right? But the other thing is, Kate, quite frankly, I’ve thought it could happen again. May 4^th was a big deal, right? The fiftieth anniversary makes the national news and that kind of stuff. I think it could happen again and I don’t think it would be a big deal. Isn’t that awful? Isn’t that just awful?

 

[Interviewer]: What makes you say that? The prevalence of shootings in society now?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Oh, yeah, guns! Look at guns, guns, guns, guns, guns. And the indifference of our government? I mean, Governor Rhodes was perhaps unique among—I mean, you know, he was running for the Senate. It was all political to him, the whole law and order thing. I feel like that sentiment has prevailed. I feel like all that peace and pacifism that we were all about has just been shoved to the side. I feel like they won. And you know how hard it is for me to say that? I am—if people would characterize me, you know, if they had to sum me up in one word, they would say that I’m an optimist. I’m a very positive person, but honestly, this fiftieth anniversary just has been anything but a positive experience for me.

 

[Interviewer]: I’m so sorry.

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: I mean, I’m fine, but—

 

[Interviewer]: No, I’m just sorry in general.

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Yeah, me too. I am really, really sorry. I feel like it’s not just what I feel, I think it’s the reality. I really think it could happen again.

 

[Interviewer]: Boy, so I’ve been hesitant to do this the whole time throughout our recording, but maybe what you just said makes me feel more strongly that I need to do it. So, for the record, [00:51:22] are you willing to go back to what you remember while the shootings were happening and you were on that practice football field?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Sure.

 

[Interviewer]: So, you could hear bullets whizzing over your head? I just wanted to get like a visual or audio on that.

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: I can’t remember the exact—exactly what it was, right, but we heard something. I didn’t know what gunfire sounded like. Right? And so, I said to Alison, who was probably like twenty one, but I thought he was an adult, “What is that?” And he said, “It sounds like guns, but it’s got to be blanks because they wouldn’t shoot students.”

 

[Interviewer]: So, you didn’t jump down and lie on the ground? The two of you kept going?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Right. And it’s unfortunate that they built the gym there and destroyed the physical landscape of that time, but there was a fairly significant hill that went up to the practice field, so we were way low. We couldn’t see what was happening up there until we got up there and went through that gate. That’s the other thing, now that you mention it, that gate. When I went back to the dorm, it was partially because the Guardsmen had marched up and pushed us back from the students that were there on Blanket Hill—pushed us back and we were all penned in by that fence on the football practice field, a whole bunch of us. They were teargassing us and so, that’s when I thought, Well, my dorm is right across this—the there was an open field there and so, I thought, I’ll go back and wash off my face and leave my jacket. I had forgotten about that part. 

 

[Interviewer]: Oh, okay. So, when the shootings happened, you were on your way back?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Yeah, I was on my way back.

 

[Interviewer]: Oh, I didn’t understand that before. Got it, okay.

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Oh, sorry.

 

[Interviewer]: No, my fault. So, you were on your way back to the rally?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Yeah. Even after I’d been teargassed—yeah, without my jacket. And I remember going back and saying things to my roommate, but nobody was really interested. I remember, one other guy at lunch said he was going to go to the rally, but we didn’t go together and people weren’t that engaged. Yeah, so I was on my way—

 

[Interviewer]: You were near Dean Kahler, you saw Jeffrey Miller, did you know them at that time?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: No, no.

 

[Interviewer]: So, later, you learned their names?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Right.

 

[Interviewer]: But you saw them. You were clearly very close to Dean Kahler, were there other people gathering around him? Did the Guard, did any of the National Guard come up?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: No, I don’t remember seeing any of them. But that is when it becomes really very blurry. Just sort of the chaos and people—and I have a memory of like shouting and saying, “This kid needs an ambulance, an ambulance!” And I remember thinking that that was going to happen, that somebody was going to get an ambulance. That part of it was going to be okay. And I’ve not talked to him since and I’d like to do that because I think he lives near me. He lives somewhere down here in Canton. 

 

[Interviewer]: And that’s something else that could happen the next time we’re able to do an in-person commemoration. You’d be able to talk to people and just share notes and commiserate.

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Yeah, yeah. Fifty years.

 

[Interviewer]: There’s a lot to reflect on. So, thank you for going back to those memories. I’m glad we were able to get a little bit more of that down. Is there anything else before we close? Is there anything else you wanted to talk about or you’d like to mention that we haven’t covered?

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]:  No, nothing I can think of. I’m just really glad that you’re doing this because I think it’s important. Those who do not learn the lessons of history, right? They are doomed to repeat. I’m worried that we haven’t. And so, I’m glad that you’re doing this because, I mean, it was just one incident on one day, but I think it has a lot of meaning in the bigger sense.

 

[Interviewer]: Well, Amy, thank you so much for being so generous and sharing your memories and experiences. I really appreciate it, thank you.

 

[Amy Shriver Dreussi]: Sure. As I said, thank you.

 

[Interviewer]: Okay, we’ll close here. Thanks very much.

 

[End of interview]

 

 

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