Barb O’Patry, Oral History

 

Recorded: June 25, 2019

Interviewed by Kathleen Siebert Medicus

Transcribed by the Kent State University Research & Evaluation Bureau

 

[Interviewer]: This is Kathleen Siebert Medicus speaking on June 25, 2019 at Kent State University Special Collections and Archives as part of the Kent State Shootings Oral History Project. I am speaking today with Barb O’Patry. Barb, thank you so much for traveling down to campus to meet with us today. Thank you. 

[Barb O’Patry]: Oh, my pleasure.

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

[Barb O’Patry]: Sure. I was born and reared in Cleveland, Ohio on the near west side and that was before it became kind of gentrified. So, it was a community. I went to a very small high school, thirty-eight girls in the graduating class. It was not a college-prep school. So, I was probably one of three young women who went on to get a four-year degree. I started out my college career at Tri-C, downtown, where we had to wait in line to go down the steps. I always wondered where the fire department was because this building should have been condemned, but it never was to my knowledge. But then they built a beautiful campus, of course, after I left. 

[Interviewer] So, there were too many people trying to get down the stairs at once?

[Barb O’Patry]: Especially, during, you know—when the classes were over, you literally had to stand in line to go down the steps. It was—even I, at a young age, recognized, this is not good. This is a fire hazard. Maybe I was the only one. Not to have the pun, but I may have been the only one that was alarmed by this.

I don’t know. It was very different than high school. First of all, I went to school with all girls. This was mixed, co-ed. I don’t know. I was used to coming into a small school and, you know, just being a big fish in a small pond. Well, I was a very small fish in a very big pond because, yeah, there there were several buildings that were part of Tri-C. And that wasin—I think Tri-C opened in ’64 maybe, and I started in September ’65. So, it was very new. It was very new to the Cleveland area. And I did the program where you take the classes and hopefully they’ll all transfer for a four-year degree, which it did, except it was often classes I couldn’t use. So, I got the hours. So, when I graduated I had probably an excess of about twenty quarter hours that I couldn’t use because they didn’t meet the criteria for the degree that I had, which was a bachelor of science in education. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

So, I decided on Kent. I really wanted to go to Michigan, but I knew my grades weren’t such and out-of-school residency [editor’s clarification: out-of-state residency]—it’s really expensive to go to Michigan. So, I thought, Well, I’ll go to Kent or maybe I’ll go to Cleveland State. Those were my only two realistic options, so then I said, Okay, I’ll go to Kent. Well, I wanted to start Kent in September ’68, but they had no room in the dorms. So, I had to wait one quarter and I started Kent in January of 1968. In those days, if you weren’t twenty-one, you had to live in the dorm. And I was going to be twenty-one in five months. I cannot tell you or anyone how painful it was to live in the dorm. I hated it. I know that’s a strong word, but I just hated it. The communal bathrooms, the communal dining, I just didn’t like it. I lived with two women, both of whom had lived with each other for probably close to two years and they had bonded and I just felt like I was intrusive. They were very nice to me, but it just wasn’t for me, living in the dorm. Plus, I knew no one. I know people say, “Well, I didn’t know anyone when I went to college.” I literally didn’t know anyone on the Kent campus. I didn’t go to big school, so it wasn’t like you go to a big school and you know twenty people, even if they weren’t your friends, you know them. I didn’t know anyone on the Kent State campus. 

[Interviewer]: No one from high school? No one from community?

[Barb O’Patry]: No one from high school, no one from the ‘hood. No. Nothing. The first day—actually, it was previous to the first day or during orientation, I met a woman who to this day is a friend of mine. So, I was very fortunate in that respect. But, I was terrified of—I’d never lived away from home. Well, everyone has that same scenario and I was a little bit older. But I think the age did not serve me well. I think I would have been better had I been eighteen. So, I lived in the dorm for two quarters. Finally, in the fall of ’68—we were in quarters then—I moved to what used to be called Glen Morris, behind Satterfield and Bowman Hall. I don’t know what it’s called now.

[Interviewer]: Apartment buildings.

[Barb O’Patry]: Yeah, and they were apartments then and I liked that. It was a much better fit for me. Plus, I was an English—well, I was an education major, but my area of concentration was English and then, somewhere along the line, I added social studies. Not sure what that’s about. But anyway, Bowman and Satterfield were right there, so it was perfect.

[Interviewer]: You could easily walk to class.

[Barb O’Patry]: Oh yeah. I’m not much of a walker, so it was good. I came to college with little money. So, I always had to work. And I was really apolitical. I hated the war. I had dated—then, a man when I was younger in high school, and he went to Vietnam. And he was seriously wounded. So, it became personal for me. I hated it, but I just was not a joiner. I just didn’t get into the—that political—I didn’t even know how, even if I wanted to. I just didn’t have those ties. I don’t know how you do that. You sit in the Union and have a sign, “I want to be a part of the movement.” I just didn’t know how to do it. But, when I lived at Glen Morris, I had a friend, not from high school, but from grade school. And Jeannie was much more political than I was. And I remember—this is in the—we’re now in the winter of ’68 and we’re on break now. Jeannie and I, that was my roommate, both of us came back to college a couple of days earlier before school started, before the classes resumed in January for winter quarter. And Jeannie was much more political than I and she knew how to make those ties. So, she had struck up a conversation with a YSA member, Young Student Alliance [editor’s clarification: Young Socialist Alliance]. And they had convinced her, for us to host a meeting and I’m like just going along. I have no idea. I’m not particularly against it. I’m not particularly for it, but—

[Interviewer]: You’re going with your friend.

[Barb O’Patry]: That’s—you’re absolutely right. It was about the friend. It wasn’t about the movement or YSA. Well, we were going to host it and then Jeannie saw someone on campus—not on campus—but somewhere, probably at Glen Morris, that they were going to meet somewhere else, somewhere in downtown Kent. Well, right before the meeting was to begin, let’s say the meeting was at six. So, around five-ish, we get a knock at the door and it’s the Kent Police. And we’re like, “Woah.” And it’s just the two of us. And there are very few people on campus, very few students, that some probably remained there all winter, you know, during winter break. But he said that he had a report that there was a disturbance; that there was a lot of noise emanating from this—our apartment. Well, that can’t be. It was only Jeannie and I. I mean how much noise can we make? I don’t think, other than a woman up on the top floor, to my knowledge, there was no one else in the building. And he said, “Well, I’m just going to take a look around because I think there’s people in here.” So, he looked around—bathroom, bedrooms, you know. Of course, he didn’t find anyone because it was just she and I. And he left and I was so rattled. I was like, “Woah.” I was paranoid.

[Interviewer]: Scary.

[Barb O’Patry]: And Jeannie said, “I wonder if they”—oh, what’s the word for it? When they tap the phone. And I’m like, “Oh God.” So, then we go to this—so, then we do go to the meeting and, I have to say, I don’t remember one thing. I don’t remember where it was. I don’t know what the topic was. I was so anxious the whole entire time. So, that was my introduction and my termination with any type of political or radical group. I just couldn’t— I couldn’t do it. I was just too scared. 

[Interviewer]: Wow. Were you aware, at the time, of whether it was a police officer from the city of Kent or a campus, Kent State campus police?

[Barb O’Patry]: You know what, I don’t remember.

[Interviewer]: You might not even had known at the time.

[Barb O’Patry]: I don’t know. It was definitely a policeman. It wasn’t an FBI person, because this person was in uniform.

[Interviewer]: Police officer.

[Barb O’Patry]: You know, the gun, the whole nine yards. But that’s a good point.

[Interviewer]: Just curious.

[Barb O’Patry]: I don’t know. I guess I thought it was the city police, but maybe not.

[Interviewer]: You might not have even thought about it at the time.

[Barb O’Patry]: No, I’ll tell you. I don’t know what I was thinking. I think I was numb almost. I was numb for a long time after that.

[Interviewer] Scary situation, sure.

[Barb O’Patry]: It is scary. And all I could think of is my parents like, “What are you doing?” That’s all I could think of. Like, “Sent you to school and you’re—you know, the police are at your house.”

[Interviewer]: Oh sure. Oh yeah.

[Barb O’Patry]: So, that pretty much curbed that activity. And then I just went about my business. And after the year at Glen Morris, the following year, my last year, my senior year, ’69/’70, I lived on North Depeyster Street. Liked that even better because it was blend of college students and you know, townies. So, I liked that. I felt more grounded there. I felt more familiar there. I believe it was fall quarter.

So, my first quarter on Depeyster and my first quarter of my senior year, Jean and I took a class called Great Contemporary Issues. I can’t remember which building it was in, doesn’t really matter. I kind of think it was the Education Building. It was close to [State Route] 59, it was one of those buildings. And we didn’t know what to expect. It was a one- or two-hour class and it looked like it was going to be interesting. Because they were inviting different groups in to talk about different topics based on what that group represented. So, Jeannie and I would trek over to the—let’s say the Education Building—and woah, my anxiety again, I can’t believe how anxious I was as a student.

I can’t remember exactly which groups were represented, but one of the topics surely was the war, the Vietnam War. That was one of them. And the groups that came to represent that—and I don’t know the groups. I want to say one was the YSA because I thought I remembered a couple of the people’s faces from a year previous—not a year, but about nine months. But I can’t be sure. But, there were groups who had done their homework. It wasn’t the rhetoric about the military-industrial complex. I mean these folks did their homework. And the way it was set up is that the group would come in and they would have representatives, who would kind of— it was almost like a debate. It was a debate. They would have opening remarks and then the university would have professors that represented the university. One was from, like Journalism, one from like the History Department. I can’t remember—certainly don’t remember any names. But they represented the college and they represented perhaps a different point of view or they were asking questions. It wasn’t necessarily confrontative.   

[Interviewer]: So, kind of like a panel discussion type?

[Barb O’Patry]: Yeah, like an open forum to talk about ideas. But all of them tended to be well, great contemporary issues. They were things that people at that time were struggling with and they tended to be controversial. Like today, we might have other issues, like abortion or something. Then it was pretty much—well, it was two things. It was the whole Vietnam War and then also human rights. And there were a couple of groups that represented human rights. One of which was BUS, Black United Students and I remember, again, very articulate. It had a history. And really the professors really couldn’t—I don’t—maybe they could, but they chose not to rebuttal. They just kind of took it all in. But it was—I guess I’m uncomfortable with confrontation. I’m uncomfortable with people not feeling good or feeling you know, real—an anger. I’m just never comfortable with anger. And I think that’s what a lot of what at least the two groups, BUS and the group that represented the Vietnam War protest. There was a lot of anger. And it just made me so nervous, but I went every week and some of the other topics were less controversial. I can’t remember what they were. Well, it’s been fifty years.

[Interviewer]: Almost!

[Barb O’Patry]: I can’t remember. I don’t know. But, that class struck me because it forced me to think differently. You know, like my protest to the war was more of myself being a passivist and what had happened to the guy I been dating for years. But now, it took on a whole other realm. It was bigger than that. The whole thing about imperialism and what are we doing in Vietnam and the Agent Orange, just all that stuff, it was really overwhelming. And I think that was—I don’t know that the goal of it was to be overwhelming, but I think the goal of the class was to get you out of your comfort zone, to make you think. Either way. It was one of the few courses I took that I thought, Wow. It really made a difference. Now I can’t remember much. I only remember how I felt. I can’t remember the content. But I know it changed me.

[Interviewer]: But it was challenging and it challenged you to really analyze things and think about things very carefully.

[Barb O’Patry]: Right. And think more globally. Like there was life beyond Kent and beyond my little world. It was scary, because I just not had thought of some of things that they talked about. And I think what also scared me is that the professors really couldn’t—they really couldn’t form an argument. They were just like taken aback, I think. 

[Interviewer]: That’s interesting.

[Barb O’Patry]: That’s how it appeared to me. Unless there was a reason. Like maybe they didn’t want the confrontation to escalate and maybe that’s why they were pretty silent. But, I took it as they just didn’t know where to go with the argument. They couldn’t think of a good argument against what they were saying, which scared me even more.

[Interviewer]: Absolutely. Sure. As a young person and student of theirs.

[Barb O’Patry]: So, that was Great Contemporary Issues. And that was a two-hour class in the fall of 1969.

[Interviewer]: Were they—was it the same professors each week? Were they sort of co-teaching the class? And then did you have to write essays?

[Barb O’Patry]: I don’t remember. They were the same people, I do remember that. They represented—maybe if someone couldn’t come that day, but they always represented the same areas of history and journalism. And there was another—I don’t think the arts were represented. And I don’t think education was represented either.

[Interviewer]: I was just curious. Didn’t know.

[Barb O’Patry]: It was pretty much the same—the same profs every week. But the group that was invited in changed every week and the only two I remember were BUS and the other group. And I can’t remember what that group was. I want to say SDS, but I think they did not have—I think they would not be invited on the campus. That’s what I think. Because, even then, you could feel it. Something was building. You know, I couldn’t feel it so much from the students or even from, let’s say, people who were part of SDS, but more from the townies and the police, both campus police and the city of Kent. That’s where I felt the tension more so than on the campus.

[Interviewer]: Do you remember any examples of things that happened? Like in your neighborhood? You said you were living a little more off campus at that point.

[Barb O’Patry]: I remember going to—I don’t know. Maybe I’m the only person in Kent State history, but I never went to any of the student bars. I just didn’t. I don’t know why. And God knows, I’m not above it. Please don’t take that to mean that I was like—

[Interviewer]: It’s just not what you did.

[Barb O’Patry]: No, I didn’t get it. I just didn’t get it, but it’s not to say I didn’t go to bars, because I was twenty-one now, so I went to the townie bars and that’s where I could feel some of that, you know, like,  “What are you guys up to? What is this stuff? Vietnam [mimics heckling sounds].” Do you know what I mean? Like pushback. Not that we would walk in and start some type of long soliloquy on our feelings about the war. But I think it was like, Kent State student … Uh-oh, war, war. These kids are, you know, they’re all rebels. And they’re all, you know, and they’re going to destroy our country as we know it. It wasn’t even about the war. It was like this fear they had of us, which kind of made me laugh, because I didn’t feel powerful at all. I mean, I got up every morning went to school. I didn’t feel like I had any power. I didn’t even feel like I had that much—what’s the word I’m looking for? I didn’t feel like it was myself and all these other people, that we were like this communal group who had the same thoughts, the same feelings. I didn’t feel like part of that. But, I think we were perceived in town as being a threat at some level because of maybe how we dressed, or our hair too long, or because some of us spoke up against the war, some of us had peace signs on our clothes. I don’t know what it was, but I just felt like the older—maybe it was older people that felt threatened by us. And I think there was stuff happening in other parts of the country and I think people were alarmed with that. So, their radar was up. So, anything we did may have been interpreted differently than what the—I was going to say what the intent was, but I had not intent.

[Interviewer]: You were just going to a bar to get a cold beer.

[Barb O’Patry]: Yeah.

[Interviewer]: But you definitely felt like you would go into what you called a townie bar and people would know right away. I mean, you didn’t grow up here. People knew you didn’t grow up here. They knew right away you were a student from Kent State. Interesting.

[Barb O’Patry]: It wasn’t like—they weren’t necessarily like, “What are you doing in here?”

[Interviewer]: It wasn’t nasty. 

[Barb O’Patry]: No, it wasn’t. But, it was a lot of questions and a lot of their beliefs about who we were. Maybe there are people that meet that description, but that wasn’t me. That wasn’t probably ninety percent of the campus. I mean, I don’t know. I just didn’t know people on campus that were openly involved with radical political groups. And maybe they were underground and maybe they weren’t on the campus. Maybe they were in the city. It could be that these folks, you know, really had a better gauge to what was going on—the Kent residents. Maybe did have a better gauge as to what was going on than I did.

[Interviewer]: Do you—Your friend, your roommate, I think Jean, Jeannie, had she stayed more active with some of the student movement groups that year?

[Barb O’Patry]: No, unfortunately, she didn’t come back to college. I think she didn’t make the grades, which is, I don’t know how she managed. She’s so smart, but I think she was—she also worked. She worked in Cleveland, as I did. So, that was the other thing. Every other weekend, I worked at a hospital in Cleveland. So, I off campus. So, I really never bonded in the way that a lot of students did. And it was kind of—there’s some turbulence. There was some stuff going on. I personally never saw a protest on the college campus.

[Interviewer]: Okay, ’68, ’69?

[Barb O’Patry]: Even the first part of ’70. I never saw anything.

[Interviewer]: You were busy. You were doing other things.

[Barb O’Patry]: You know that’s exactly right. I was kind of like in a survival mode. I was working in Ravenna as a cocktail waitress. My two roommates and I were working there and we’re trying to get some money together. We’re full-time students. So, I thought that it’s almost of a luxury, except the Great Contemporary Issues class where I saw that I shouldn’t perceive that as a luxury to be involved in these groups or involved politically at all, not necessarily in a radical group. But, I think there’s ways to protest. I think there’s ways to be heard other than maybe burning down the ROTC Building. I don’t know.

[Interviewer]: So, you learned from that class those people who did their homework. I mean there’s a lot of substance there and there’s a lot to be learned. It was a great class.

[Barb O’Patry]: And different ways to think about things. I mean, pretty much, it was very different. It was seeing the whole. I was pretty much seeing only parts of the whole movement, I’m not sure what that means, but, you know the protests and what have we. But, these people brought it full circle. They were really—they were probably very, very bright.

[Interviewer]: Were there any other classes that were kind of current events or news about the war or protests? Was that discussed by any of your other professors?

[Barb O’Patry]: Not really. But you know, in my senior year, I was an education major, so we took what we called methods classes. That was over at the Education Building. I personally can’t think of a more conservative major than education. So, no there was none of that. I mean, absolutely nothing. I was pretty much only taking methods classes winter quarter of 1970. And then, spring quarter of 1970, I had to do my student teaching and I did my student teaching in Cleveland. So, I lived at home. So, I was off the campus except one day a month and one day a week. Every Monday we would come back. I forget what it’s called but it was—a class, a group of people that were all education majors would come together and talk about our previous week in the student-teaching role. What worked, what didn’t work. There was a prof there. Look at lesson plans. You know, it was really helpful because most of us, like myself in particular, because I had never gone to public school and I was student teaching at a public school, I had no idea what to expect. I was drowning. I had no classroom behavior skills. None. But, it so happens, that May 4th in 1970 was on a Monday and my critics teacher—they have another name for them now, but they’re the person that you teach in their class and you teach under them and they’re advising as you go and what have we. He told me—and this was before cell phones, before CNN twenty-four hours a day—he said, “Something going on at the Kent State campus. I don’t know if you should go.” And I said, “I don’t know. I can’t miss it.” Because again, this was really important to me. This was my life saver. I couldn’t imagine not going. 

[Interviewer]: You wanted to graduate. You wanted to do your best. So, this person you mentioned was sort of your supervisor?

[Barb O’Patry]: Yeah, he was my class—he’s the classroom teacher.

[Interviewer]: At the school where you were student teaching.

[Barb O’Patry]: Right. And a great guy and he was worried about me. He said, “I don’t know that you should go.” And I said—his name was Richard. I said, “Richard, I have to go. I really rely on that.” It was comforting to hear other people with the same issues, you know, that I wasn’t alone. It was—turned out to be for me, like a support group. Not so much an academic thing, but it was like support group for new teachers or something. So, Richard said, “I don’t think you should go.” And I said, “Oh, it’ll be okay.” So, I go. Well, and I’m hearing things on the radio. The class started at one, so I always came the same way, took the turnpike to 43 or wherever and 43 straight into the college and then I realized that, well, I couldn’t go that way because there was a tank in the middle of the street. And I thought, “Oh my god. Richard was right. It’s like a war zone.” And I can’t be sure of this, but I don’t know how else I would have this in my mind. But, I believe that there were sharp shooters on the restaurant. There used to be a restaurant called Burger Chef. I think it was a chain, like a Burger King, only it was Burger Chef. It was on 59, across the street from the campus. I can still see the sharp shooters on the roof!

[Interviewer]: On the roof of this fast food restaurant on 59.

[Barb O’Patry]: And it’s like, “Oh my god! I made a wrong turn. I’m like in a war zone.” And it wasn’t long before I was stopped and, I mean, I couldn’t go much further. The policeman or, I guess it was a policeman, told me I had to turn around. And I said, “I have to go to class.” I’m sure he probably looked at me like I was nuts because by this time—this was after twelve thirty—by this time, the shooting had occurred. And he said, “You’re not going on that campus.” And I learned later that people—even people who lived on campus couldn’t go back in there. They couldn’t get their belongings. So, I’m like what is going—again, no cell phone. The radio—get bits and pieces. By then, I mean by a little after that I knew what had occurred. And I was—I don’t know what I was. It was surrealistic. It was like this couldn’t happen. Cute little hippie kids, you know, wearing their peace buttons and stuff. How did this happen? But I knew I couldn’t stay. There was nothing to stay for. College was closed. Certainly, that day and then forever. At least for the rest of that quarter. So, I went home, well, I was on my way home, but I do have to say that I have a propensity not to buy gas until the last minute and I, to this day, still do that. So, I got on the turnpike, which is my way home and well, needless to say, I ran out of gas. And I had a big Kent State University sticker across the back of the car. I had a big ‘64 Chevy. This was big, big—well, today it would be huge. Those days, it was even big. So, I pulled over and people are starting to slow down. I think, Good. Someone’s going to give me a ride because I need to get that towpath or whatever that building is and call someone and say, “Hey, could you come and get me with some gas, so I can get my car off the turnpike?” Well, they would slow down and they would yell stuff out the window and it wasn’t nice. They would yell—you know, I don’t remember what, but it was nasty stuff because they knew I was a Kent State student.

[Interviewer]: You had a bumper sticker on your car that said Kent State.

[Barb O’Patry]: And on the window, so it was really high up. They would swear at Kent and they’d swear at me, you know, it was awful. So, by the time my friend came, I was in tears. It was what had occurred back in Kent, which I still couldn’t get my mind wrapped around, and now this. It was awful. It was inhumane. It was bad enough, okay, don’t stop, but you don’t have to swear at me and say terrible things about the college. So, eventually I did get home. I don’t even remember, I know I spent a lot of hours on the turnpike. I think somebody did give me a ride to one of those—I don’t even know what you call them—rest stops or whatever and I called a friend and I was able to get my car home.

[Interviewer]: So, you were stuck for several hours with people yelling at you?

[Barb O’Patry]: Yeah. And I didn’t know what to do. What do you do? I mean I just felt so out there. There was—and so alone. And wanting almost—like, at first, when I had a little more energy—first, I wanted to start yelling at them. But then after a while, I got scared, so then I just stayed in the car.

[Interviewer]: And obviously no trooper, state troopers ever stopped to help…

[Barb O’Patry]: No, no one came. They were probably all at Kent. That’s all I could think of, is they probably were all called to the university, so there was no one, but some kind person.

[Interviewer]: No one had cell phones then. Very, very few people had car phones. I mean I don’t even think car phones were common.

[Barb O’Patry]: Oh no.

[Interviewer]: Nobody had that. I didn’t know anybody that had it.

[Barb O’Patry]: I was lucky— I didn’t even have gas. So, of course I didn’t have a car phone.

[Interviewer]: I was thinking of somebody driving by maybe who would call in for you. Oh, my goodness.

[Barb O’Patry]: I had no idea.

[Interviewer]: Did you see anyone hitchhiking from campus trying to get home?

[Barb O’Patry]: No, I didn’t. Actually, what was surprising about it is that, again, I wasn’t on the campus, but even on the street there were—I can’t recall seeing students. I think—I don’t know—were they traumatized and they just ran and left? I had no idea. There was no—I expected a lot of traffic on the turnpike because people are leaving, but most of those folks were undergrads or younger, they probably had to wait for someone to give them a ride. So, they probably couldn’t leave then. I don’t know, I can’t even imagine what it was like on campus. Because outside the campus it was like a war zone. That’s all I could think of. Just soldiers, I guess they were soldiers. I don’t know, I can’t even sort them out. There was highway patrol and I don’t know. But I ended up getting home probably very late. I probably left Kent around one and probably didn’t get home till six or seven that night. It’s an hour drive, so I spent a lot of time waiting.

[Interviewer]: Were you parents worried? They must have been worried.

[Barb O’Patry]: You know, I don’t recall. I think I called her when I was at the towpath, you know…

[Interviewer]: Called home from the rest stop.

[Barb O’Patry]: Called home and told her that I was okay, but the college was closed and I ran out of gas. Then, of course, I had to listen to her. It’s kind of like figure/ground—she’s not focusing in on the shooting, she’s focusing on how irresponsible I am that I don’t have gas in my car, which is true. But I continued my student teaching and then, I do have to throw this in, because it’s kind of pertinent to the situation on why I didn’t graduate. I was supposed to graduate in May of 1970. Student teaching was going to be my last hurrah, then I would graduate. Well, unfortunately, in the winter of my senior year, I received a call from the Administration, I don’t know from whom, telling me that they made a terrible mistake in my transcript and the state of Ohio requires, I think it was six hours of active Phys Ed in order to graduate. I think that req. does no longer exist but existed when I was there. Well, I had taken a health course and I took it as three hours, three semester hours which translated to 4.5 quarter hours. So, they said, “Okay, that’s close enough.” Well, no. It turns out that health class is not active Phys Ed, of course. So, they told me if I wanted to graduate, I would have to take five hours of P.E. 

[Interviewer]: Okay.

[Barb O’Patry]: I am not athletic. It wasn’t even like pick one, or pick two. I had to almost take them all. So that quarter—oh, so then summer quarter, which I was supposed to have been graduated—I was on the Kent State campus, other than for bowling, because bowling we had to go to a bowling lane somewhere on 59, but I took golf, badminton, archery, tennis, bowling. Those were the courses I took. It was crazy. So, then I said, Okay, if I have to be here, I’m just going to add on a history class. Now I’ll have a double major, I would have enough hours for a double major. So, I took a history class. I did not want to be on the campus. I was—it was so sad for me. I could barely go on campus. The only thing I was grateful for was that I was doing active Phys Ed, so I wasn’t sitting, other than the history class—that I wasn’t on campus-campus, except the history class. But it wasn’t long before I got myself—well, I didn’t get myself into it, I think the university was wrong, but who knows. I took golf and there was a golf instructor and there was probably eight of us in the class. I have no idea. There were very few students on campus.

[Interviewer]: It was pretty quiet.

[Barb O’Patry]: Oh, that was other thing. It was eerie quiet. There was no one. You didn’t see people walking across campus. It wasn’t like—and I had gone to school the summer previous, so I knew what it looked like in the summer.

[Interviewer]: It wasn’t a normal summer. 

[Barb O’Patry]: No. I saw more people today than I did in the whole time I was at Kent summer session. Well, I don’t know why they did this and I don’t know, but they had the golf class, or whatever it was, at the base of Taylor Hall, where the students were shot and I said, “I can’t do that. I can’t golf here.”

[Interviewer]: In The Commons.

[Barb O’Patry]: I can’t do that. And he said, “Why not?” And I said, “Why not!?” I don’t remember exactly. I probably worse mouth when I was younger. But I’m like, “What do you mean?!”

[Interviewer]: What do you mean why not? Yeah.

[Barb O’Patry]: Now I would use the word disrespectful. I probably said sacrilegious or something when I was younger. But now I would just say it’s just extremely disrespectful. And he argued with me for a while and then he said, “Just go wherever you want to go.” So, I went— I don’t know how far down from there. He never ever saw me golf. I could have been sitting on the grass. I would go there, get the club or clubs, and then I would go to my little piece of where I was golfing and the rest of the class was over here with the prof—I don’t know what he is—the golf pro or whatever he is. The only way I think he knew whether I knew anything was there was written test so, I guess I did well on the test.

[Interviewer]: But you weren’t getting golf instruction about your swing or any of that?

[Barb O’Patry]: No, I got no instruction. Nothing. And I—you know what? I hated golf and I hated being there, so I didn’t care. I didn’t care if I ever learned anything about golf. I just wanted it to be over. Plus, I had to save myself for my other things, like archery and the badminton teacher who was so strong that, if the birdie or whatever that thing is would hit you, you’d get a welt. It was just the most ridiculous quarter. I don’t know, it was ridiculous. Like that’s kind of funny, like ha-ha. But then the background is such sadness.

[Interviewer]: Not funny.

[Barb O’Patry]: It was so—I can’t even explain it. Like Barb, This is absurd, you having to take five classes and you’re in no way athletic. You know, it’s not what I want to do. Like other people would be like, Yay, we get to do this! Not me, I’m like, No, just give me another English class or something. But also, the background that this silliness, what I called silliness, was going on and it shouldn’t be. I don’t know what I thought, but the only thing I knew for sure is that I shouldn’t have been on campus. That’s the only thing I’m absolutely positive of.

[Interviewer]: Were you commuting back and forth to your parents’ house that summer?

[Barb O’Patry]: Oh no, no. I was back on North Depeyster.

[Interviewer]: You were back in the apartment. Okay.

[Barb O’Patry]: Yeah, I was on North Depeyster.

[Interviewer]: And when you—I want to picture this discussion you had with the golf instructor. Was the whole class there or did the other students hear you say this?

[Barb O’Patry]: I don’t think so. I think that I chose to talk with him one-on-one. I don’t remember other students being there.

[Interviewer]: And everybody else?

[Barb O’Patry]: I don’t know, I never saw them again.

[Interviewer]: Went forward with the class in its location on the Commons?

[Barb O’Patry]: Yeah, they were all there. I mean, pretty much. You know, when I’d look over, they were there.

[Interviewer]: And you were off around the corner somewhere.

[Barb O’Patry]: Yeah, I went just far enough that I felt that this wasn’t sacred ground and it was okay to be shooting some whiffle ball or whatever it was that we were doing. I mean, that was just so, ugh. I kept thinking, Who, who set this up? We have a huge campus. Why do we have to play golf—not even golf. I don’t know what the heck it was. Why do we have to do this? This is one part of the campus. It could be so easy to move it somewhere else, but no. So, there I was off golfing all on my own.

[Interviewer]: That must have been upsetting, traumatizing, I would think. 

[Barb O’Patry]: It was—traumatizing—I don’t know if I was— traumatized is probably a good word but probably—

[conversation is interrupted by cell phone announcement]

[Barb O’Patry]: I’m so sorry.

[Interviewer]: Oh, it’s okay. It’s fine. Phones do their thing. You can’t control it.

[Barb O’Patry]: I know they—that’s another thing I don’t have control over. That and the dog sitting.

You know, trauma was not a word that was part of my vocabulary then. But since then, I would say, yes. But the thing that bubbled up more than anything else was anger and paranoia. I was so angry and first, I was angry at the National Guard. Oh my gosh. They shot those kids. What’s wrong with them? They’re murderers. I mean, just ranting and raving in my head and with an audience—not an audience, but if I had someone to talk with I would use the same—I would never say they were shot. I would say they were murdered. But then, it would take long, probably maybe a month or so, and I thought, You know, it’s the National Guard, they were kids. Probably, I was older than some of them. I don’t know how old you have to be in the National Guard. I was twenty-three. 

[Interviewer]: There were Guardsmen who were younger than twenty-three, absolutely.

[Barb O’Patry]: I’m sure. Probably, twenty-one, twenty-two. So now where do you go with your anger? I didn’t feel it was right. It didn’t fit to be angry at the National Guardsmen because they were probably terrified. They didn’t know what to do. And they’re relying on someone else to tell them what to do. But the whole set-up was—I mean it was like, What could go wrong? Just everything, in retrospect. 

[Interviewer]: Well, that summer you were going through kind of these stages of grief and because of this requirement you were kind of forced to be on campus that summer when you said you didn’t really want to be.

[Barb O’Patry]: No, well, I was angry about that. I was angry about the P.E. courses. I was angry that I couldn’t graduate in May. I felt it was their mistake and they needed to make it right. And I said as much, but they said there was nothing they can do. They apologized. So, yes, I was very upset about being on campus. I wanted that time, I wanted that summer. I was hoping to get a job teaching in the fall, or September, whenever. I was hoping to use that summer to debrief. To make sense, if I could— not just of the shooting, but of everything, the whole time I was at Kent. The whole two and a half years I spent at Kent, just trying to get my head around it. Like, how did it turn this way?

And these kids. I did not know any of the students that were shot. I did not know any of them, but I didn’t feel like I needed to, you know. I identified with them. That could have been me. That could have been someone I knew. So, the anger was always there. And I thought, if anyone confronts me—I probably was rude to the golf instructor, probably wasn’t being very diplomatic, that would be my guess. Although I don’t remember. But, being on campus, it was this eeriness like we talked about where there were very few students on campus and then I became paranoid. Like, Who’s that? Is that an FBI? Doesn’t look like a student. So, I would be like a swivel-head with my eyes going round and round looking around. I’m not sure why I was so paranoid. I mean there were—I believe and I think everyone, and maybe it’s even been confirmed that there were FBI and other people on the campus the summer of 1970. But, I couldn’t figure out why I felt so paranoid because I wasn’t doing anything. Then I thought, oh maybe the golf. How could that be? How petty is that? I couldn’t believe that, so then I kind of dismissed that, but every time I walked across campus I looked and like, I wonder if that’s an FBI? Then I thought, Wait a minute, they could be in my class. Not the P.E. classes, but they could be in the history class. So then, I’m in the history class looking around, again, I’m just not sure.

[Interviewer]: Didn’t know who you could trust that summer.

[Barb O’Patry]: And I really wasn’t doing anything wrong. But again, the anger flared, not just the paranoia about them being on campus, but the anger. I felt like they don’t belong here. This is my campus. What are you doing here? What are you looking for? You know? How dare you come here? I just— there was a lot of arrogance, for sure, do you know what I mean? There was just so many feelings that bubbled up, but the paranoia and the anger remained pretty much throughout the entire summer. Then, when I wasn’t on the campus, North Depeyster was fine.

Again, I didn’t go into the town bars, but I probably did something that was almost worse for me. I needed a job and I couldn’t get a job back at the bowling alley that I worked at because they already replaced—because I wasn’t there spring quarter because I was student teaching. So, believe it or not, I got a job doing the same thing, cocktail waitressing, at the Kent Elks. Well, I thought, Hmm, you know, that’s a pretty conservative body; those are like Kent’s elders, so to speak. Is this a good move? But it’s the only job I could find that would pay that well. So, the pact I made with myself was that I would work there as long as they were not disrespectful. If they were not saying like, “They should have killed more,” which I would hear from other people in town. I thought, I can do this as long as they’re respectful and I’ll be respectful. I’m not going to say anything about blaming them or spouting off about Rhodes, who was the governor, or whatever. And it really wasn’t bad. They may have been saying things, but maybe when I came around to bring their or take their order, to bring their drinks, they didn’t say anything and it was okay. It was a little bit awkward. It was a little bit uncomfortable because it was like I was waiting for the shoe to drop. I was just waiting for someone to say something and how was I going to react because, again, that anger is on the surface and a bad mouth. Not so much physical. I’m not physical at all, but I could be pretty bad running my mouth. So, I was afraid of what they would say that, in turn, would trigger what I would say.  

[Interviewer]: And you would be angry, feel angry.

[Barb O’Patry]: And I just didn’t want that to happen.

[Interviewer]: So, it stayed civil at your job?

[Barb O’Patry]: It did. Now what I noticed, though, because I worked up to the day I graduated, is I felt and maybe not accurately, but I thought that—it was—I felt the climate, so to speak, in the Elks Club was a little bit different. The closer we got to the new quarter, because Kent was going to reopen. I don’t mean reopen, it was already open. But the fall quarter. And I just wondered if the folks there, the Elks members and their guests were scared, were anxious about what was going to happen. I mean now, as more of an adult, I can see both sides of it. That I couldn’t understand what had occurred. They really couldn’t understand either, except there was all something wrong with us and we were spoiled and why don’t we just go to school or whatever. But I could feel—it’s just a little bit more tense.

[Interviewer]: When they knew the large numbers of the students would be returning for the fall. 

[Barb O’Patry]: And they didn’t know what to expect. They did not know what to expect. I can’t remember what day I graduated, probably mid-August some time. And the Elks were very nice. They gave me a wonderful graduation gift, which was money, which I really needed and I do have to say, I had a crush on the bartender, so that was another reason I stayed.

[Interviewer]: So, it worked out.

[Barb O’Patry]: Yeah, yeah. It did.

[Interviewer]: You made it work.

[Barb O’Patry]: But it was just, again, even at this age, I can’t really articulate how strange the whole thing was. Here I am on the Kent campus and then there I am at the Elks Club. Not to be confused with the bowling alley. It was just—even in a regular year, whatever regular is or normal, it would have been very odd, but that year in particular. And it took me a long time to come onto campus again. It took me a very long time. I bet I was fifteen-twenty years before I set foot on the campus again.

[Interviewer]: After you graduated?

[Barb O’Patry]: Yeah. I was angry. And then, again, where do you go with the anger? I was so angry about what they did to the college, the reputation. That’s my memory. Other people remember, I don’t know what, like Greek, like parties, like frat parties or something. And this is what I carry.

[Interviewer]: Carefree college days.

[Barb O’Patry]: Yeah. So, for the longest time I was angry. I’m not angry anymore. I’m still sad. And I’m okay on this end of the campus because now I go to the memorial. The memorial is always on this side of the campus and I’m okay. But when I go over to other side of the campus, it’s like I’m being transported to the time that I was a student. I feel like student. I don’t feel like this seventy-two-year-old adult when I’m over here. I just have to walk—what, a quarter of mile, not even an eighth of a mile, and I’m back to being a college student in her early twenties. I feel what I felt then. It’s hard. I rarely go there. Even though I come on the campus for the memorial, I rarely go there and I’m debating about it even today whether or not I should go. I’m not sure why. Do you know what I mean? I already feel bad. I don’t know and I don’t have—I have a mixture of memories, like some of the memories—I mean college wasn’t all bad. I had a lot of fun. But, all of a sudden, we were forced to be adults. First, I get slammed with student teaching, which knocked me off quite a bit.

[Interviewer]: That was enough sudden adulthood, yeah.

[Barb O’Patry]: Yeah. I didn’t want to be an adult anymore. And then the whole—and then the shooting. And no goodbyes to the people we knew, you know. Again, kind of like, the not doing what we could have been doing earlier. Not getting names and addresses and phone numbers, home phone numbers and stuff. Some of these people are lost. I find myself sometimes at the memorial looking around, but I think, My god, forty, forty-five years, forty-nine years have passed. How am I going to recognize anyone? And I wouldn’t recognize the name either. But I still look, I still look for someone who was there. I go with my friend who was a graduate in—I don’t know when she graduated—probably mid- to late-Seventies. So, she’s of another era, but she and I go every year. And I’m so grateful for that. I mean, it matters. I think for a while, I don’t know, I think that the town and maybe even the administration and the board and the regents, the Board of Regents and everybody just wanted to bury this and let’s move on, you know, let’s clean the slate. Okay, it happened. Nothing we can do about it. Let’s move forward. Well, it’s just like any other grief, you know, you have to grieve. I think for a while there, it wasn’t allowed. It wasn’t allowed in the golf area where I was golfing. That was not allowed. So, I think the memorial says, It’s okay to grieve. It’s okay to relive that at some level. I thought this year’s memorial was better than any. I have kind of like the faded memory, we used to go on the campus, I mean the other part of the campus. But, now, it’s been indoors, so it’s a different feeling. 

[Interviewer]: It was indoors this year. There was concerns about a thunderstorm warning, so I think it was—

[Barb O’Patry]: I think another year, too, it was indoors.

[Interviewer]: Depending on the weather.

[Barb O’Patry]: But, I thought this year, taking the four students and having someone talk about them, not this was their major or this was what they were doing on the campus, but how their parents felt. Not necessarily as students, but as people. I just thought it was so personal and just so humbling at some level.

[Interviewer]: I thought that was very good as well.

[Barb O’Patry]: I thought it was excellent. Then we also stayed for the main session, which I thought was just unbelievable.

[Interviewer]: The guest speaker, Bob Woodward.

[Barb O’Patry]: Bob Woodward. I’m trying to think of who I heard previous to that? The year before or two years before the commentator, the news commentator—

[Interviewer]: It was—Oh gosh. You know how when you want to remember a name it doesn’t come?

[Barb O’Patry]: It doesn’t matter. I guess what I’m looking for there—

[Interviewer]: Dan Rather?

[Barb O’Patry]: Dan Rather. Thank you. What I’m looking for is still, all these years later, I’m still looking for someone to explain this to me. How this happened? How Vietnam happened? How this happened on this campus? I mean, we’re not—this isn’t Cornell, I mean, we’re not—well, I’ll speak for myself, I’m not a heavy thinker. I’m a good student, but I’m not a thinker. I don’t know how to analyze things real well. I’m thinking, Why here? Why in this sleepy little town in Ohio? 

[Interviewer]: Midwestern. Not a big college.

[Barb O’Patry]: So, I’m looking for Dan Rather, Bob Woodward, I’m looking for anyone, Dick Celeste, anyone to say this is why it happened here. And this is what happened and this is why it happened. But, I think we’ll never really know. I mean, it was, to me it’s like a perfect storm. That’s the only—after all these years, that’s all I could come up with. It was the perfect storm.

[Interviewer]: And a perfect storm can happen anywhere.

[Barb O’Patry]: That’s right. I mean, do I know more now than I knew in 1970? Yeah, but I don’t know enough that I feel like, Oh, I get it. I don’t get it. I don’t get any of it, I don’t.

[Interviewer]: So, there’s no feeling of closure in terms of that for you?

[Barb O’Patry]: No. And I still look for that. I still look for an understanding. Or, to what—Kate, people will say that the war probably ended quicker because of the college protests, particularly Kent. And so then, is that okay then? We lost four people. We lost people’s ability to function, they lost their mobility. I mean, wasn’t there another way? I’m glad the war ended, and for as far I’m concerned, way too late. But, is that the price we had to pay? Wasn’t there another way? Is this what we had to do? And then, why here? I kind of like when someone says to God, “Why me?” And God says, “Why not?” Well, maybe that’s the answer to Kent. Why not? I don’t know. I know that people feel like a lot of people came in into the area to infiltrate the SDS. I don’t know, other organizations, but they were on other college campuses too. So, I don’t know. Maybe we’ll never know.

[Interviewer]: This campus surely wasn’t singled out that way.

[Barb O’Patry]: So, I go with the perfect storm. And that’s pretty much my—that’s so much recollection because I really didn’t see a lot because I wasn’t really on the campus, but it’s more what happened afterwards, maybe some of the things leading to it. But, the actual event, I really don’t have a lot of visuals, nor do I have a lot of thoughts because I was just, I think I was just in a fog. I don’t know how long I felt that way. I bet it was days before I felt I was myself and I could think.

[Interviewer]: After May 4, after the shootings happened, you were—

[Barb O’Patry]: But, of course, I had to do the student teaching. God. I thought I would get a pass, like oh. But no. In a way that was good, because it was almost like therapy because, when I was in the classroom, I was in survival mode. I had to be at my best game.

[Interviewer]: And the person that was supervising you, that was working with you there was probably relieved that you were okay and concerned for you because he’s the one who suggested that you not try to come to campus that day.

[Barb O’Patry]: I didn’t tell him. He didn’t say I told you so. And I didn’t say anything.

[Interviewer]: Did—he wanted to hear your whole story, I’m guessing?

[Barb O’Patry]: No, he did. He was very fortunate. He was the head of the English department, so he would have two periods together. You have a free period and you have lunch. We often went off campus—I mean off the school, not campus, school grounds. We probably spent a couple of days talking about it, kind of debriefing. He’s very bright. He’s very, very bright. It just felt good to talk someone that was removed from it, but also had a sense of history and what was going on. And I had told him a little bit about Kent, like my experiences at the college. That was very therapeutic.

[Interviewer]: He was sort of a mentor for you. He was a mentor role with you.

[Barb O’Patry]: In more ways than just the—he really got me through. I think he really got me through a tough time.

[Interviewer]: Were you able to talk to your parents about a lot of things? Was it—did they want to hear your whole story?

[Barb O’Patry]: No. I can’t explain, I don’t want to make my parents sound like they were emotionally distant. They weren’t but I really don’t even remember ever having a conversation with my parents, either parent actually, about Kent State. About what happened or about how I felt. We weren’t a family that talked about feelings. I had to learn that, that wasn’t what we talked about. We could be angry, maybe we could be happy, but we couldn’t be sad or confused or any of that. None of those emotions.

[Interviewer]: That was kind of part of that era as well, I think.

[Barb O’Patry]: I think so.

[Interviewer]: Not just your family.

[Barb O’Patry]: And maybe more so my family though, because of the—you know, my mother had gone through the war, the Depression. I mean not that—for me, this was a huge event, but maybe she had a different perspective on it. I don’t know. The only thing I remember is that I told her I have to go back to school. I told her well before May of 1970. I told her winter quarter, I’m going to have to go back. And she was not happy about that because, of course, tuition’s involved and room and board. But, she said— I do remember her asking me if I thought I was going to be safe. And I think she felt better knowing that I wasn’t going to be actually in classrooms. Although the shooting didn’t occur in a classroom. Not like what we see today. But she was—I don’t know, but she was a little bit worried. My father— 

[Interviewer]: That was on her mind.

[Barb O’Patry]: Yeah. I didn’t come home that quarter. I came home for quarters for years. For probably a year and half, because I worked in Cleveland at the hospital, but once I started working at—I can’t remember the name of the bowling alley in Ravenna. I never—the money was good. It was crazy to drive to Cleveland.

[Interviewer]: So, then you didn’t need the Cleveland job.

[Barb O’Patry]: No, so I stayed on campus. I think that put me really, in retrospect, not only being a transfer student. But I think it put me in a step-down position that I went home every weekend. I really never—I didn’t belong to any organizations and I’d been the class president when I was in high school. Here I am, no organizations. I go to school, I work, I go to bed. You know, that was my day.

[Interviewer]: Yeah, you were busy.

[Barb O’Patry]: Yeah, it was very different. I would do it very differently, I think. I would not have gone home and I think I was okay at Tri-C. It was cheaper and it was okay. I think I needed that step from going from high school. Because I was young eighteen-year-old. Even though I lived in the inner city. People always thought—some people thought, Oh man, she’s like street smart. I am dumber than a bag of rocks. I still don’t know things that are going on, I just don’t have an antenna for that. I don’t know.

[Interviewer]: You probably stuck to your neighborhood.

[Barb O’Patry]: Oh, and more so probably because my parents didn’t drive. I was the first one that drove. So, yeah, our little corner of the world. So, this was huge, like I said, I thought I was in a rural area. Pretty soon we’ll be seeing cows. I had no idea and I had a friend in Rootstown, which was even crazier. And like, Wow, what is this? But I liked it.

[Interviewer]: Even more rural.

[Barb O’Patry]: Yeah, it was—in Ravenna, I go take the school bus up to downtown Ravenna, or how far it went, and I go to the Army Navy store and buy seafarers. These are the memories I have. 

[Interviewer]: You took the Kent State campus bus to go shopping?

[Barb O’Patry]: Yeah. It was just simple stuff, but I liked it. I never went to any activities, I never went to a game, I never went to any of the bars. I’m so atypical. I think I’m an atypical. I was an atypical student, but I think not everyone travels that same road. 

[Interviewer]: And there were a lot of commuter students. You probably weren’t as atypical as you think because there were a lot of students who were commuting.

[Barb O’Patry]: Oh, that’s true. I don’t think I knew any of those. Is that odd?

[Interviewer]: And working at factories. I mean, I’ve heard of students driving from their factory job, finding a place to park, taking a nap, and then going to class, things like that. So, you weren’t alone, but you didn’t get to meet each other because you were—

[Barb O’Patry]: I think I was just on that track. I think I had blinders on, like: school, finish school. Every quarter, I took fifteen or eighteen hours and it was a lot of reading because I was an English major. So, I took a track that maybe others did take as well, but I don’t know. I always felt just a little bit different than—I think when I was at—I lived in Prentice. I think that living in Prentice gave me maybe the wrong impression of what the Kent State population was, because they were pretty preppy and they were all lavaliered, if there’s such a word. And going to frat things and stuff. I just felt like that’s—

[Interviewer]: That wasn’t your circle of friends. Your dorm was Prentice Hall before you moved off campus?

[Barb O’Patry]: Right, that was my bailiwick over there. There was nothing over here. There was no reason to come over here. Student Union was about as big as this table. So, when I did go back to Kent after all these years, I went in the Student Union, I am telling you, I was bowled over. It looked like going into IKEA or something, like, what are they selling here? We sold books and sweatshirts. That’s what they sold. And pencils and bluebooks.

[Interviewer]: And the exam booklets.

[Barb O’Patry]: Yeah, that was it. None of this. It’s almost like culture shock.

[Interviewer]: Yeah, that was built in the 80s, so, yeah, wasn’t here when you were.

[Barb O’Patry]: Oh my goodness, it was unbelievable. Even the campus, the layout, how beautiful it is that the landscape. I mean, it wasn’t that pretty when I went here. But then tuition wasn’t what it is now either, so there’s that. So, there’s money to build and to beautify. I guess bigger is better. I liked the old Kent. But the old administration buildings and the library over there. I liked that traditional, that Gothic—I call it Gothic compared to this. I just liked it, I was fine over there.

[Interviewer]: Yeah, it was like the old campus feel with the big trees.

[Barb O’Patry]: And then the hill. So, when I come here, this is very strange to me. I don’t feel— I’ve never bonded with this part of the campus. I mean, it’s fine, but it’s not the school I went to. To me, it’s like two different Kents. And I don’t know where you break that off. How different is it? We’re speaking architecturally now, so we can probably come up with a point where all this building began. This whole—

[Interviewer]: The science corridor—

[Barb O’Patry]: The Eastway complex and all this. So, we could probably come up with a year, a couple years, when that vision was made. But is there a before-Kent 1970, spring of 1970, and an after-Kent 1970?

[Interviewer]: Well, that’s maybe a question I should be asking you. It does seem like—you weren’t here for much longer after the shootings happened. You just had that summer term where you had to finish that P.E. requirement. I have heard people talk about 1971, 1972 when they came back, things felt very different.

[Barb O’Patry]: I would think they did. It certainly felt different when I came back summer quarter. But, my goodness, that was just a month later, so I would expect that.

[Interviewer]: And it was so quiet. There weren’t very many people that summer, et cetera, when you were here. 

[Barb O’Patry]: Yeah, it was kind of creepy. Then my intense paranoia just made it more creepy. I wondered, when I was at home, after I graduated, were parents going to be reluctant to send their kids to Kent Was there going to be that period where we don’t know that it’s safe. Well, that’s kind of naïve because, if it happened at Kent, it can happen anywhere. But I could see where, as a parent, I probably would have been. 

[Interviewer]: That’d be my reaction as a parent.

[Barb O’Patry]: Yeah. So, I just wondered if that was going to hurt the college. I wanted Kent to do well. I wanted it to be well. But, I couldn’t come on campus either. I just couldn’t come.

[Interviewer]: So, when you first came back many years later, was that for one of the annual commemorations?

[Barb O’Patry]: That’s the only time I come. Other than today. That is the only time I come. Oh no, I take that back. I have a grandson who is a junior in high school and I want the narrative at home to be that he’s going to college. Real bright kid, but probably does not want to go to college. I said, “Well, why don’t we go to Kent?” Because he plays baseball and Kent’s got pretty good baseball team. I said, “Let’s go to Kent.” And he’s like, “Okay.” So, we walked around the campus and I forgot how hilly it is. This body had a pretty hard time with some of those hills. Got into some of the—couldn’t get into any of the dorms other than—I don’t even know if we could get in the lobby. Very different set up now. I’m so surprised, I mean, some ways it was stricter when I was a kid, because, for instance, there was Dunbar across the street from Prentice. Prentice was all female, Dunbar was all male. But yet, it was easier to get in the building until they locked the doors. 

[Interviewer]: But boys were not allowed in after a certain hour?

[Barb O’Patry]: Oh no. Girls—they locked the doors. Girls were not allowed into their own dorm after—you had to call the RA or I don’t know.

[Interviewer]: After curfew, right.

[Barb O’Patry]: Craziness, it was. I lost my train of thought about where I’m going with this.

[Interviewer]: So, you were touring with your grandson?

[Barb O’Patry]: Oh, touring with my grandson, yeah. And the hills. We did get into one dorm building and we just saw the inside. We got into a couple classrooms and then we went to Ray’s. Said, “There you go.” I shouldn’t say—is Ray’s like a townie—is Ray’s a bar, because I just said I never go to any student bars, but I thought Ray’s was more of a restaurant.

[Interviewer]: I think Ray’s is sort of everything and everybody goes there.

[Barb O’Patry]: Now, how long has it been there?

[Interviewer]: That’s been there since the 30s.

[Barb O’Patry]: Oh, I didn’t go there when I was a student.

[Interviewer]: It’s an institution, it’s a Kent institution. They’ve been there a long time.

[Barb O’Patry]: We had the Robin Hood.

[Interviewer]: Yeah, that’s gone.

[Barb O’Patry]: I never went to the Robin Hood either—I never did. I think I just never did what others—I know there’s probably another—there’s probably a whole fraction that didn’t do the usual. But I just never had—I just never did those things. And didn’t miss them, really, either. I don’t know. I mean, I was fine.

[Interviewer]: This interview’s not about me, but I didn’t go to bars in college because they were so smoky. Because everyone was smoking.

[Barb O’Patry]: Oh, I was a smoker then, that wouldn’t bother me.

[Interviewer]: I wasn’t a smoker and that was a deterrent for me because bars were smoky.

[Barb O’Patry]: Yeah. It was before ventilation. I can remember going home and thinking, Oh my god. I got to take a shower. It just reeked and my hair was longer and it was just like smoke in my hair.

[Interviewer]: Do you remember any of the names of the townie bars that you did go to at all?

[Barb O’Patry]: No. There was one on Water. The only thing I remember about the one on Water was that there was a guy who had a skunk and he had it de-skunked. And he would park his car and never pay the meter and he put the skunk there. And so, the cops would never ticket it. That’s all I remember. There’s just probably one or two bars that we went to. [Unintelligible], I have such a selective memory. 

[Interviewer]: Well, this was a small town, really.

[Barb O’Patry]: I don’t remember any, like classes that well.

[Interviewer]: So, the bars you went to were on South Water Street?

[Barb O’Patry]: Yeah.

[Interviewer]: But they were—

[Barb O’Patry]: North Water.

[Interviewer]: Oh, North Water.

[Barb O’Patry]: North Water, yeah. Because I’m on North Depeyster. So, I remember we didn’t walk very far. I was next to—I wonder if that school’s still there. There was an elementary school next to—

[Interviewer]: Depeyster School.

[Barb O’Patry]: Right. Depeyster School. Yeah. I lived the house right next to it. The white house, double. Nice house. And we were playing house. At least I thought—well, in retrospect, now I think we were playing house. Then, I thought, Hey—

[Interviewer]: “I’m an adult.”

[Barb O’Patry]: I know. Yeah, it was good, I liked it. I guess a lot of my—I don’t know. A lot of my memories about school have nothing to do with class. It has more to do with work. That there was also, there were some problems. I did not have problems, but there were people around me. The immediate problem was more the marijuana. And a lot of people’s heads that went rolling due to that. So, that was an ongoing problem. And a lot of paranoia around that too, previous to the shooting. 

[Interviewer]: Friends and classmates and just people you knew on campus.

[Barb O’Patry]: Oh yeah, you know, “It’s a narc.” You know what I mean? We had such rich imaginations, do you know what I mean? Maybe they were right, maybe I’m naïve, but they were so sure that there were narcs all over the place. “Better not light up!” I could barely afford cigarettes, so it didn’t appeal to me at all.

[Interviewer]: I do have a couple questions going back to that day, May 4, 1970, if that’s okay with you?

[Barb O’Patry]: Sure.

[Interviewer]: I’m curious just to kind of paint that picture fully for us. So, you were driving toward campus to come to your student-teaching briefing?

[Barb O’Patry]: Which was in the Education Building.

[Interviewer]: So, I’m wondering, you got pretty close to campus.

[Barb O’Patry]: Yeah. I was on 59.

[Interviewer]: You were on 59, kind of at that front where the "K" [Kent State seal] is. The front gate to the front campus.

[Barb O’Patry]: No, I couldn’t come that way. Because I think that’s where the tank was. That’s the way I would usually come in. I would be coming that way where the seal is. 

[Interviewer]: From 43? Where the big seal is. Okay.

[Barb O’Patry]: That’s the way I would come and then I would just stay on 59 and then just turn into the parking lot by the Education Building.  

[Interviewer]: Through the Education Building.

[Barb O’Patry]: But, I couldn’t do that. It was blocked. So, I somehow went around, but I don’t know how I went around. Especially now when I try to picture it—streets are so different.

[Interviewer]: Things have changed.

[Barb O’Patry]: Yeah. I really cannot even—all I know is—

[Interviewer]: You either went through the neighborhoods or you went around the other side of campus.

[Barb O’Patry]: I think I went through the neighborhoods. I didn’t go through the campus. I didn’t go up—what is that? Summit. Or Lincoln. I didn’t go up that street. I went the other way—north. Up the campus. So then, let’s say this is the college and then I’m coming this way, but no, that’s not going to work because there’s a tank over here. So, I go this way, somehow, like behind Burger Chef and all these stores on 59.

[Interviewer]: North of campus through the neighborhoods.

[Barb O’Patry]: Then I’m now—here’s the college. Here’s—let’s call this the Education Building. Then I’m maybe here. I’m on 59, but I’m not very close to Education Building.

[Interviewer]: So, now you’re 59 westbound.

[Barb O’Patry]: Right.

[Interviewer]: Heading toward campus from the Ravenna direction?

[Barb O’Patry]: From Ravenna. Absolutely. So, here I am over here. Here’s the Education Building. I think the Burger Chef was over here somewhere. I mean, it was right across from campus.

[Interviewer]: Across the street probably from White Hall or right in there, where those restaurants are.

[Barb O’Patry]: White Hall?

[Interviewer]: The Education Building.

[Barb O’Patry]: Oh, is that what it’s called? Like, Why are we talking about White Hall?

[Interviewer]: Sorry.

[Barb O’Patry]: No, no, that’s fine.

[Interviewer]: So, Education Building and then right across 59, there were a whole bunch of fast food—there were restaurants.

[Barb O’Patry]: Okay. To this day, I say that there were sniper guys on the roof of the Burger Chef. The tank was here. There were all kinds of soldiers. There were also—

[Interviewer]: And they were in the street on 59, the tank and the soldiers?

[Barb O’Patry]: They were right in the street. The soldiers—I can’t remember. There were police. I don’t know that they were in the street. They were on both sides of the streets, that I remember. But there weren’t as many on the non-campus side. But I know that whoever came over to talk to me, came from the campus side. He didn’t come from the side with the stores. And he told me I had to turn around, that I couldn’t go any closer. And I didn’t know why. Well—no. Now, I’m getting confused.

[Interviewer]: Like you said it was all a blur. You probably pulled in, maybe to try and go into the parking lot at the Education Building and there was somebody there.

[Barb O’Patry]: No, I never got that close. I never got that close. I got as far as Robin Hood. I don’t know what’s there now, but the Robin Hood was right there. That’s when I realized there was a tank in the middle of the street. So, I turned around, or turned, or whatever. Went this way. Came up, like you said, heading west on 59. And got to maybe this part. Maybe closer to where the Hearing Speech, where the Theater is. Maybe a little past that. I was pretty far. I was at the far end of campus. And this policeman comes, or maybe it was a state trooper, I don’t remember. And said to me, “Where are you going?” “I’m going on the campus.” “No, you’re not.” “I have a class.” “No, you don’t.” I mean, it sounded like that. It wasn’t really a conversation. He seemed really irritated with me and I picked up on the irritation and again, I probably—not as diplomatic as I could have been. Then he just stared at me like I grew another head. But, I think he was staring at me because he thought, either I was stupid or I just landed from a space ship, because I didn’t know what was going on.

[Interviewer]: He didn’t tell you campus has been closed.

[Barb O’Patry]: I think he just assumed. I think assumed I was a student, which is a good assumption. Although I didn’t have student garb on. I mean I had my student teaching, almost an adult, clothes on. And I think maybe he thought I was being disrespectful or egging him on or something. I can’t say what he was thinking because I don’t even know what I was thinking, but I just know it was really just kind of [narrator makes clipped sounds imitating their brisk conversation]. I had to turn around.

[Interviewer]: You just did a U-turn?

[Barb O’Patry]: I probably turned in the driveway or something. But there were other cars behind me, so I don’t know if people couldn’t get—I’m assuming people couldn’t get through. I mean I wanted to go on the campus, but not everyone that goes down 59 is going to go to the school. I mean some people maybe going downtown Kent.

[Interviewer]: Do you remember when or how you first heard that there had been shootings on campus? Was that on the radio driving?

[Barb O’Patry]: I heard on the radio. Yeah. But here’s where I’m fuzzy. I sure didn’t know the college— the campus was closed. I sure didn’t know that. But when this—I don’t know, whatever he was—patrolman or policeman. I don’t think I even knew the shooting occurred then because I’m coming in there right around the time— 12:20, you said. I’m probably in that neck of the woods about twelve thirty, twelve forty maybe.

[Interviewer]: Right, because your class starts at 1:00. You have to park.

[Barb O’Patry]: Oh, and I got to be there early because I don’t want to do student teaching. So, I tell Richard, “Oh, it takes me a long time to get back.” I got to smoke my cigarettes, I got stuff to do. Drink pop, you know.

[Interviewer]: I don’t think there’s any way you could have heard before you arrived.

[Barb O’Patry]: I don’t think I knew. I’m trying to think of when I knew. You know, I had the radio on. I always had the radio on. We didn’t have compact discs or anything. I don’t even think we had [unintelligible] a tape recorder or tape player. I don’t know when I knew, quite frankly. I know before I got on the turnpike I knew, because I forgot all about the gas. Well, I think I would’ve forgotten about the gas anyway. Just because of everything that had occurred, even if there had been no shooting. I think, just the tank and the policeman and turning around. Just the stress of not being able to go to class and not knowing exactly what’s going on.

[Interviewer]: All that alone is enough of a distraction. Absolutely.

[Barb O’Patry]: But I know by the time—I think I knew by the time I got on the turnpike because it’s a ways. It’s pretty far from—well, my phone told me it’s seven miles on Route 43.

[Interviewer]: It’s a slow seven miles. It takes twenty minutes to get up onto the turnpike.

[Barb O’Patry]: So, I’m thinking by the time I got to 43 or maybe even a little bit before I got 43 to the time I got off of 43 and turned onto Streetsboro. Now, for some reason Pop’s truck stand. Do you know about Pop’s?

[Interviewer]: No. I don’t.

[Barb O’Patry]: Pop’s Truck Stop was just what it was. It was right on, you’re coming up on 43 and you’re turning on— What’s that? 14. Okay, right about here, not very far, maybe five hundred feet from 43—where 43 intersects with 14.

[Interviewer]: In Streetsboro?

[Barb O’Patry]: In Streetsboro. There was this thing called Pop’s Truck Stop. I went there now and I was amazed at what was there. That was the only thing there, Pop’s Truck Stop. And it was kind of a hangout for Kent kids of a certain grouping, do you know what I mean? I never went there but, for some reason Pop’s Truck Stop, I was just wondering if there was something there, if there was a sign—if there was something there. Why would Pop’s Truck Stop come in my mind?

[Interviewer]: You didn’t stop to get gas, clearly.

[Barb O’Patry]: God forbid. That made way too much sense.

[Interviewer]: But you might have stopped for a cold soda or something.

[Barb O’Patry]: I didn’t stop, I don’t know. Who had money for that? Anyway, for some reason there must have been something at Pop’s Truck Stop. Not inside, but in the driveway because—but I don’t know what it is? I wonder. Was it a protest of what occurred? I don’t know. But it was an old ratty place. I’ve never been in it, but from the outside, it looked old and ratty and it was kind of like the neighborhood joke. Like, “Where are you going to do your shopping?” Or, “Where are you going to go?” “I’ll go to Pop’s.”

[Interviewer]: Oh, so you didn’t hang out at Pop’s.

[Barb O’Patry]: Oh no. People didn’t hang. They just kind of stopped there. Do you know what I mean? Like you stop at a gas station now. Get-Go and get out. Get a drink or something. People did that. And it was just kind of funky. I think that when I went to school, I think this kind of frames it for me. Not only was I not part of the preppy, that rah-rah college people, but I think the framing is that I was a hippie kid that really looked down on a lot of that stuff. Maybe now, I have to say, because I wasn’t a part of it. So, I thought, Screw them. I don’t need that, blah blah blah. I don’t know, but I really fashioned myself as hearing the beat of a different drummer. It wasn’t political, but I wasn’t cutesy and rah-rah, you know, I wasn’t the cheerleader type. I was a little hippie kid.

[Interviewer]: You were more in the alternative group.

[Barb O’Patry]: I wouldn’t say like Goth. I wouldn’t go that far. We all had our uniforms. It was the seafarers, I wore seafarers every day of my life, which are like jeans. That’s what we wore to school. That’s what I remember anyways. And I can remember—I remember giving a flower to someone that I was so sure was an FBI man when I was on campus. There was a part of me that was just a little bit. Do you know what I mean, there was a little piece of me, that basically, I was just a little hippie kid. And Pop’s would be something that I would be drawn to, but I just never went in there because I wasn’t going to buy anything. But just like the town bars, I was drawn to that. 

[Interviewer]: They were a little more off-beat.

[Barb O’Patry]: And I didn’t know anyone on the campus, of the ones that I lived [with] in Prentice, I can’t imagine them working in the bowling alley or at the Kent Elks. They didn’t do that. They worked at the pizza places, or if they worked at all. I don’t know. I think that’—and that was kind of a strange place to be because I didn’t fit in with the collegiate set. And I wasn’t smart enough to be like the brainiacs, although I did have a friend in Mensa and I was so proud of that. We met him at the bowling alley. He said—he was from India maybe. And he said, “Oh, I belong to Mensa.” And I go, “Oh, good.” I had no idea what it was. I see it on his—the three of us, we would be—tending bar, not tending bar, but cocktail waitressing and we’d stop at his house sometimes afterwards. He was just the nicest, nicest guy. One day we read what Mensa was. We’re like, “Ooop” I don’t think I said a word after that. But, I didn’t fit in with the brainiacs. I mean, part of it was, my quest for fitting in. I think it wasn’t so much that I was apolitical, I just—it was further down on the—who’s that guy with the—triangle? I can’t think of what it is, and I should know this.

[Interviewer]: I’m not sure what—

[Barb O’Patry]: Yeah. It has to do with what you—self-actualization’s right on top and the bottom is survival kinds of things.

[Interviewer]: Okay, yeah, yeah.

[Barb O’Patry]: Apolitical—being political wasn’t at the top of my whatever that scale is. Can you picture it?

[Interviewer]: Okay, like your priorities.

[Barb O’Patry]: Having money to spend because there was no money to spend. If I didn’t earn money—my parents paid, I never had a school loan, my parents paid for my books, they paid for tuition, they paid for room and board. But—maybe my father would give me five dollars. Five dollars? I’ve got a smoking habit, that’s not going to work! So, I always worked. So, working was at the top and kind of trying to find place where I was comfortable was more of a—I just wasn’t ecumenical enough to—be part of anything else. I just—my own little. I don’t know. That was pretty much my quest. Always looking to fit in, to find a niche that I felt comfortable in.

[Interviewer]: I mean all young people are to an extent, of course.

[Barb O’Patry]: Well, I think so, but I think I was more seventh grade-y than most.

[Interviewer]: That’s funny.

[Barb O’Patry]: I just think of myself as really being young. Like one of the things I hated in Prentice,we had the cafeteria so the guys in Dunbar had to come over. They’d stand on the railing. I’d stand on the railings, too, and the steps leaning against the railing—the inside railing to go down into the cafeteria. And rate the girls. I wanted to line them up and slap them. I just thought that was so disrespectful. And they’d laugh and stuff. It was like, I’m saying I’m seventh grade, I don’t even know what grade they were, they were so immature. It was just—and it was hurtful. Like a form of bullying, I think. At any rate, those are the things I think about. About trying to fit in. The good news was that I was in the English Department and they’re kind of borderline artsy kind of people and kind of sensitive. Not that other people aren’t.

[Interviewer]: But you made friends there.

[Barb O’Patry]: Yeah. After a while, yeah. I knew people, but I always kept with a small group. I never branched out. And I had that one young student in the Alliance [Young Socialist Alliance] meeting, that was enough for me and enough for my friend, Jean because we never went to another meeting again. So, that was college.

[Interviewer]: The other thing I’m curious about that summer after the shootings and you’re back finishing this credit you didn’t know you needed to finish, how were things different in terms of any interactions you had with community members and the neighborhood where you were living? Or was the tension worse?

[Barb O’Patry]: You know, I don’t think so. But, I found myself not spending as much time—I mean, I was exhausted after five classes of P.E., let’s throw history in. I think, honest to God—

[Interviewer]: And then working at the Elks.

[Barb O’Patry]: It was just a lot. I think I only worked at the Elks on the weekend, but I really don’t remember—

[Interviewer]: —So, you probably weren’t doing as much in town that summer?

[Barb O’Patry]: No, I wasn’t. My buddies, my best buddy graduated. She graduated in May because she had her six hours of P.E., so she was able to graduate in May and she and I—she’s the woman I met at orientation. We were neck and neck. She was an English major as well. So, both education majors with a concentration in English. So, we were on the road and we were neck and neck. And then all of a sudden, she got to go home and then I got to stay and take P.E., but she would be the person we’d go and then with some other folks too.

[Interviewer]: Yeah, so you didn’t have all your friends there that summer either, of course.

[Barb O’Patry]: Yeah, it was very different and I didn’t want to be there. I think shut down a little bit. I think emotionally I was shut down a little bit. I don’t think I was in the mood to go, even to see the silly skunk. I really wasn’t in the mood to be hanging out downtown. And I think again, I was afraid maybe. Not afraid so much of what they would say, more frequently, what I would say. I didn’t want to hear it because I’m not confrontational. I’m just not.

[Interviewer]: It just wasn’t the mood of what you would be doing that summer?

[Barb O’Patry]: It certainly wasn’t what I thought. Even in winter, I was trying to find something positive about having to come back summer quarter. And I thought, Well, okay, I’m going to be outside and I love being outside. I get to walk around campus, there’s not going to be a lot of people. I mean, I made this list and pretty much convinced myself it was going to be okay. It was a minor setback. Poor Tony and Olga, my parents, had to pay for another quarter of school, but you know. Good news is, weren’t a lot of books, so the bookstore fee was not high. 

[Interviewer]: For the P.E. classes.

[Barb O’Patry]: Yeah, books about this big, it’s a little manual. So, I thought, Oh, it’s going to be okay. But then, when I went back, it wasn’t okay. It was just so, so different. And I know the campus was different, but, I know it emanates from within, I know I was different. So, I perceived everything differently. I didn’t perceive the school as being what I thought it was. And what I thought it was a little bit of a reprieve, a little bit of a place to be where you don’t have to yet be an adult, but no one’s going to spoon-feed you like they did in elementary school or high school. That you’re gradually becoming—and it’s safe here. It’s okay here, but it wasn’t. So, it was very disappointing. It’s just—I could never talk myself into thinking, Oh, this is okay. I don’t mind this. I’ll get though it. The only thing I kept telling myself is, It’s better than student teaching. So, there was that. I can’t even define how the campus was different, other than fewer students and these people I had identified as being FBI. I don’t know that they were. They could have been students, but everyone had their radar up. I think everyone was, not just afraid of—because most the people I knew, I’d say almost all of them, were apolitical. I think the paranoia spread to everything, like drugs, alcohol, just almost anything. I think there was just this feeling that it’s not safe here. 

[Interviewer]: That’s sad.

[Barb O’Patry]: Especially to go out on that note. I mean, I don’t know if it would have been any better have it happened in my junior year. And I would’ve been able—I don’t know that you can acclimate yourself. I don’t kno,. I’d be interested in knowing how some of the folks that were sophomores and juniors felt when they came back, if they did? I know some people transferred out. But those that did come back, wonder if they were ever able to reclaim the feelings that they had previously? And I wondered about the profs and I wondered about them. 

[Interviewer]: Right. What was their recovery like in the years following?

[Barb O’Patry]: Because they’re kind of—like most of the profs I knew lived in Brady Lake or one of those areas. The area behind the Music Building. All those streets with those nice houses. And I just wondered because they’re kind of having to almost be on both sides. I mean, they’re with the college kids, they probably really like a lot of the kids and like teaching and probably hold some of those same beliefs, but then, also they’re also adults in a college town.

[Interviewer]: And they live close to campus, but they’re not on campus.

[Barb O’Patry]: How do you bridge that? Can you be yourself in either environment? Do you have to kind of tone it down when you’re on campus and vice versa? I wondered about that. I think overall, maybe they were affected more than the students. I mean, we got to move on, sort of.

[Interviewer]: I think each individual has their own story about that. Absolutely, depending on—

[Barb O’Patry]: But I’d be interested in knowing what—reading one or more of their narratives. What is was like for them.

[Interviewer]: Sure.

[Barb O’Patry]: Because I often wondered, because they had to traverse both worlds. And how do you do that? Do you go back and forth? I don’t know, it would be sort of conflicting.

[Interviewer]: Did you feel any of that in your student teaching? Were your students asking you things about Kent State?

[Barb O’Patry]: Oh, please Kate, you give them way too much credit. They’re too busy being on the windowsill grabbing one of those big stupid bugs that come off of Lake Erie. Oh, no, no, they had no idea. Now I do think that Richard—

[Interviewer]: So, you weren’t suddenly having a different role as a student teacher?

[Barb O’Patry]: Plus, they were middle school kids. Need I say more. I don’t know where middle school kids should be, I’m thinking suspended animation. I can’t even tell you about that. I cried every morning I had to do student teaching, that’s how bad it was. Not in the morning, almost every night I would cry, it was so bad. I’m not used to—control’s a big issue for me and I had absolutely no control. Plus, I really loved English. I love words, I love language. These kids had absolutely no desire to learn.

[conversation is interrupted by a cell phone notification]

Can I tell you what a techy I am. Did I tell you? I don’t even know how to turn this silly phone off.

No, they had—now, Richard, my critics teacher, I think now their called cooperative teachers. He did tell the class, he told the—I had one eighth-grade class. I had sixth and seventh graders mostly, and he told the eighth-grade class. With me present, I mean it wasn’t like he was talking behind my back or anything. But he just said, that Miss Cappetti, that was my maiden name. He told them a little bit about Kent and that—and they were a little bit more understanding, I don’t know. I will say this though, when the teacher came, or whatever he is, a supervisor from Kent because they would come also. I don’t know how often they’re supposed to come. Once a week, maybe, to see how you’re doing.

[Interviewer]: To observe, okay.

[Barb O’Patry]: He would warn them, “Miss Cappetti’s teacher is coming from Kent. You better be good.” And they liked him, that was part of the problem. He was a big handsome guy and the girls, the older girls, were all in love with him. And they resented the fact that I was in the classroom because he wouldn’t be most of the time. And the younger kids, well he’s a big guy, 6’5”, two hundred pounds. They’re not going to mess with him. It’s just like with a substitute teacher, it’s the same thing. You don’t have a relationship with these kids, at least not early on. But anyway, he would warn them and they would be good, they really would. But in the end, though, it was kind of a disservice because I would say to him, to this supervisor, “I’m really struggling here. I have no classroom management skills.” And he’d go, “Oh no, you’re doing really well.” He said, “You know, I’d like to spend more time,” and he goes, “But I’ve got people drowning.” And I thought, Oh, what do you think I’m doing? I’m drowning. So, in the end it was a disservice to have the kids behave. I mean, I was grateful for the reprieve, but—

[Interviewer]: Right. And they were behaving when he was there. So, he didn’t get to see what you were really dealing with. Interesting.

[Barb O’Patry]: Well, I would tell him, oh, don’t worry, other teachers would tell him, too. Like Brian, who got the big bug and stuck it in the music book and the teacher would collect the music books and she opened—I guess, once a week, she’d collect the music book or something and she opens up the music book and Brian’s got this big—I can’t figure what they’re called—Canadian soldier. It’s about this big, they’re the ugliest, I hate bugs anyways. So, don’t worry, she told Richard. “Richard, your student teacher. I don’t know what’s going on in there? Brian had this big bug in the music book, I almost died.” Richard’s telling me this off campus. He’s laughing his head off, I’m mortified. “She’s an old bitty.” And I do want to say that I have never ever really taught school. I never taught. 

[Interviewer]: That was maybe my last question. Did you get a teaching job that fall?

[Barb O’Patry]: I never got a teaching job. I substitute taught. I taught at Lakewood High School one summer and that was okay, except I was teaching three grades simultaneously: sophomores, juniors, and seniors. It was ridiculous. I have, though, taught at a proprietory school level and I like that. There’s my niche. These kids want to learn. I taught speech and I taught psychology. But as full time, I’m a counselor and that’s really—that really is my calling. I miss teaching and I’m sorry I never taught, but it just never happened. But I still, anytime I can do, you know, a class for other people, I’m right there. I love it. I guess it wasn’t meant to be. Certainly, not middle school.

[Interviewer]: That didn’t sound like that was the best niche.

[Barb O’Patry]: Oh, the first day I was there, across the hall, there was a social studies class going on and the kid picked up the desk and threw it at the teacher. I thought, Oooh. Bad career choice, Barb. Now what? It was rough, it was inner-city school. That was before there were gangs and that kind of stuff. These kids came from very poor families, education was not on their radar. The parents did not support education, not that they were not supportive, but that was a luxury to come to a PTA meeting or to come to a parent-teacher conference. They didn’t do that. So, the kids were set off on their own. Those kids didn’t eat, that was before there were free lunches and stuff. So, it was an eye-opener. I mean, I lived in the inner city, but I didn’t live inner—I mean, well you know, any community’s like that: pockets of real poverty and kind of pockets of people who are little bit better off. I was I guess in the better off. Although when I was there, I didn’t think I was.

[Interviewer]: But you had your little neighborhood school.

[Barb O’Patry]: I went to Catholic school, all through my schooling. I was really kind of sheltered, I think. So, that’s kind of my story.

[Interviewer]: Is there anything else we haven’t touched on that you—? 

[Barb O’Patry]: Probably when I’m in the car, I’ll think, Well, I should’ve said something about—

[Interviewer]: We can always add if that happens.

[Barb O’Patry]: I really can’t think of anything. Because, it’s more about how I felt, more so than what I observed. Because I really didn’t observe that much.

[Interviewer]: No, but you did—it’s like a ripple in the pond. You were right there, kind of at the first ripple. You were on campus before it happened, you were on campus after it happened. It impacted your whole experience of your college years. So, I’m very grateful for sharing your story with us.

[Barb O’Patry]: Thank you.

[Interviewer]: I think students into the future have a lot they can learn from listening to it. So, thank you very much.

[Barb O’Patry]: You’re welcome. I hope so. I hope that people that are my peers will hear what other people had to say, because I’m hoping for me—I didn’t listen to a lot of it yet, but I’m hoping for me it’s going to add some clarity. Or confirm what I’m feeling. Do you know what I mean? It’s still as though—

[Interviewer]: —someone was who was a hundred yards from you seeing a whole different thing—

[Barb O’Patry]: Absolutely. And a different set of experiences that, previous to that. I just can’t believe it’s fifty years. I mean when I hear that, I can’t even comprehend fifty. That number is an unreal number. How can that be? How can that have been fifty years ago? And I think it’s good because, truth of the matter is, many of us are in our seventies now that were students then. If not late sixties.

[Interviewer]: Absolutely. And even some of the faculty who were young at the time.

[Barb O’Patry]: And some of the students could have been a lot older too because they would have been not typical students. Could have been in their mid-twenties and still going to school, graduate students. So, it’s good to record it, it’s good to have different people’s thoughts. But I’m looking forward to listening to it. Not to me, but to other people. And see what their take-away is, because that’s really what it is. What are the lessons learned? I don’t know.

[Interviewer]: But it’s something that everybody who was here then has carried—you’ve carried it with you your whole life.

[Barb O’Patry]: And it’s not just the college. It’s not just like when you talk about, oh, Kent. And then you have these memories. Yeah, you’re right, it’s always there. Sometimes, it comes to the forefront. Most of the time it’s kind of back there somewhere. But an experience like that, how can that not affect who you are? I didn’t know any of the students personally. But, I can’t imagine if I knew them. I think the thing with the memorial this past year. I think that’s what made it so significant, is that you felt you knew them. You got a sense of who they were.

[Interviewer]: It helped you get to know them a little bit.

[Barb O’Patry]: And no, as a mother and grandmother—I think, I didn’t even think of the families. All I could think of was, Oh my god, those poor kids, those poor kids. I didn’t call them kids because they were my peers.

[Interviewer]: You have a different perspective now.

[Barb O’Patry]: Now, as a parent, how do you—I can’t remember—Carlos Jones I know from Cleveland, he does a lot of gigs in Cleveland and I worked at PEP [Positive Education Program], which is a school for children diagnosed with autism. He would come there once or twice a year and would work with the kids with music. Kids—there’s something about music and with children with autism—well, with all of us. But, children with autism, if you can select the right music, it is just so soothing for them and it just brings out a whole other side. I don’t know if was Carlos Jones—see now, this is why we need to record today. I got sidetracked. Carlos? And I have no idea what was I talking about. Oh, dear god. Oh—I don’t think it was Carlos—doesn’t matter who it was, well, it does and doesn’t. Having to tell the parents that their child died, I just—I cannot even imagine.

[Interviewer]: Don’t even want to go there, trying to imagine.

[Barb O’Patry]: No. It was just—I had thought about what the parents feel like for years, but that was like, Oh, my god. One of them mentioned, one of the parents died, I thought, pretty young. I thought, I wonder if they died of a broken heart. You know, so, now that I’m older, it seemed to be shifting more to family. Their siblings and stuff.

[Interviewer]: Your perspective at this point in your life is broader.

[Barb O’Patry]: Yeah, it’s much more—

[Interviewer]: Thank you again. Thanks so much, Barb.

[Barb O’Patry]: Oh, you’re so welcome.

[Interviewer]: I appreciate it. I’ll stop the recording there.

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