Barbara Child, Oral History

 

Recorded: April 16 and April 27, 2020

Interviewed by Barbara Hipsman Springer

Transcribed by Kathleen Siebert Medicus

 

[Interviewer]: This is Barb Hipsman Springer speaking on April 16, 2020, in Kent, Ohio. As part of the Kent State Shootings Oral History Project, we are recording an interview over the telephone today with Barbara Child. Okay, now we’re recording. I’m recording with Barbara Child and she will tell you her name.

[Barbara Child]: My name is Barbara Child.

[Interviewer]: There is really no format for this recording, other than to ask you to start what feels comfortable. You’ve given me an outline for the weekend. But, let me ask you before we even start with that. What, to you, was the general feeling around that time? You said you were living in the Falls [editor’s clarification: Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio]. But, nationally, were you aware of other things going on?

[Barbara Child]: Oh heavens, yes, you know. I had been a supporter on the—outside the edges of SDS in the late Sixties. I’ve always said—this is earlier than what we have on the outline—I’ve always said that the arrest of Matthew Flanagan, who went by the name “Rebel” in those days. He was arrested for distributing obscene literature and the literature in question—

[Interviewer]: When was that, about?

 

[Barbara Child]: Well, it was a film—it was a poster for a film festival that the SDS was going to put on. And, I’m sorry I can’t tell you a thing about what that poster had on it. I don’t know whether it was about nudity or whether it was about language, I have no idea. But, it was pretty clear that what it really was about was not obscene literature, but shutting down the SDS. And I did not know him from Adam, he was a freshman at that time and that would have been, I don’t know, ’68, I guess. And I just went nuts, I was so furious about that. And so, I saw him last May 4^th and we had a fun conversation and I said, “Do you realize that you are responsible for turning me into a civil libertarian overnight?” Because I had not particularly been such until that.

 

[Interviewer]: I didn’t know that about you, that’s interesting.

 

[Barbara Child]: Well, I was already a member of the ACLU board. I went onto the Akron-Summit County ACLU board in, I don’t know what year, someplace in the Sixties. In fact, I was responsible for getting there to be a Portage County chapter, there was no such then, there was just Akron-Summit County.

 

[Interviewer]: So, if I might interrupt, how old were you when you were living in the Falls? Were you employed at Kent State or were you still a student?

 

[Barbara Child]: Oh right, well, let me line that up. I came to begin teaching at Kent [State] in the English Department in 1963, in January of 1963. That was because I finished my master’s at Indiana U. that previous fall, I guess, ’62. And so, I lived in Kent when I first moved there, I took a little duplex down on Kent-Munroe Falls Avenue, right where—it’s close to where you live, really, it’s where—what’s that street, Longmere?

 

[Interviewer]: Middlebury [Road] and Longmere [Drive] intersect, yeah.

 

[Barbara Child]: Right, it was on—the place I lived was a duplex on Middlebury right smack where Longmere empties into it, made a “T” with it. So, I lived there for two years. I got married on the 17^th of September, 1965, to Bob Tener, who was a Shakespeare professor in the English Department and moved into his family home with him and his mother in Cuyahoga Falls. And so, I lived in Cuyahoga Falls from September 17, 1965, until I filed for divorce on the 21^st of September, 1970. And moved first into a little apartment building, I forget whether it had a name or what, on Lake Street. And I just lived there for about a year while I was looking for something I would like better and that something was a duplex, again, out on Seasons Road, it’s a very nice place to live. I lived out there until I got myself in Brady Lake in 1975. So, that’s the dateline!

 

[Interviewer]: Okay. Well, maybe we could—you said that, leading up to that weekend, you hadn’t really been that active in anti-war protesting, those types of things?

 

[Barbara Child]: Well, what I meant to say on the outline was that I was at home in Cuyahoga Falls the weekend of May 1 through 3 [1970], and so I did not know anything about the business going on downtown, the protests, over the weekend. I had been, as I said, kind of on the outside of things, being concerned for the wellbeing of SDS in the late Sixties. And when that big thing happened at Music & Speech, which is when people got arrested and all kinds of stuff started to happen, that’s when I heated up because two doors down from my house in Brady Lake was Kass McClaskey and her husband—then husband, who was Michael Tarr—she later married Ray Wise, who was somebody in the Theater Department. But Kass was one of those people who either got arrested or, you know, it’s very foggy in my mind exactly what happened to whom right then. But, I was being concerned for them and I remember, in fact, one of my sort of visceral images and I couldn’t begin to tell you the date: but, I went to legal proceedings in the courthouse in Ravenna and I know that one of the defendants was Rick Erickson. And Candy, his wife then, was sitting right in front of me and I think I said this to her later, maybe I wrote it in a letter, that I was sitting right behind her and I had my hand on her shoulder. And the gesture, to begin with, was of me showing her support as she was watching her husband go through this. But, afterwards, what I realized was that she, and not just Candy, but that whole group, were essentially lifting me up. I was becoming a different person during those years, the five years of my marriage were a period of transformation for me.

 

[Interviewer]: So, from what to what, would you say? What kind of title would you have before this?

 

[Barbara Child]: I was not stuffy, ever! But, well, let’s see, what was I? I was the faculty advisor to the literary magazine which we called The Human Issue and I was the faculty advisor to the Honor Society, the National Honor Society. So, I was kind of—the

 

[Interviewer]: So, you were a rule keeper?

 

[Barbara Child]: I was, you know, an institutionalist. My office was there in Satterfield—I don’t know if you know the configuration their offices are in, like pods, with an open space in the middle where the grad students would sit. And Bob and I had offices in that same pod, [room] 202, down at the end, but mine was bigger because the literary magazine office, The Human Issue office, was in my office. But, you know, I was being in charge of students in extracurricular stuff, in a way. I taught every kind of writing class you can think of: I taught fiction writing and poetry writing and essay writing. And then, you know, everything changed later on when I went to law school and then I was—I added legal writing also. And I taught drama courses, reading, fiction reading, plays. But, there was my husband, you know, right down the hall there. And—oh god, I don’t even know how to describe our life.

 

[Interviewer]: Well, it was just a normal relationship, I guess, and then you met up with some people who kind of changed your ideas on a few things, it sounds like.

 

[Barbara Child]: Yeah, and I don’t mean to suggest, really, that Bob was terribly conservative, that’s not true. In fact, when people were talking about, When did you start being an activist, when did you march, and stuff, I remember the marches sort of around in a circle right out in front of Bowman Hall for SANE—the nuclear, against nuclear weapons.

 

[Interviewer]: Oh, yeah, I remember that group. Students Against Nuclear something or other.

 

[Barbara Child]: Right. And it was Bob who was really the marcher for SANE. But, I don’t remember being part of any anti-war stuff before 1970.

 

[Interviewer]: So, you said that you went to the trials, were those before, were those in 1970?

 

[Barbara Child]: Yeah. Yeah, that would have been ’68, ’69, I think. And I do remember—on what, Friday the 1^st  was when folks went out by the Victory Bell and burned the—or buried The Constitution and Black United Students was involved in that. And I remember that that same afternoon, I had an appointment to interview for a position that I don’t believe had existed before, which was some kind of an ombudsman position.

 

[Interviewer]: Oh, interesting, at the university?

 

[Barbara Child]: Yeah. And I know, later on, I became an ombudsman for the English Department. The reason that sticks in my mind was that, this was after the divorce, and you know, the Seventies, for me, in the English Department, was really interesting! The divorce was final on the end of December of ’70 and I was still there until ’78. And, being the ombudsman in the English Department, and I had gone back to my maiden name. While I was married, I took Bob’s name, and so I was Barbara Tener and people who know me only in association with the late Sixties or even ’70, you know, the year of the killings. Some people might not know who Barbara Child is because I was Barbara Tener. But, anyway, people—when I was being the ombudsman, and later on, if a student came with a complaint about Professor Tener and they would come to the ombudsman—me—Professor Child and they, you know, some of them didn’t have any idea I’d ever been married to him. And so, I had to had to have some kind of back-up person. Yeah, I had to recuse myself. Anyway, which is very far off from, probably, what you want me to talk about.

 

[Interviewer]: Now that we have that laid out. No, that’s all right. What the first indication, you came in to campus after the weekend, so it would have been Monday.

 

[Barbara Child]: Oh, right. Well, I came in to the campus and came to my office in Satterfield Hall and, in those days, what is now the parking lot for the Student Center was what we called the old football field, or the practice football field, or something like that, which was just beyond the Satterfield parking lot, which is still there. But anyway, my office window looked out on that parking lot and I guess I didn’t see it when I got out of my car. But that makes sense because, you know, the Student Center lot is like lower than the Satterfield lot and I, you know, I had no reason to look in that direction, I guess. And so, I just went on in the building and the first thing I saw were there were flyers posted up on the walls that said, No rally allowed, illegal rally, do not go to a rally. And, I thought, What, what’s this about?

 

[Interviewer]: So, this is Monday, May 4^th?

 

[Barbara Child]: Yes. And so, then I went up to my office and I looked out the window and I could not believe my eyes because the whole old practice football field was covered with tents, the National Guard was bivouacked on that football field. I, you know, What? And then, it began to be clear and I think I remember somebody going around on a jeep with a bullhorn also, saying, “No, no rally. It’s illegal, you can’t go to the rally.” And part of this is going to be my own memory and part of this is going to be what somebody told me last May, because a student by the name of Ann Roher, R-o-h-e-r, who had been my student then, came last May 4, 2019, to the book signing in the bookstore on the morning of May 4^th, where I was signing books. And she came, it was just a lovely encounter, she came to give me a signed copy of a book that she had just written to thank me for starting her on her writing career. But, she also had a different—an additional message, and this I did not remember. She told me that I was so upset—that class, she was in class with me at eleven o’clock—and she said, “You were so upset that you—about what was going on—that you were becoming aware of what was going on that you said you could not teach and you had to let the class out early.” And she said, “Because you let that class out early, you may have saved my life because I was walking across the Prentice Hall parking lot, which is where I was going after our class, at twenty minutes after 11:00 instead of twenty minutes after 12:00.”

 

So, that I did not remember. But, what I do remember and will never, never, never forget was—and I didn’t quite know why I was doing—I, my thinking was not real clear, I guess. But, I found myself in that class sort of trying to memorize what people were wearing. And it had to be that I thought I might have to identify people in pictures, or something. I’m not sure what I thought I was doing. I do remember, there was a fellow in that class by the name of Jim Leffler and he was barefoot! And I said, “Oh, Jim Leffler, don’t go out there in your bare feet!” God!

 

[Interviewer]: That’s the old Barbara Child talking.

 

[Barbara Child]: But, the one that really is paramount in my memory, is the student, whose name was David King, and there’s a David—there are two David Kings and the David King that is still in Kent and that was a member of the SDS, back in the day, is a different person. I knew a different David King. The current one I’ve only just met last year. But, the one who was my student, I, somehow, registered in my brain that David King had on a red plaid flannel shirt and that turned out to be significant because, at the rally, when I went over there—

 

[Interviewer]: You went over to an illegal rally?

 

[Barbara Child]: Of course I did! But, I was on The Commons side, I never was on the side of Taylor Hall that was to the parking lot. And I can’t remember, is it called Johnson Hall? There’s a dormitory, I think, if you’re facing Taylor Hall from The Commons, there’s a dormitory on your right, I think. Well, I was standing and I think there was a walkway down to The Commons and maybe two or three steps at the bottom. Anyway, that’s where I was, at the edge of The Commons, so I watched all the back and forth stuff going on on The Commons. And then everybody went over the hill, so then I couldn’t see what was on the other side of the hill. But I heard the shots and everybody around me, of course, heard the shots. And, you know, you go through the rounds of thinking, Oh gosh, who’s the fool putting off firecrackers here?

 

And then, somebody said, “No, it’s the Guard.” But, even then, we said, “What on Earth are they doing shooting blanks here?” You know, why would they be doing this? So, that’s when the red plaid shirt becomes important because when I was trying to get my bearings, trying to figure out what was going on, and everybody was just kind of crazy at that point. Suddenly, I looked up and here comes David King down the hill and I spot that red plaid shirt which I had memorized. And he was running straight at me. And I will never forget, as long as I live, his words which were, “The people are dead, I saw the holes in the people.”

 

[Interviewer]: Oh, my.

 

[Barbara Child]: Yep.

 

[Interviewer]: And so, where did you then go? I mean, you were kind of on the edge of The Commons.

 

[Barbara Child]: I didn’t go anywhere, I stayed right where I was. And the students, you know, there was a little bit of a time lag there and I’m not sure how much time. But then, there was the movement back over the hill to The Commons and that’s when the famous occurrence happened of Glenn Frank, Professor Glenn Frank, geology professor, pleading with the students to leave so that there would not be, you know, just many, many more killings. Because, by that time, there was somebody coming around on a jeep, Guard coming, you know, “Campus closed, get out of here.” And the students weren’t leaving. And I don’t know, you know, it’s like you stand around to watch a fire or you stand around to watch an accident, I don’t know why I didn’t move. And I don’t know at what point Bob joined me. I do not believe that he went to The Commons with me, I don’t remember him being there with me, although I don’t know why he wouldn’t have gone. But, it seems to me that I remember being there by myself most of this.

 

But then when it was clear, yes, the students were going to leave, yes, we had to go, they were going to close the campus and the word was we had an hour to get whatever we were going to get. And that would be same for the students, an hour in their dorm and us an hour in our office. And the most unbelievable and visceral memory I have is of Bob and me heading to Satterfield Hall and, literally, there was a Guardsman with a bayonet at my back. I could feel the end of that bayonet. And all I wanted to do was run and Bob had a death grip on my hand and was hissing in my ear, “Don’t run, don’t run.” That is about as uncomfortable a little piece of time in my life as I’ve ever had.

 

[Interviewer]: So, you probably had to go up around Johnson and Stopher there, those two halls and then up the hill just a little bit to Bowman and Satterfield.

 

[Barbara Child]: Right, and I don’t know at what point these two things happened, but I know somehow the word began to move around, maybe it was not until we got in to Satterfield, that the faculty were going to gather that afternoon. And it was the intern minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church. And I might choke up even telling you this now. I will forever be so proud. And the minister, who is also a fairly well-known minister among us, Peter Richardson is his name, was out of town. But his intern was the one who invited us to come and meet at the Unitarian Church. And the intern was Bill Schulz and Bill Schulz went on to become the executive director of Amnesty International, so that there’s peace over war.

 

Anyway, at some point, the faculty got it together to go to meet.

 

[Interviewer]: So, you were still in Satterfield, but you told me once that there was something—what was the thing about the hair?

 

[Barbara Child]: Oh yeah, that was the other piece of information, and—

 

[Interviewer]: Were you told what to do about your offices, I mean—

 

[Barbara Child]: Well, I don’t know who had this bright idea, either. But I know that somebody suggested that we take a strand or little bit of our hair and tape it underneath the center drawer and to the drawers on the side. And the point was so that whenever we ever got back there, we would know whether somebody had opened our desk drawer. And that is in fact what happened.

 

[Interviewer]: Did you lock your desk drawers?

 

[Barbara Child]: No. And so, yes, I taped the hair there and yes, it had been broken loose when I got back in. So, that is May 4, that is about all I can remember to tell you about May 4.

 

[Interviewer]: So, you went to Satterfield, did you go home to the Falls then or did you stick around Kent?

 

[Barbara Child]: Oh yeah, well, we went to the faculty gathering at the U. U. Church. I don’t remember anything about what happened at that gathering, I can’t remember how many of us were there. I do remember that, pretty shortly after May 4^th, it became illegal to gather in the City of Kent, not just on the campus. And the campus was really locked down. I mean, there were barricades on all the entrance roads and there were chains on the doors to the buildings.

 

[Interviewer]: But, immediately, you were at the U. U. Church in Kent, is that where you were?

 

[Barbara Child]: Yeah. But then, you know, whenever that was over, then Bob and I went home to Cuyahoga Falls.

 

[Interviewer]: To watch the news, to watch the news, I’m guessing.

 

[Barbara Child]: Oh yeah, yeah sure, of course. And then, and I’m not sure how much time elapsed and all these things. I do know that my pride in my U. U. clergy folks and, of course, I was not anywhere near thinking about ministry then. But, when it became illegal to gather in Kent, then, the minister, who was my minister, who was Gordon McKeeman, the minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Akron, all the way over in Fairlawn on the west side, invited us and I remember I was so proud I didn’t know what to do! All these faculty members driving all the way to Fairlawn. So, the Kent faculty met in the Unitarian Universalist Church.

 

[Interviewer]: Well, the U. U. Church has always represented sort of a—a little bit progressive, shall we say, and open doors to all comers?

 

[Barbara Child]: Oh, yeah, in fact, maybe I jump ahead now a little bit. Well, no, let me—

 

[Interviewer]: Let’s finish that up, yeah. What’s the next day like? What’s the very next day, the 5^th?

 

[Barbara Child]: Well, I don’t remember the next day, I can’t—to say what happened what day, I’m not sure.

 

[Interviewer]: Yeah, it just becomes a blur.

 

[Barbara Child]: But, I do remember—is that I had a fair number of seniors in my classes and I remember, and this must have been partly, at least, what we, in our faculty meetings figured out, that we were just hell-bent on getting our students who were seniors to be able to graduate. And so, what I think of is the UCF House, United Christian Fellowship House, which I don’t believe exists anymore, I think that—somebody told they moved the house, the building itself, around the corner. It was an old house right nextdoor to the Robin Hood, which also doesn’t exist anymore.

 

Anyway, the United Christian Fellowship House, that place, in a way, became KSU in absentia. It was the happening place. And I remember that the ACLU set up shop in the basement to interview witnesses and there was a steady stream of students in there, going to the basement to be interviewed. And I taught my classes on the front yard and I think I was not the only one. Some of my classes I taught down at the Pancake House, which I guess doesn’t exist anymore. But anyway, we just kept going the best way we could and we did it, we got our seniors to graduate.

 

And I had graduated from college ten years before that, this is kind of an aside.

 

[Interviewer]: 1960, then.

 

[Barbara Child]: Yeah. I guess this is an aside, but it sure is in my head. You probably cannot believe this at all. I can hardly believe this at all. But I was a sorority girl in college.

 

[Interviewer]: Well, that’s what everybody did then.

 

[Barbara Child]: Right. And so, I was a Tri Delt and the Tri Delts at Indiana U., which is where I had gone to school, had a ten-year reunion in June of 1970. And I got in my car and drove to Bloomington. I thought, I have got to get out of here. And so, I did that.

 

I guess the other piece that needs to be figured into there is—and the timing is not real clear in my head anymore—but there came to be an understanding that the powers that be were going to try to blame this whole works on some faculty members for having incited a riot. There were twelve of us and Bob and I were two of them. We sarcastically called ourselves the Dirty Dozen. And only one of the twelve was actually, finally indicated. And that was Tom Lough, sociology professor. And that was dropped eventually.

 

Anyway, we thought we might be going to be indicted. And, when we learned that we weren’t, the ACLU began to talk about our filing suit. And that, for personally, for me, became a significant piece of business because I think it got my attention in a way that nothing had so far. That, if Bob and I became plaintiffs in the lawsuit, and I knew enough by then about how long lawsuits can take, that that was going to cause us to be fused as co-litigants for an uncertain and possibly very long time. And so, I think the divorce word began to happen in our minds, partly as a result of that. But we have to have at least filed suit, there had to have been some kind of start on this thing because—

 

[Interviewer]: So, it would have been ACLU representing you against the university?

 

[Barbara Child]: Yes. Because it had to get as far as the discovery process and I know this because, and this I have told often and love to tell because I think it’s hilarious, this meant that I was investigated by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, the BCI. And I got to see the report on me, which meant we had to get as far as the discovery phase.

 

[Interviewer]: That means it has to have actually been filed, in order to have a discovery, sure.

 

[Barbara Child]: Right, right. And so, the best they could figure out to say about me in their report was that I was a known member of the American Association of University Professors! But, it gets better. And I was seen going to meetings in the basement of the Unitarian Universalist Church! I love to put that bit in the sermon every now and again and I probably will put it in my sermon on the 3^rd of May. Anyway, that became the end of that.

 

[Interviewer]: Oh, you know, speaking of that, on the 3^rd of May, are you going to do that electronically, then?

 

[Barbara Child]: Yes I am, in fact, going to preach for the Unitarian Universalist Church of Kent on the 3^rd of May.

 

[Interviewer]: Oh great, then Anne [Reid] and I can watch. Nice.

 

[Barbara Child]: It will be, I think on Zoom, I’m going to find out anyway.

 

[Interviewer]: Well, back to the point at hand. So, you were part of the Dirty Dozen, the ACLU suit had been filed, and you saw your reports. So then, by the fall of 1970, had things simmered down on campus, or were things still locked up?

 

[Barbara Child]: Well, no, no, I think they even opened—I think there was some summer school. I had no part in it and, in fact, Lord knows how much of this was about my own personal divorce plans and how much it was about what had happened in May, I don’t know. Anyway, I took a leave for fall semester or fall quarter, I forget whether we were quarters or semesters.

 

[Interviewer]: Quarters, by then.

 

[Barbara Child]: Okay. Anyway, I did not teach. I sat in my little apartment on Lake Street and filed for divorce on the 21^st of September and went back to teaching in January after the holiday break. But, at some point, faculty had to go and, I guess students too, surely, everybody had to go get picture ID cards.

 

[Interviewer]: Which is so common now but, back then, it really wasn’t.

 

[Barbara Child]: Yeah, well, that’s when we got them, I never had such a thing before. And I think we all lined up and went into Bowman Hall or someplace over there in the summer. So, I did that and then school started up. I did not teach but I was just dumbstruck when I did teach, when I got back in the classroom in the winter of ’71, it was astounding to me how many students would say things that amounted to, “Don’t blame me, I didn’t do anything.” And I would say, “What?!”

 

[Interviewer]: You mean, so they were saying, they were feeling bad about the killings but they wanted to make it known that they weren’t part of the rally.

 

[Barbara Child]: Right. As though students were, in fact, responsible for the killings and for the school being shut down and, you know, for everything.

 

[Interviewer]: Where do you think they got that feeling? Was it being at home?

 

[Barbara Child]: Well, I think they got it from the university. I mean, good grief, is it not telling that—how long it took to get any kind of proper memorial? I mean, the first thing that happened, and I’m not sure how long this took, was that little memorial stone that’s at the end of the parking lot in a little grassy thing with a tree in it or something. That was put there by Hillel and the faculty.

 

[Interviewer]: Right and that was maybe 1979, I’d have to go look at the memorial.

 

[Barbara Child]: I’m not sure when it was. And there was another structure, another kind of a sculpture thing that I can barely even remember what it looked like or who put it up. It looked like pipes or something, very strange. It didn’t last long. It was over there sort of towards Bowman Hall, between Bowman and Satterfield, someplace over there. But, of course, the major thing was the commissioning of George Segal’s sculpture which was Abraham and Isaac and, I mean, the irony just drips for me that the university said, Oh, no, we can’t have that, it’s too violent. Do you know what it looks like?

 

[Interviewer]: Yeah, yeah, and, I think, isn’t it at another university?

 

[Barbara Child]: It’s at Princeton.

 

[Interviewer]: Princeton, right.

 

[Barbara Child]: Yeah, it’s permanently installed at Princeton. Segal had taught there and the families, our four dead—families of our four dead—went to Princeton for a ceremony to have it installed. So, that will always, in my view, be the proper memorial. And the memorial that we have, those great big blah stones, you know, come on, can you get more vague? But, so be it, you know. At least they managed to have a memorial every year, a commemoration every year.

 

[Interviewer]: Well, it was my understanding, too, that the Jewish Museum has Segal’s Abraham and Isaac installed there until this October.

 

[Barbara Child]: Oh yes, that’s—the one that’s at Princeton is the bronze, the ultimate final sculpture. There is also the plaster sculpture that, I guess, what, was the core around which the bronze was planned? And that’s the other one and, in fact, I made a big fuss, which got me nowhere, because I know that one—it’s in Los Angeles, is that where is it? I forget where it is. Anyway, it was—or New York? Shoot, I’m sorry, I don’t remember where it is. But anyway, since I read about it, it was being moved somewhere to be shown for some period of months. And so, I thought, Well, shoot, if they can move it to wherever—

 

[Interviewer]: Well, that’s right and we asked about, and someone at the university asked—

 

[Barbara Child]: —they can also move it to Kent.

 

[Interviewer]: Right, but it had been booked in to the Jewish Museum in New York City for awhile and it’ll be there until October.

 

[Barbara Child]: That’s it. And so, I thought, you know, Why can’t they at least bring it to Kent for the 50^th? For the weekend, something. But, no, nobody was interested in that.

 

[Interviewer]: Well, now there’s no May 4^th celebration.

 

[Barbara Child]: Yeah, so, it wouldn’t have mattered.

 

[Interviewer]: How disappointing. So, back to you. So, the university had changed, it was obvious the university had changed and you’d taken a leave in the fall. And so, what was it like when you came back in the spring of ’71? Still pretty fresh, it would have been the first anniversary, would be that spring.

 

[Barbara Child]: Right, I know we certainly did go on that march and stood vigil, which I did every year that I was there. My own choice, to begin with, every year that I was there, except last year, and last year for different reasons, I stood for Jeff.

 

But, the ACLU very quickly, I was so proud of us, proud, proud of Ohio ACLU. By that time, I was on the board of Ohio ACLU. And I remember being on the phone with Benson Wolman, who was the executive director of Ohio ACLU immediately, right after the 4^th. And we said, “Oh, yes, we need to offer representation free, representation to the families.” And, initially, the Scheuers were the only ones who accepted that offer. And that touched me, and so it was in Sandy’s place where I always stood vigil while I was still there. Then, all the families did come along. I remember going to, I don’t know how many meetings, probably not very many, actually, but some meetings of the families with John Adams. And I really want to lift up the name of John Adams. John—

 

[Interviewer]: Tell me about him.

 

[Barbara Child]: —he, he’s dead now. He was dispatched by the national office of the Methodist Church and I’m sorry that I can’t give you the exact terminology for that, the name of that office. But, the Methodist Church, the national Methodist Church dispatched this minister to come to Kent, Ohio, and minister to those families. Which he did.

 

[Interviewer]: Were any of the families Methodist? 

 

[Barbara Child]: No. And, in fact, three of the four who were killed were Jewish. Bill Schroeder may have been Methodist, but I don’t think so. The point is that John was not there because he was of the same faith as somebody or everybody or anybody. He was there to minister to people in a terrible state and he did not proselytize ever in any way. He was the most beautiful example of a pastor, a minister to people in extremis, as I have ever seen. And I will always say, and I’ve said so in print more than once, my idea ever to be a minister myself came from John Adams who was not a Unitarian Universalist, he was Methodist.

 

[Interviewer]: Oh, that’s a tribute.

 

[Barbara Child]: But his, I’ll jump ahead for this point, his most impressive piece of ministry that I witnessed, when all those folks, 194 of them, I believe the number is, who got arrested all at once after their sit-in on the hill to stop the gym from happening. Martin and Sarah Scheuer came to be arrested as part of that group and, by that time, Martin Scheuer was not in good shape physically, he was suffering from Parkinson’s disease.

 

[Interviewer]: So, this was during the gym struggle, 1977?

 

[Barbara Child]: Yes, I’m jumping ahead for this point because I’m talking about John Adams. Martin wanted to be, Martin and Sarah both, determined to be arrested with all those students. And John Adams would not let Martin go to jail by himself. And so, John sat down next to Martin and went to jail with him. He was just the most lovely man in the world, he really was.

 

[Interviewer]: If I might interrupt just for a minute, I think when we, I’m going to suggest we take a break, go to the bathroom, get another drink and then come back and start in with you leaving the university to do law school and start your legal career and get into the gym struggle. How would that be? Come back in five minutes?

 

[Barbara Child]: So, you’re going to call me back?

 

[Interviewer]: I will call you back.

 

[Barbara Child]: All right, I’ll go warm up my coffee.

 

[Interviewer]: I’ll go get a cup of tea. Sounds like a great afternoon. All right, we’ll be back in a few minutes.

 

[Barbara Child]: Okay, bye.

 

[Audio recording pauses]

 

[Interviewer]: So this is a second installment of Barbara Child from Nashville, Indiana. Today is the 16^th of April, 2020. And so, here’s Barbara Child. We are talking a little bit about coming back to school after May 4^th, but really getting into 1971 and the start of your law school. What made you think that you wanted to go to law school, as a teacher?

 

[Barbara Child]: There’s really a very easy answer to that question. I was a volunteer with the ACLU, I was on the board, and there was so much to be done. And, I must say, Benson Wolman, who was the executive director, was quite fine. But I was constantly frustrated by what I could not do in the Kent litigation. And I thought, Oh my god, if I were only a lawyer myself, we could get this ball rolling! And so, when I started law school, which was 1973, I had no idea of quitting teaching English at Kent State. I was simply going to be a more effective volunteer at the ACLU. That was it.

 

And that remained it, really, until—well, 1977 really was a very significant piece of business. To begin with, of course, all those students moved onto the hill after the—it was on May 4^th, the evening I think, when they began to move up there, and that lasted until July. And it was—it was a very curious time for me because I graduated from law school and I took the Bar exam in August, I believe. I remember sitting on that hill studying for the Bar exam.

 

[Interviewer]: So, when you say the hill, was it the hill where people were killed or the hill, The Commons?

 

[Barbara Child]: No, the hill that we were trying to keep them from building a gym on, where the Tent City was. And I had a reputation as the “brownie lady.” I would go up there—they had potluck supper every night on the hill and so I was constantly making brownies. My brownies were famous. And so, I would go up there with brownies and with an ACLU report. Those were my jobs: make brownies and give an ACLU report. And I slept up there one night. I thought I had to at least have a ceremonial night on the hill! But just one.

 

So then came the mass arrest, of course, in July. And then the university put up its construction fence right quick. And people started going over the fence. And major bunches of people were going over the fence and getting arrested. So, here I was, now I was really frustrated because I was not an attorney and all these kids needed representation and so I worked very happily with Bill Whittaker for the legal—

 

[Interviewer]: Oh, there’s a name for me. He took a class from me, way back when I first started, Reporting Public Affairs. He was a good student.

 

[Barbara Child]: Really? He’s a great guy. And so, I became his case manager and that meant my first job was to scare up attorneys to go into court with all these people. And, of course, most of them were just in and out, you know, pleading out, pay a little money, whatever.

 

[Interviewer]: Well, tell me, too, there was a story there about you not being admitted to the Portage County Bar.

 

[Barbara Child]: Oh, no no, that—wait a minute. That’s a little later. That’s a little later. So anyway, I managed to get forty attorneys, Lord knows where I found them, but I did. And that doesn’t include the guys from Cleveland, you know—meanwhile, the litigation was going on in Cleveland and the National Lawyers Guild guys were doing that. So, I had folks from Akron, by and large. Maybe it was folks I’d gone to law school with, probably. Anyway, so I had forty attorneys and, before we were finished, I had over 300 court appearances. Some of them were in the Kent branch and some of them were in the Ravenna branch, not the Common Pleas court, but the—

 

[Interviewer]: Municipal Court, it would be.

 

[Barbara Child]: Municipal Court, thank you. So, I managed all that and that’s when—oh, I have to mention my bright idea that went nowhere. Which I called the Prominent Women’s Bust, we would never get away with saying such a thing today.

 

[Interviewer]: Okay, what was that about?

 

[Barbara Child]: I had this bright idea that I would get a couple, maybe more than two, but the two that I remember were Mary Vincent, who was the wife of Howard Vincent, who was a very well-known scholar in the English Department. And Mary herself was no slouch, when there was a period of time when there were big efforts to calm the waters between the people of Kent, Ohio, and the university, Mary was very much instrumental in that. Anyway, there was Mary Vincent, and there was Nel Janik, who was the wife of the, I guess, chair, president, or whatever, of the Board of Trustees of Kent State University. I thought, Oh gosh, wouldn’t that be something if we all went over the fence together? And, somehow, for some reason, I couldn’t get any of them! My bright idea went nowhere.

 

Anyway, I want to put in a plug for Mim Jackson, Miriam Jackson, who has a beautiful book, it’s, you know a few years old now, called, We Shall Not Be Moved. It is the story of the gym struggle. Bless her heart, she says of lot of very kind things about my work that year with that. So, that’s what I spent my time on. Also trying to get strategy that both the National Lawyers Guild guys, who were doing the offense in Cleveland and my defense folks. I can remember a meeting of all these people on my front porch in Brady Lake trying to do strategy. And it was tricky because the politics of the National Lawyers Guild guys and the politics of us ACLU-types were not exactly the same. And there is an analogy to be drawn, which I suppose I won’t go into now, between that and what’s going on right now between the May 4^th Task Force, whatever, official committee folks and the Outside Agitators. It’s a similar pattern of two different sets of folks that really should be on the same team, you know, it just makes me—just makes me sick.

 

Anyway, so, I did all that work. My Prominent Woman’s Bust did not happen. They brought in the bulldozers, there was a picture that my good friend at that time, one of my good friends at that time, was a woman named Betty Kirschner, who was—

 

[Interviewer]: Yeah, I remember Betty.

 

[Barbara Child]: You knew Betty?

 

[Interviewer]: Met her right when I first came here. Anne made sure I met Betty Kirschner and I was a little bit active in the AAUP, of course, and Betty was very active, and that’s how I met her.

 

[Barbara Child]: Okay. Well, Betty and I hung out together in those years. And we would go to the May 4^th Coalition meetings night after night after night. Which were, of all places, in the Student Governance Chambers at KSU. And so, there is a picture, well, I don’t know where it is anymore, but somebody took a picture of Betty and me sitting on the hill watching the bulldozers come in and we’re crying our eyes out. I remember, in later years, when I had moved away and when I came back to visit and would stay at Betty’s, that picture was on the wall to be a reminder forever.

 

We did put together a trial of all those many, many people who went over the fence. As I said, most of them just plead out. But, I think four finally decided to go for it, to have a defense in the Common Pleas Court and Bill was their attorney and I worked with him. And I don’t even remember who all of those were, but the one I do remember was Ric Vrana. Because part of the—

 

[Interviewer]: I knew Ric, too.

 

[Barbara Child]: You met Ric?

 

[Interviewer]: He lived out in Portland. I went out there and we had a lovely afternoon together, because I met him through Bob and Anne, and we talked at length about the various things he had done, but, most importantly, the Portland Mass Transit in the area and it works like clockwork. And every time I get on it, I tip my hat and say, “Thank you, Ric Vrana. He was an amazing guy, God rest his soul.

 

[Barbara Child]: He is such a great, great guy, just a lovely guy. And, in this court proceeding, while Bill Whittaker was the lawyer for everybody else, part of the strategy was that Ric would represent himself, which he did. And the plan, of course, was to make an absolute circus of the whole thing. And he did that in spades. So, that brings us up to, then, 1978 when I miraculously had passed the Bar. I’m not kidding, it was really a miracle that I did. And what I really wanted to do was try out practicing law to see and my plan was to go on leave from KSU so that, if I decided I didn’t like it, I could go back. And KSU would have nothing to do with my plan!

 

[Interviewer]: To this day, they don’t do that anymore, it’s really kind of—they don’t do that all, anymore, it seems.

 

[Barbara Child]: Oh, well, anyway, what they said to me, and I don’t know if this was Ken Pringle, my English Department Chair, or some larger body, but, anyway, the idea was, no I could not be being paid by somebody else while I was on leave from the English Department. And, I can remember my father, whose middle name was “Security,” having an absolute fit that I would give up tenure, because that’s what it came to, that’s why I so much wanted to try going on leave. So, I had to give up tenure and really cut bait from the English Department.

 

So, I did. I went to work for the Legal Services Corporation. And initially, that meant working in Akron— Summit County Legal Aid, there was no Portage County Legal Aid. And the Summit County Legal Aid was trying to serve five counties. And so, they got the idea that it would be a great thing to have a satellite office in Portage County, in Ravenna. So, I did that. Why? Are you saying why?

 

[Interviewer]: No, I said nice. Nice idea.

 

[Barbara Child]: Oh. So, a nice young guy named David Duff and I came over there and opened up this office. And it was awful. It was absolutely awful because the private Bar in Portage County, if they had had any sense, would have understood that what we did by coming there was give them a ton of business that they otherwise would not have had. Because people were contesting divorces that had never been contested before. Contesting evictions. They got all kinds of business because we were there. Our joke was that, if any of them had ever been to federal court and knew how to do it—because they would have gone there to try to do something with us, but they didn’t, couldn’t, whatever. But, they did their best to make life miserable for me. And that was primarily because I had had anything ever to do with Kent State University. That was a short chapter, I stayed there three years.

 

[Interviewer]: Three years is substantial.

 

[Barbara Child]: Well, what I decided I was really doing was paying my dues because I wanted to be in academia, I wanted to be teaching in law school and I knew that, when I was a law student, the difference between professors who had practiced and those who had not was substantial. That’s what I was doing, was paying my dues so I could go to academia, which is what I did. I guess that’s the end of this story.

 

[Interviewer]: It’s kind of interesting, though, because then you went on to a Unitarian Universalist minister and how did that transition come about? You said you were affected by John Adams.

 

[Barbara Child]: Oh, yeah, well, I never forgot John, that’s for sure. Well, I had joined the Unitarian Universalist Church right shortly after I came to Kent and that was because the first letter to the editor that I ever wrote in my life was to the Akron Beacon Journal when the prosecutor in Akron and that outfit called Citizens for Decent Literature started yanking books off library shelves. And, of course, it couldn’t reach me, I was at Kent State in Portage County, but I was so mad about that that I wrote this letter to the editor. And that got me a phone call from a woman who said that she was in charge of the Monday evening discussion group at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Akron and would I come and talk to them about censorship. Well, I would talk to anybody about censorship! I didn’t know anything about Unitarian Universalist, but that was okay. So, I started going to that Monday evening discussion group and, eventually, I joined the church. But, I said, and still say, that for all those years that I remained in Kent and even when I was—after I moved—I went to teach at Golden Gate University Law School in San Francisco, and my religion was the ACLU and that’s just all there was to it. I did not set foot in the church for years and years. And then, the dean of that private law school decided to solve his financial problem by eliminating the position of Director of Writing and Research, which was what I was. And so, there I was in San Francisco with no job. I wrote abstracts for Commerce Clearing House for a year up in Marin County, which was fun. I got to drive across the Golden Gate Bridge twice every day, in the opposite direction from the traffic!  But it was goofy work, I mean, good grief. But it was the first time in my life that I had a job that I went to at eight o’clock in the morning and I left at four and I didn’t take home anything, no papers to grade, nothing.

 

[Interviewer]: It’s a teacher’s dream.

 

[Barbara Child]: Yeah, so I lasted for about a year and, meanwhile, I couldn’t keep my eyes off the Chronicle of Higher Ed[ucation]. And finally came this ad that they need—University of Florida, College of Law, was wanting to hire somebody who would design a legal drafting program. And, you have to understand, this is a different matter from writing and research. The writing and research program in a law school is a required program for first-year students and they learn how to write briefs and memos of law. I had cooked up, at Golden Gate, for fun, this course that did not exist anywhere in the world, in which I was teaching people to draft contracts and draft pleadings and draft wills and all the documents that lawyers draft, in plain language. That was my shtick. And so, Florida, bless their pointy heads, wanted somebody to come and design such a course and hire people to teach it and train them to teach it. And I’ve always said, I can tell you how to get a job and this is what I did: I saw this ad and I responded to it and I said, “I don’t want your job, but I can tell you how to do it. And, if you like, I’ll come there and tell you how to do it.” And that’s what happened. So, I designed the program, I hired the people, I trained the people, I ran the program—

 

[Interviewer]: Like a whole another career.

 

[Barbara Child]: What?

 

[Interviewer]: It’s a whole another career!

 

[Barbara Child]: Yeah. And I wrote the textbook and I’ve been getting royalties on that textbook until, I guess, maybe two years ago, they stopped coming in. The text on this, second edition. But, there I was in this very conservative law school and looking around, thinking, Oh my god, oh my goodness. Hang out with fear! Now there were a few people that were just lovely to hang out with but, by and large, not. Anyway, that, in short, is what made me scratch my head and say, Well, there is the Unitarian Universalist Church, let’s see what they’re like.

 

[Interviewer]: Yeah, so you kind of came around full circle back to U. U., that’s amazing.

 

[Barbara Child]: I did and I did it by way of retreats, which were women’s retreats. When I first got a brochure that the Florida district—Unitarian Universalist Association, Florida District—was putting on this retreat for women and I thought, Oh my God, you’ve got to be kidding. You know, I had been hanging out with lawyers, almost all of whom were men, for a long time. And I was used to that, so going to a women’s retreat, oh my gosh. But I went and I was very lucky because the two women who put on that first one that I went to were really good. And so, I started going, there were more, and I started going. Then I started saying, Gee whiz, I bet you I could put on these retreats! And that’s kind of the way the ball went. And what it amounted to was that, very gradually, I was learning the value of being in community with other people and how you can make discoveries about who you are and even change who you are. So, that was my back door into ministry. But, no, I wasn’t going to serve a church. By this time, of course, I had been hanging out with this vet in Florida that was my partner for ten years and I was not going to serve a church, I was going to work with homeless vets, that’s what I was going to do.

 

[Interviewer]: It’s nice that, at that point, you could actually kind of pick your places that you wanted to do.

 

[Barbara Child]: Yeah, so, I mean what I suppose comes through this story is that every chapter in this saga has not been because I set out with a goal to do this or that or the other thing. Things just sort of had a way of happening.

 

[Interviewer]: Sounds like it happened pretty nicely.

 

[Barbara Child]: Changing me, you know. Change.

 

[Interviewer]: Changing the subject a little bit, you came back for this particular—well, you come back a lot for May 4^th, I know. But, this last one, it seemed to bring out a lot of different people who hadn’t come back before. It seemed like the groups were a little different. What’s the atmosphere when you come back to campus? How does it feel for you? You run into a lot of friends, I know, because I’ve seen you in some of these groups.

 

[Barbara Child]: Oh gosh. Oh yeah, but the friends, you know, are people also who were there a long time ago. I have very little sense of what it’s like to be on that campus now, either as a student or as a faculty member. I was touched, I guess is the right word, when I got a phone call, maybe it was an email first, but then I had a phone call with this young man named Colt Hutchinson, I think.

 

[Interviewer]: Yes, he’s very nice. Very active, very smart. Really smart.

 

[Barbara Child]: Yeah, so I have a sense of the SDS re-forming there and that’s nice to discover happening.

 

[Interviewer]: Of course, now, with all the COVID, who knows?

 

[Barbara Child]: Yeah, well yeah. But, last year, of course having at least some bit of reunion with some of the folks from the families, of course, Tom Grace and the Canforas and Joe Lewis. Joe Lewis’s first wife was Galen Keller, who gave up her studies in the grad school in political science to be an unpaid legal assistant for the litigation for the families and that’s how she met Joe. So, that’s how I got to know her also.

 

[Interviewer]: Well, you take care. Thanks for doing this. It was lovely hearing all your background on this, many of which I’ve heard in fits and spats here and there.

 

[Barbara Child]: Well, you tell Anne Reid she needs to get on the stick here!

 

[Interviewer]: Yeah, she’s going to do it. I know she will.

 

[Barbara Child]: Oh, good.

 

[audio for the April 16, 2020, session ends]

 

[Interviewer]: This is Barb Hipsman Springer, speaking on April 27, 2020, in Kent, Ohio. As part of the Kent State Shootings Oral History Project, we are recording an interview—a second interview session—over the telephone today with Barbara Child.

 

Today we’re going to talk about Vietnam Veterans Against the War, which I know you were very involved with. So, where would you like to start? By year or by incident?

 

[Barbara Child]: Well, this is really the story of one incident. And, you know, I have to thank Kate Medicus. I’m just astounded at myself that I didn’t think of this to be part of the story that I recorded with you the other day. But it was when Kate asked me for a picture of myself in the ballpark of 1970 and I thought, Oh, my goodness, do I have any such picture? And then, I did such an enormous double take because, probably my favorite picture of myself in the whole world is on the stage set up on The Commons in October 1972 when I introduced Daniel Ellsberg to speak at a rally, an anti-war rally, which was jointly sponsored by the ACLU and the Vietnam Vets Against the War.

 

So, the story of that event, how that event came to pass and why it is my favorite artifact in the whole world, the picture hanging on my wall, is this: I, by 1972, I had managed to get there to be a Portage County Chapter of ACLU. When I began my affiliation with ACLU, there was no such thing as a Portage County Chapter. I was on the board of the Summit County Chapter. So, we said there ought to be a Portage County Chapter and there came to be and I know it existed by 1972 because it’s all geared to this story that leads to this picture because I remember very well that the Portage County ACLU board met in my living room. And, suddenly, there came a request from the Kent Chapter of the Vietnam Vets Against the War and this came to me from this man, whom I had never met, by the name of Alan Morris who was one of the leaders of the Vets Against War, the Kent chapter. He then came to a meeting of the ACLU board in my living room. And the story he had to tell was that he and his fellow vets in the VVAW Kent Chapter were very much convinced that they had, in their midst, an agent provocateur. That is, somebody who made himself out to be one of them but who was there not just to spy on them, an agent provocateur does considerably more than spy. But, you know, tries to get them to engage in illegal activity so as to get themselves shut down.

 

So, he, Alan Morris, wanted to know, was there some way that the ACLU could help them get this guy not only identified, but exposed. So, I put on my thinking cap and the attorneys for the ACLU of Portage County were Allison & Miller, Howard Allison and Bruce Miller, who had their office down on North Water Street, I think, upstairs somewhere. So, I had Alan Morris go with me to visit Howard and Bruce to say, What could we do. I, to this day, I can hardly believe that this came off and that it came off successfully and nobody got shot.

 

The story was this: apparently this guy, whose name was Reinhold Mohr, M-o-h-r—and he went by the nickname Ron—that Ron Mohr had an AK-47 which was a totally—it was totally illegal to own such a weapon. But anyway, that’s what he told the vets, that he had this weapon. And Howard and Bruce’s concoction, the idea was, that Alan Morris would volunteer to buy—would ask Ron if he could buy the AK-47. And that is what came to pass, that Alan asked Ron that and Ron said yes. And a date and time were established.

 

[Interviewer]: So these, wait a second, these were Allison—they were two lawyers?

 

[Barbara Child]: Yes, Howard Allison and Bruce Miller were, and as far as I know, still are, attorneys in Kent. I don’t know if they’re still there, I haven’t been in contact with them for some time. But, anyway, they knew that there was no love lost between the Kent City police and the Kent State University police and the suspicion was, which turned out to be accurate, that Ron Mohr was in the employment of the KSU police. And so, the deal was arranged, that Alan Morris would go to Ron Mohr’s house and purchase this AK-47. And once the time was established for that to happen, the Kent City police were alerted, by Howard and Bruce, to show up, to make an arrest. And I was petrified!

 

[Interviewer]: Well, you’ve got to wonder why would someone agree to sell it to two lawyers?

 

[Barbara Child]: No, not to sell it to two lawyers, to sell it to Alan Morris. See, Alan was the leader, one of the leaders of VVAW and the idea was for this illegal weapon to be in the possession of Alan Morris, VVAW, and you know, who knows, maybe Ron Mohr hoped that they would cook up some violent thing to do with it.

 

[Interviewer]: Ah, I got you.

 

[Barbara Child]: Yeah. Anyway, the idea was—the idea of Ron Mohr as agent provocateur, was to provoke the VVAW into doing something illegal and getting them shut down. So, he was going to help this along by selling Alan Morris this AK-47.

 

The plan came off exactly as planned, that is, Alan Morris showed up at the appointed time at Ron Mohr’s house and, I don’t know how Alan managed to get it fixed up so that Ron would have to come out on the front porch to do the transaction. That is, Alan did not go in the house. But anyway, so Ron came out on the porch with the AK-47 at the appointed time at which time, surprise surprise, the Kent City police show up and he got arrested. So, he was exposed for exactly what he was up to.

 

We were so pleased by this outcome, both the ACLU and the VVAW, because this had been our joint project, that—you know, the whole story was about surveillance.

 

[Interviewer]: Let me ask you an aside, though, wouldn’t Kent State’s—wouldn’t the City of Kent police know Ron Mohr was an agent provocateur?

 

[Barbara Child]: No, not necessarily at all, that’s part of what I’m saying, and there was no love lost between the Kent City police and the KSU police and so the sharing of information was not a given, by any means at all.

 

Since surveillance was the large rubric for the whole thing, the ACLU and the VVAW, jointly, through Alan and me, got really courageous—courageous is not the right word—really uppity. And invited Daniel Ellsberg to come and speak to a rally, an anti-war rally, on The Commons, jointly sponsored by both of our organizations. And that’s what happened.

 

Ellsberg was still under indictment, I believe, at that time. Anyway, he came, and this picture, which is my favorite picture in the whole world, is of me introducing Ellsberg. I am at the podium and the complete picture shows Ellsberg and, next to him, Benson Wolman, who was the executive director of ACLU and, next to him, sort of behind me, when I’m up at the podium, is Alan, still in his fatigues. He had been back from Vietnam, I guess, about a year at that time, maybe two years.

 

Anyway, I don’t remember whether Ellsberg had something to do with instructing us on this or not, but here’s where coincidence comes into this story. I love this story, one of my favorite stories in the whole world! It was a total coincidence, having nothing to do with the war or VVAW or the ACLU or any of this—total coincidence—that I happened to know who an undercover cop, policeman, in the KSU Police Department was. Not an agent provocateur, just, you know, in the run-of-the-mill business of a police department, there are undercover police. An undercover policemen with the KSU Police Department had come to see me in my office in the English Department because somebody was posting obscene things about me on the walls of Satterfield Hall. And this had been going on for a little while and it was, you know, not pleasant to have happening. The particular one that I remember said, For a good time call Barbara at… and then my phone number. And I will say to you that I know exactly who was doing this, although I will not say who he was. And I know why he was doing it. But anyway, the chair of the department, Ken Pringle, said to me, you know, “This is—we can’t have this here.”

 

[Interviewer]: So, what year was this going on, ’72 still?

 

[Barbara Child]: This was 1971, I guess. Yeah, it would have been ’71. And so, Ken said, “I am going to call the police—the KSU police—and have them send somebody over to see you and we’re going to figure out a way to get this to stop.” And I think it, pretty clearly, was the case that the person who was doing it discovered—figured out—that the police had been brought into the picture. And that brought a stop to the whole problem. But anyway, the point was, this man, who was an undercover cop with the KSU Police Department, came to visit me in my office, so I knew who he was, right?

 

[Interviewer]: Ah, now I get it.

 

[Barbara Child]: So, we cooked up a plan which worked so beautifully, I cannot believe it. Just like the plan to get Ron Mohr—

 

[Interviewer]: Maybe you missed your calling, you know? A reverend versus CIA?

 

[Barbara Child]: Right! This came much later. Anyway, the plan was—which worked so well, so beautifully—was this: I was sitting up there, on the stage, and we knew that there was more, that we sure—that there was more than one undercover police person and that that rally would be the place where they would be doing their thing in—

 

[Interviewer]: Ah, sure.

 

[Barbara Child]: And so, I knew this one guy. I’m up on the stage and, the deal is, I keep my eye on the audience until I spot the guy that I know. And I don’t remember exactly how we did this, whether it was just eye signals, or hand signals, or what. But, the whole ACLU crowd was part of this plan, which was, and we were in sequence, right. So, I spot the guy that I know, I make some kind of signal to one our ACLU folks: that’s the guy, right there, the one that I know. Now, you watch him and see where he goes, who’s the next person he talks to and bing, bing, bing, bing, down the line. In those days, we didn’t have telephones with cameras but we sure did have little—things from the—drugstore cameras, you know. And so, a picture was taken of every undercover cop on The Commons. And, at the next ACLU meeting, we had a photo display on the wall!

 

[Interviewer]: Did you ever determine whether they really were? Undercover?

 

[Barbara Child]: Oh, I don’t think there was much question. When those guys talk to each other at an event, it’s pretty clear what’s going on! Anyway, it was great fun and the picture of me introducing Dan Ellsberg, with him in the picture, you can tell he’s sitting there, he’s not watching me—I’m looking at that picture right this second, on my wall—and he’s not looking at me while I’m introducing him, he’s looking off to the side and I know exactly what he’s doing! He’s watching the watcher!

 

[Interviewer]: Oh, that’s funny, that’s a great story.

 

[Barbara Child]: Yeah. It was a great day. And it was all, of course, to the benefit and, on purpose, for the benefit of the Kent Vets Against the War. You know, I’m laughing about it because there were comic elements to the story, but when you stand back, the story is not comic at all. It is a story about the Police Department of Kent State University being in concerted action to put out of business the Kent chapter of the Vietnam Vets Against the War. And this is 1972.

 

[Interviewer]: How long do you think the VVAW was going before it sort of petered out? Do you know?

 

[Barbara Child]: You mean as a total organization? Or Kent?

 

[Interviewer]: Well, at Kent.

 

[Barbara Child]: Well, I don’t know, You know, I mean the war, essentially, came to an end. But, interestingly enough, when I wrote my book, which was published last year, which is called Memories of a Vietnam Veteran, which is about Alan Morris, who was the main character in the story I just told you. I determined that I wanted the—I did not want the royalties on this book, I wanted them to be donated. And Alan was, of course, a leader of VVAW in Kent and he also had a connection, even then, in Kent, with Vets for Peace. But, in the last years of his life, in Florida, he was very active in the Vets for Peace. At his death and after his death, at which time, as you know, I was his partner—which didn’t happen for many years after 1972—it was the Vets for Peace who were wonderful to me. I won’t go into detail about the things they did, but they were wonderful to me. Interestingly enough, the banner that the Kent VVAW had, at the front of all of our peace marches in the Seventies, with Alan Morris holding up one end of it and Ken Johnson holding up the other, that banner ended up on the wall of my cottage in Florida. At Alan’s memorial service, I gave that banner to the Vets for Peace, the Gainesville, Florida, chapter of Vets for Peace. So, I determined that I would give the royalties on this book to Vets for Peace and that’s what I’ve done.

 

But, in the course of it, I have—worked in doing the business around this book—I have come to learn something that I did not know for years, decades. And that is that the VVAW, the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, are still an active organization, a very active organization. In fact, a wonderful guy from Vets for Peace wrote a review of my book, which went into the newspaper of the VVAW. And this is, you know, this past year. They are a fabulous, ongoing organization. And I didn’t fully understand for a while; I knew that there came to be an organization called Iraq Vets Against the War and then I learned that that organization changed its name to About Face and I think it has a subtitle, I think the full title now, of that organization, is About Face: Iraq Vets Against the War. So, when I discovered them, I mistakenly believed what that meant was that the Vietnam Veterans Against the War was no longer an extant organization, that it had morphed into these others. So, it was quite an amazing surprise to me when this man wrote this review of my book and then I discovered this fabulous newspaper of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, which is going on right now.

 

[Interviewer]: Since they’re all probably between the ages of sixty-five and eighty, they’ve achieved professional status somewhere, and are probably, you know, lawmakers, and business executives, and bums—

 

[Barbara Child]: Although, I think it’s also quite plausible that a whole bunch of very much younger people have joined their organizations and are active in them. They aren’t just all old guys that are dying. Anyway, that is the story that I wanted you to know.

 

[end of audio recording]

×