Kent State Shootings: Oral Histories
Greg Long Oral History
Kent State Shootings: Oral Histories
Greg Long Oral History
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Greg Long, Oral History
Recorded: January 23, 2020Interviewed by Kelly Riley and Kathleen Siebert Medicus [Interviewer 2]Transcribed by the Kent State University Research & Evaluation Bureau
[Interviewer]: This is Kelly Riley, speaking on January 23, 2020, at Kent State University as part of the May 4 Kent State Shootings Oral History Project. Could you please state your name for the recording?
[Greg Long]: I am Greg Long.
[Interviewer]: Thank you. I would like to begin with some brief information about your background so we can get to know you a little better. Could you tell us where you were born and where you grew up?
[Greg Long]: Well, I was born in Akron, Ohio, but my whole life I’ve lived in Wooster, Ohio. That’s where my father’s family was from. My grandparents lived in Stow, but I spent my whole life, other than the Army, when I was in the Army, in Wooster. Wooster’s a small town in Wayne County of about 25,000; the county seat of Wayne County.
[Interviewer]: When you mentioned that you had served in the military, where were you stationed?
[Greg Long]: Well, when I was at Kent, I was in ROTC from ’67 to ’71. Graduating in December of ’71. Went on active duty in the Army in January of ’72 and went through the Army officer basic course at Fort Knox. Was on active duty for a while and then, because Vietnam was winding down, they didn’t need us or want us, so they released all of us. I came back to Wooster and joined the Army Reserves in Wooster and stayed in the Army Reserves until I retired in ’94. I was in for twenty-three years, retiring right after Desert Shield/Desert Storm.
[Interviewer]: So, when did you first come to Kent State University?
[Greg Long]: Well, my grandparents lived in Stow, so I was around Kent my whole life. I knew, when I was ten years old, I was going to go to Kent, and it was going to be in a CPA. I knew that when I was a child, okay? We used to drive by up here and I knew way long before I ever did it. And everything came out exactly the way I said. So, living in Stow made me very familiar with Kent. And I like Kent, and I knew I was going to go here.
[Interviewer]: Didn’t consider anywhere else?
[Greg Long]: No. Didn’t even apply anywhere else.
[Interviewer]: You mentioned that your major while you were a student was accounting?
[Greg Long]: I was accounting major, yes. A dual [major], accounting and management. But yeah, I knew I was going to be a CPA, I knew I was going to be an accountant, and that all happened.
[Interviewer]: [00:02:40] While you were here as a student, how did you view the protests and the Vietnam War?
[Greg Long]: Well, coming in the fall of ’67, you didn’t have near the protests and stuff. It kind of built up over time, you know. When ’67, there were obviously some protests, but each year got a little more and a little more. In Kent, because it had all the student organizations: the SDS, the Weathermen, the Black Panthers, we had them all, okay, here. And we had a lot of the leaders of those groups. Not only of right here, but, and we were visited a lot. It seemed like Kent was a melting pot for them. It seemed like we had one of everything. And so Kent wasn’t just an outpost, it seemed to be more of a headquarters, if you would, because they were all over the place.
And we pretty much ignored them. I mean, I was disliked not only because I was in ROTC and we represented the military establishment. But I was also—I lived in a fraternity house for four years. And we represented corporate America. We were the straight guys that were going to move on and we were going to be the leaders of the country and so they really didn’t like the fraternity guys either. So, I was kind of disliked by both groups. But the only visible one was really ROTC because we wore uniforms two days a week, because we had corps hour here so, every Tuesday and Thursday we wore uniforms to campus to drill down on The Commons. We were pretty easily identified, and there was not any real direct assaults until about ’69 is when they got pretty aggressive, and they started throwing stuff at us and eggs and tomatoes and all kinds of stuff. Calling us baby-killers and all the normal stuff you’d see in a protest.
And we were, of course, under very strict orders not to do any, not even talk to them, acknowledge them, nothing. And we never did. Far best of my knowledge, nobody ever had a confrontation with them. It would have been very easy to do. But you just have to block it out and keep going, never stop. Don’t try to engage in a conversation. You don’t argue with somebody who already has their mind made up. I learned that in my fifty years in business. If you already made your mind up, what am I wasting my time for? Well, that was one of those, okay? They weren’t going to change me and I wasn’t going to change them. So the guys did a really, really good job of never having an incident, if you would, to the best of my knowledge. There might have been one, but I just don’t remember it.
But it ratchetted up to the point where, by ’69, they were starting to get aggressive. [Nineteen] Seventy, of course, became the year that things just seemed to start building and there was a lot of tension and I just ignore that stuff. I really couldn’t have cared less. I had my mind made up what I was going to do, and they weren’t going to change me, and I sure wasn’t going to get into some kind of big fight with them. And so, I was able to really ignore them, even when they did stuff that I should have, normally would have done something—I just didn’t. They weren’t worth it. Didn’t think much of them, so—I don’t know if that answers your question.
[Interviewer]: Yeah, and anything that stands out to you or is memorable, sort of a moment that happened during all of that that really stands out or something that you recall that was—
[Greg Long]: Well, I lived in a fraternity house on West Main, which is across the railroad tracks. There were three or four fraternities and sororities out there. So, I took the West Main plaza [bus] into classes most days. Kent had its own bus service, see, and the West Main plaza went clear out to the Macy’s out in Stow-Kent [Shopping Center]. So, I’d ride that in every day from the fraternity house. Well, I got on a bus one day and there sits Jerry Rubin. I don’t know if you pull up Jerry Rubin, he was one of the big-time protesters. And, of course, he was there to greet anybody like me, and that was a corps hour day, so I had my uniform on. Must have been ’69, maybe early ’70, but definitely ’69 probably. And he started—that was a very memorable thing because he was a national figure. And we had national figures coming into Kent to raise a lot of havoc. And, people throwing stuff at me, and calling me names, those were memorable. But Jerry Rubin was probably the most memorable.
[Interviewer]: [00:07:30] Was there a conversation between the two of you that took place?
[Greg Long]: I don’t know if I’d call it a conversation. I’d call it a one-way insulting me. I didn’t respond. I just didn’t. And I’m pretty disciplined, and there was nothing to be gained by talking to him, especially when he’s yelling obscenities and calling you all kinds of bad names. So, I just ignore it, just block it out, yeah. I don’t think I, other than my girlfriend, we never really had much of a—and, of course, the fraternity: we’d talk about it, fraternity stuff, we’d talk about the stuff with people that you like, but you really didn’t take on and have long conversations with people that were there just to give you a hard time. It’s just nothing to be gained by it. If that makes any sense.
[Interviewer]: Yes, it does, yes. [00:08:25] All right, so, how would you describe the prevailing attitudes or mood among students in the spring of 1970?
[Greg Long]: Well, I mean I think that there were students, obviously, of all different opinions on both sides: a pro, against, or just keep me out of it, I can’t do anything about it, so just leave me alone. And I don’t think that ever changes. I think if you polled a group now, you’d have the demographic—now, I think the protestors were getting more bold as time went on. They were bigger groups, they were doing more things. They had an event—I told you, they didn’t like the Greeks very much, and so they organized what they called, on The Commons, they called it, “Kick Greek in the Ass Day.” And they were going to go find guys and go try to give them a hard time.
Well, the football players were all Sigma Nus, and they lived over in a house, and Jack Lambert was one of them that was a Sigma Nu. And so, the Sigma Nus got together and decided they were going to go have fun with these guys. This group that was going to organize this “Kick Greek in the Ass Day” started leaving The Commons in this little parade up the sidewalk and there comes all the inter-fraternity council guys, down the sidewalk, headed by all these big-ass football players. And you could just watch these guys do a big U-turn and just go back, because they—we’re not taking these. I mean these guys were 250, 300-pounders. Us little guys were at the back. There wasn’t a single blow thrown because they knew that was a no-win for them. So that protest ended pretty fast. But it was funny. I’ve never backed down from anything in my life. And surely not somebody giving me a hard time for something I believed in. And I wasn’t breaking any laws, I wasn’t doing this because they didn’t like me, I couldn’t have cared less. But that was really funny. I mean it was just—but there were all kinds of crazy things.
The Commons seemed to be the one magnet, that’s where a lot of the rallies started because you had the [Victory] Bell there and you had, you know, it just became the focal point because there’s a lot of room out there. And, you could have a rally of ten people or you could have 500. And they wore, you know—but a lot of different kinds of protests during those years, I mean, they’d protest this, they’d protest that. The theme changed based on the group that was organizing it. If it was the Black Panthers, then it was based on Black issues. A lot of it was the war, of course. And then it crossed over. But each group had its own laundry list of issues and that’s what they were protesting. So, I would just avoid it. I would walk around it. Being in business [major], I was down on the city, lower part. You know, a lot of my classes were down there. I didn’t have to cross The Commons much, I didn’t go to Taylor [Hall]. See, the whole university was on that side. There were mostly dorms on the other side of The Commons, except for Taylor Hall, and the Music Department was over there. But I didn’t have any classes on the other side, so I never went on the other side very much. Mine was all on the Main Street side of campus. And so I didn’t go there and I just avoided them. Nothing to be gained by getting in their face.
[Interviewer]: [00:12:22] So you had mentioned that you grew up close to here in Kent, you visited Kent quite a bit. So, your family was aware of, I’m sure, of the protests that were going on here. Did they ever express any feelings to you about what was going on?
[Greg Long]: Well, my grandfather was World War I, my dad was in World War II and Korea, and I was going to end up, then, being the family representative in the Vietnam War. So, you know, I had a rather conservative family, if you would. They would ask questions, but they never really cared. They wanted to know if it, how it affected me, and I’d tell them it didn’t have any impact on me, I just ignore the stuff. And I’m pretty good at blocking stuff out. And one thing I learned very young is pick your battles. And you can’t fight everybody all the time. And so, these guys weren’t worth the effort, so I just ignored them. And it’s pretty hard to ignore them, but the guys that didn’t then, they got all worked up all the time, and it just wasn’t worth the effort.
I was trying to just stay in school and do the best I could and get out of here. And, because you know they set you down—we had a big class because people were coming to go to college just to keep from going to Vietnam. Now me, that wasn’t my purpose. My purpose was to get a degree and pass the CPA exam. I wanted to go finance corps in the Army because, a CPA, accounting. The Army said, “No, we don’t need finance corps guys. What we need is infantry, armor, artillery, take your choice.” So I took armor. But I wanted to be a finance corps officer and I would have liked to have stayed in, but because of the situation and the big downsizing of the Army in the early Seventies, they weren’t keeping anybody. Everybody went on, got trained, and got off. And that was the way, now if you wanted to stay in the National Guard or Reserves, no problem. But to stay on active duty as an officer back then was just almost impossible. It was very, very few numbers. But I’m glad that it didn’t work out that way because it would have delayed me doing what I ended up doing, and that was going and passing the exam and working in a CPA firm and starting my own in ’83 and I’m still there. You know, I’ve only ever worked for two people. And one of them was myself. And I like that. I don’t take orders very well. I did in the military, but I don’t in the accounting business. Accountants aren’t—they aren’t great leaders, they’re managers. They’re managers, by design, by their very DNA. So I’m a little bit of an enigma, in that I was not a manager. I’m only a manager in the sense that I lead people that manage. Because I don’t like managing, too much routine to it. I prefer to be the head guy and set the pattern and do whatever.
But my grandparents living in Stow made it very nice for me because, like I said, I was here a lot as a kid, and it kind of, it’s a great place. I mean Kent’s very valuable. That’s why I came back and wanted to help. And I’ve been on the Accounting Advisory Council, that’s the first thing, but then I’ve been on the National Advisory Board at the School of Business when Deb Spake came. I was on her search committee. I had to beat my way onto that because normally they don’t put non-employees on these search committees for deans—almost all employees. And Yank Heisler (editor’s clarification: Robert “Yank” Heisler, Jr.) was the old dean of the School of Business, the College of Business Administration, and he owed me a favor, so on the way out I asked him if he would do that, and he had to get permission then from the President to put me on there. And I got on there, and it was a real experience. But then, two years ago now, I got on the Kent State Foundation Board, I’m now the treasurer of the foundation, so I like that. If you’re an accountant, if you’re a CPA, when you go on a board, you automatically get pigeonholed into being the chair of the finance committee or the treasurer, or both, okay, which I am at the foundation. I sit on three boards here, and I love that. And I’m meeting Colonel Simms after I’m done here, he’s the professor of military science at the ROTC. I think he wants to start a Kent State ROTC Alumni Association. And for us to put together that panel [editor’s clarification: the “Honoring Those Who Served in ROTC in 1970” panel discussion was held on November 7, 2019 at the Kent Student Center Kiva on the Kent Campus], it wasn’t easy because they had no records on where anybody’s at. Very few records. So I had to literally shake the proverbial tree. The way you find them is on Facebook. That’s the easiest way to find anybody. Yeah, I’m serious. If wouldn’t have been for Facebook I never would have been able to find those guys that were on the panel with me. There was no other way to find them. There’s just very few—Alumni Office has records that are, to say the least, not very good. But anyway.
[Interviewer]: [00:17:46] So before, with our elevator ride up, you had mentioned your girlfriend at the time, and who’s—
[Greg Long]: Well, yeah. Kathy and I, she’s from Wooster, too. And we met—I had known her all my life, she was here as a student, she was two years behind me. And we’re still married.
[Interviewer]: You had mentioned that, maybe I read that wrong, you had differences of opinions during the time? Can you speak a little about that?
[Greg Long]: Well, she was one of those that didn’t like the war. Now, she wasn’t radical, she was very mild-mannered about it, but she was against the war. It never became much of an issue between us. We never—she knew what I was, and I knew what she was. And she would support some of the causes, but she never went out and really did a whole lot of protesting, I mean. But she was against the war. A lot of people were against the war. And you know what, wars, the people most against it are the people that have to fight and die. They aren’t for them. I can assure you of that. But we get blamed for them. Whether we like it or not, it’s just part of the job.
But yeah, we’re still together. She would tell you—she could recite all the Ho Chi Minh calls, and all that stuff. They had a whole repertoire of these things they yell, “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh,” and all that stuff. Country Joe and the Fish and Bring Them Home In A Box, and she had those songs down from Woodstock. If you go and listen to some of Country Joe from Woodstock, there was a lot of anti-war music out. And it was good music. But if you listen to it there’s, I’d say, a good percentage of the music back then was anti-war in the early Seventies, late Sixties.
[Interviewer]: Did you share with her any of the experiences that you had with, you had mentioned the tomatoes being thrown and that kind of thing?
[Greg Long]: Well, she was around, she would be with me. We’d be walking between classes. She’d see it, yeah.
[Interviewer]: How did she feel about that?
[Greg Long]: Oh, she wouldn’t like that. She’s not a violent person at all. Insulting other people is not something, I would say, a vast majority of the protestors weren’t—didn’t want to be that. They were there to protest the government and what was going on, not guys like me that were running around campus. So no, she didn’t like any of that. But it was just part of what was going on around here.
[Interviewer]: [00:20:28] Prior to the shootings, what was your sense of how local Kent community members perceived the Kent State students?
[Greg Long]: How, which group, now?
[Interviewer]: The local Kent community members.
[Greg Long]: How they perceived the shootings?
[Interviewer]: Perceived the Kent State students. Was there a, did you perceive a sense of how they felt about the students?
[Greg Long]: Well I don’t know if anybody liked the shootings. You were talking about after they happened?
[Interviewer]: No, this is prior to the shootings.
[Greg Long]: Their thoughts about whether anybody would be hurt? I mean—
[Interviewer 2]: More about town-gown relations.
[Greg Long]: You know, I think the town depended so much on the students that, and it really was very little. If you take Ray down at Ray’s Place, Ray depended on the students for his income. I don’t think any of the students ever took this stuff out on Ray. I don’t think Ray had a problem. I mean, I never noticed any prejudice, I never noticed any problem, I never had a problem, as long as you weren’t causing a problem at their store or something, I don’t think, I’d say it was fine. I mean I don’t think it was bad. I didn’t pay much attention to it, but I never experienced anything where I thought that the people in Kent didn’t like me because of the stuff going on on campus. I’m sure that a lot of them, they’re so dependent on the school and people at the school that they would have watched their voice a lot. I don’t think, as long as you weren’t giving them a hard time or causing them problems, that they had—they might not have liked it. They would have preferred that a lot of it—probably, because they’re businesspeople, don’t like that kind of stuff. But I think they just—as long as it doesn’t hurt me—I’m fine with it. I didn’t sense any problem from the town people, at all. And I had a lot of interactions with them. But businesspeople by design don’t like that kind of stuff. They’re rather conservative. And, not to say that there couldn’t have been people that would have protested because they didn’t want to see the war, but I just don’t think there was any great amount of animosity I ever saw. And I was treasurer of the fraternity, so I was buying things from all the local vendors and they treated us just fine.
And our house mother’s son was the chief of police, so, yeah! Hazel Sessions was our house mother, and her son was the chief of police, man, and let me tell you, that is not a bad thing. That was a good thing. Hazel was great. I loved Hazel. I lived in that fraternity a long time, and Hazel was there right up to the bitter end, and she was an eighty-year-old spinster, nice lady. But her son was invaluable. You’d literally have to assault a police officer to get arrested, I mean. You could, you know, she took good care of us. A lot of times they would release the person in her custody at the fraternity house. They’d drive them up, hand them over to Hazel, and Hazel would take care of them. It was good.
[Interviewer]: That’s very handy.
[Greg Long]: You can see this picture, can’t you?
[Interviewer]: Yes, absolutely.
[Greg Long]: Hazel was special, man. She was your get-out-of-jail-free card.
[Interviewer 2]: That’s a good person to have on your side.
[Greg Long]: Yes. I loved Hazel.
[Interviewer]: [00:24:06] So thinking back to the period between April 30th to May 4, 1970, can you talk a little bit about your experiences during that time?
[Greg Long]: Well my twenty-first birthday was May 2nd, ‘70, so, and we were having this big retreat at the fraternity that weekend, and so we had all these Phi Kappa Theta national people in to do this, what they call a quo vadis, whatever the heck, must be Greek or Latin or something. But anyway, so we had all these events going on and since I was an officer of the fraternity I had to be at the fraternity. And so, we were there doing that stuff and then my twenty-first birthday on May 2. So, you can imagine, and I don’t know what your twenty-first birthday was like, but it’s kind of foggy, okay? But it was fun, I mean, and we’d drive around, and I remember just seeing all the armored personnel carriers at the different entrances to the campus. And the military guys were there. And remember, I got along well with them. I grew up in the military. I know what it’s like, I mean I’m going to be one of them. So I never had a problem with them. I could just walk up and talk to them. Even the guys that weren’t from Wooster, I had no issue with them, they weren’t going to—they weren’t there to give me a hard time as a student or anything, they were there to protect life and limb and property for the state of Ohio. And so, as long as you didn’t do something really stupid, they didn’t even—it didn’t matter. And I’d stop and talk to them, “How’s it going? Where are the Wooster guys?” You know? And I’d go try to find them, and you know. And so, I had that.
And then, I was around down by the ROTC buildings, over at the Student Union, you know, that was The Hub. That’s where everything, of course, the ROTC buildings are all right here. And I went around, and then when they started to burn the building down and, of course, the fire department came, tried to put the building out and the students cut the fire hoses because the police wouldn’t protect them. That was the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
And then, the building burned down and then I got a call to come the next morning to, which would have been May 4th, to go through the building, because we had all of our guns and everything in there. And we had to account for all the weapons because you wanted to be sure nobody stole them and then burnt the building down to cover up the crime. So, the FBI and the Army—and so I got called back and I was in fatigues that day and we were down there going through the burned-out building, pulling all these barreled receiver groups, they’re the metal parts of a gun. The wood would all have been burnt. So you got the barreled receiver groups, and we were lining them up and then, one by one, we were accounting for all the serial numbers. Plus, we had a lot of exhibition weapons, things we use to drill with and stuff. And so, we had to account for all the weapons. That’s what I was doing on May 4th, that’s where I was. We were right, all right here [referring to physical map].
And of course, National Guard was down here lined up. And then, up over the hill and bang, bang, bang, and, you know. Then back. And then that’s where they stayed. They were all right here in front of us. I learned a long time ago, never look into a barrel, always look down it. Because when you’re looking into a barrel, nothing good can ever come from that. I was behind them and working and that’s what I spent the whole day doing, was picking all these things up, and, you know, it was what it was. And the FBI was there, and the Army, and us, and that’s what we were doing.
[Interviewer]: [00:27:58] What were the days and the weeks like following May 4th, for you?
[Greg Long]: Well, not many people were there very long, as you know, they shut the place down. And then made everybody leave. Now, when they actually closed the university down, Kathy was here with me, because she was in the Student Union. We walked down and, actually, the buses quit functioning, so we had to walk clear back down Main Street, back to the fraternity house. And everybody was quarantined then. Everybody had to go back to their dorms, nobody was allowed out. And then, you got orders on what you were allowed to do. You know they virtually sealed Kent off and if you were outside, it was hard for you to get back in. And if you were in, you couldn’t—it was hard to get out. For at least twenty-four, I think, hours or something, I don’t know. I lost track.
We went back to the fraternity house. And luckily, we were planning on this big party, so we had bought like six kegs of beer. So, we didn’t care, they could quarantine us forever. We could just sit there on the front porch and just have a heyday. We had a field day. It was not an issue. Just let us know when we can leave. And the National Guard was patrolling all the roads through town and it got dark and they had flood lights on the jeeps. If you were off your premise, you had to be on your property, they would stop you, question you, and tell you to give you one warning to get back to wherever you’re supposed to be. And, if they caught you the second time, then they would detain you and take you back to the police station, or wherever the headquarters was for the National Guard.
But we’d sit there and watch the jeeps go by. Then the helicopters with the things, they were looking for people. There wasn’t much moving after dark, I mean, they pretty much sealed everything off and the kids all went back. And then they were given orders to leave campus. And then they were sent letters saying when they could come back to campus and get their stuff. Classes were cancelled. They would get a notice on what to do, what their options were. I remember, it didn’t affect me at the fraternity house because we were off campus, but Kathy was living down here in small group housing, Van Campen was her—so, we had to come back. They told her this window she had to come back, and they let them come back in small groups, you know, certain number for each building, for days. I’m sure you’ve seen all those letters and they came back and got their stuff. And then the letter came on how to finish your classes if you wanted, or you could drop, pass-fail, you could drop the class. They had all kinds of things. And then they took their stuff.
And then they opened up, I believe, the second, we were in quarters then. The first summer session didn’t go, but the second one did. And then we, everybody just came back in the fall. And when you came back in the fall, it was like another place. It was like a completely different school. There was no protests, nothing. All these people that had caused all these problems were gone. I think everybody here was so sensitive and these people knew, at that point, if they came back, they would probably going to get arrested. I don’t know. It just seemed like we went from hell to heaven. It was just perfect. There were no problems, no issues that I saw. I mean it was just a different world. Now, ROTC vanished at that point. My senior year, it vanished. We moved down into the library, the old library. We didn’t wear any uniform, so it’s like, almost like it didn’t even exist. It just like vanished. We did meet down at the old, the football field, not this one, the one: Dix Field. We, that’s where we started meeting, down at Dix. But then, the other side found out that’s where we were meeting and came after us down there, but it’s a long ways. They started out with a hundred guys up here, there were ten left by the time they got down to Dix Stadium, so it was great. I don’t think they had cars, I don’t know. So anyways, so, there were no more visible protests that I remember seeing and/or things against ROTC. I’m sure there must have been, but again, I was in that final stretch and I wasn’t paying—it just seemed like a completely different school to me in the fall of ’71. Of the fall, let’s see, would have been, fall of ’70, which led to ’71, yeah. Just seemed like a different place. It was almost, though, like we just didn’t exist anymore, like ROTC vanished. They put us on the top floor of the library and that thing’s like a fortress. If I’ve got to go to war, I want to be in a fortress like that library. I mean, that’s better than the Alamo, man, let me tell you. There ain’t nobody getting in that place. You can’t burn it down, you could probably bomb it, but it would be real difficult. And where we were, they couldn’t throw them that far. It was great.
[Interviewer]: [00:33:13] Can you talk a little bit about any sort of feelings or effects you had when you heard about the shootings themselves, and what happened?
[Greg Long]: I was right there standing and, believe me, I know what an M1 sounds like when it goes off. I said, “Holy shit.” I said, “The shit’s going to hit the fan now.” And it just should never have happened, ever. That’s what nobody asks there. Nobody asks about the shootings, what I thought, should they—
[Interviewer]: What do you think, yeah?
[Greg Long]: —that should never have happened. First of all, these were armored cavalry, infantry guys, doing police work. I was a military policeman; we were trained in riot control. We knew what to do. I used to give briefings. Before every time an M-P goes on duty, he’s given a use-of-deadly-force briefing, and you’re told 8,000 times when you can use deadly force. It’s only when your life is threatened. It’s only when you believe there is no other recourse. Well, I don’t believe that was the case here. I knew that this was going to create a huge problem and should not have happened. M1s are not—you don’t use M1 rifles for riot control. They’re a weapon for war! These things will shoot a mile. A thirty-caliber round will go forever. I mean I could be shooting at those things over on the horizon. They’re not made for this, you know.
Now the highway patrol was much better equipped. The police were much better equipped. But the National Guard went in with what they had. And what they had was, you know, forty-fives and M1s. You put people in bad positions and bad stuff happens. And my colleagues—I don’t know that I ever—oh, you’d meet a few crazies that would say, “Well, we should have killed them all.” Well, that’s baloney. There shouldn’t have been anybody killed. They should not have shot them. I would never have ordered—but I think what happened, and I’ve read all the stuff, I don’t think there was ever an order given to shoot. I still don’t think there was. I think, if you’d ever be with guys that are running around with loaded guns, they all have a different makeup and a temperance on stuff. And some guys can panic quicker than others. Some guys are steady as a rock, and other ones are just the nervous sort. And the nervous ones kind of panic quicker than others. And I’ll just bet you somebody in that line fired, and once one guy fires, it’s just like a machine gun, the group just as a group just: pup, pup, pup, pup, pup, and I think, I still contend that’s what happened. I don’t think the guy said, “Ready, aim, fire.” I don’t think any of that happened. I think somebody got hit with a big piece of brick or something, and he’s staggering around, and he says, “Holy mother!” Psh! And that started it. And I’m sure there’s a million testimonies, I’ve read all the stuff, nobody knows for sure. Who started the Chicago fire, okay? They think they know, but unless you’ve got a picture or a movie, you know? And they had a lot of things, they did the audio tests, and I’ve read all—I still don’t think they know who fired the first round. They know probably who fired, but I still say it was just a reaction. I’ve seen fire fights where one guy fires and then other ones do it just because, “Oh shit, he’s in trouble, I’m in trouble.”
I don’t know, but it shouldn’t have happened. That’s my position. Guys in the military most generally agree with that. There’s always a few that really didn’t like the protestors and knew—I don’t, I never was a big fan. I knew some of these guys. I knew Jeffrey Schroeder [editor’s clarification: William Schroeder], he was in ROTC with me. I didn’t know him well, but I knew him. I mean, Allison Krause, these aren’t hardened criminals, I mean. These aren’t—Jeffrey Miller was a little more hardened than some of them, but he committed a misdemeanor, a crime, and he got a sentence for a felony. The death sentence is for felonies, capital crimes. He didn’t commit a capital crime. He committed some misdemeanors I’m sure, trespassing, causing to riot, there’s some statutes in there that, causing riots and stuff like that. And so, he might have committed minor crimes, but they didn’t warrant—they didn’t rise to the level of a death penalty. That’s just my opinion, and I formed that opinion back in 1971.
I didn’t like him, I didn’t like him, I didn’t like any of the protestors. But it didn’t warrant—they shouldn’t have been—I mean, nobody did anything to warrant being killed, in my opinion. And I don’t think anybody else—not very many people would have said that they thought it did. I didn’t like all the stuff they were doing at Kent, I didn’t like the way they treated me, but you know what, that’s not a capital crime. And, if I had been in charge of that squad, I never would have given the order to fire. It didn’t rise to that level. Nobody’s life was in that grave of danger. [There] was too much distance between them. I spent twenty-three years in the Army, most of it in military police. After I got through the armor squad, I became a military police officer, and commanded a CID unit, criminal investigation, and we carried guns all the time. And you just always know what the use of deadly force is. You got another question there?
[Interviewer]: [00:39:32] Can you speak of memories from Sunday?
[Greg Long]: Sunday?
[Interviewer 2]: Sunday, May 3rd. May have been foggy since it was the day after—
[Greg Long]: Well, it was the day after my twenty-first birthday. I was just trying to survive. That day, I didn’t spend much on campus because there was—you had the National Guard guys everywhere. Why go looking for trouble, okay? That’s what that represented to me. Even though I was part of the good guys, my own definition, but I was part of them, they were part of me, we worked for the same uncle. There was no good reason for me to be farting around on campus. When destiny’s sitting there waiting on you. Guys that would have went on either had some kind of business or were just looking for trouble. And I didn’t need to find trouble. I had enough. First, I was operating at less than full capacity, let’s just say that. If you’ve ever had a hangover, I probably had one, the best I can remember. I killed a lot of brain cells the night before. And I was trying to recoup. I know the brain does regenerate some brain cells, I was hoping that would happen. So, yes, it was, I’m sure that I was late to get up, early to go to bed, and didn’t have a whole lot of meaningful things done that day, if that makes sense.
[Interviewer]: Absolutely.
[Greg Long]: Trying to find some chicken soup probably, someplace.
[Interviewer]: [00:41:04] Earlier in the conversation you had talked about the police wouldn’t protect the firefighters?
[Greg Long]: Well, if you read what happened was the fire, they lit the building on fire and the fire department came in with a fire truck, and the firemen were starting to put it out and the protesters went over and kept cutting the water hoses. They had the hoses hooked up to the hydrants. And there weren’t any police around protecting them, and finally just said, “We’re leaving. We can’t do anything.” And then the building just finished burning to the ground.
[Interviewer]: So they, there wasn’t a presence, police presence near where the firefighters were?
[Greg Long]: No. And there wasn’t enough to protect those firemen, so they said, “Why am I doing this? I’m getting out of here.” And I, to this day, I still haven’t read an explanation on why the police didn’t go in there and protect them. And the bad guys figured out real fast that they could cut this—they wanted that building to go down, and the way to do it is to cut that fire hose because, if the firemen could have, they could have put that fire out. It was not engulfed when they got there. That building did not need to burn down.
[Interviewer 2]: Where you there, that night?
[Greg Long]: No, I was not. I was not standing there. But I do remember hearing about it the next day, seeing all the documents, and I believe that to be true. I was not physically that night at there but that’s the only explanation, I mean, and that’s what the books all say, I believe, if you go read them, the testimony from the firemen. And I still don’t know why they didn’t protect them. It makes no sense. I had a lot of stuff in that building that burned, because we all had lockers. I had all kinds of gym stuff and stuff we used in ROTC for PT and all the other stuff, and, you know. We all lost stuff, there was a lot of money went up in smoke in that building.
[Interviewer]: [00:43:04] I believe you mentioned that you knew Bill Schroeder?
[Greg Long]: I knew him just because everybody knew everybody in ROTC. He was, I think, two years behind me. I think he was a freshman that year, or sophomore, I can’t remember. I knew of him, but I didn’t know everybody. I just knew of him. You talk about a kid that looked pretty straitlaced, looked pretty—this kid looked, I mean, he looked like the poster boy for Ralph Lauren. I mean this guy was something. I mean he looked really good. And he was a good kid and, unfortunately, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. You know life is like that. And you’ve seen the movie Final Destination 1, 2, 3, and 4? The movies where fate, where somebody missed a plane, right, and then the plane crashed, but because they were supposed to die that day that fate finally caught up and settled this. If you want to see an interesting set of movies, see that. But there was a case where I knew a lot of people were walking between classes down the hill from Taylor Hall on the other side, they were down range. Any one of those could have gotten hit. I mean, there were tons of people walking around Taylor Hall that weren’t in the protest. Because protests tend, a lot of time—that was near lunch, I believe, and there were just people between classes, you had all these people just going all over the place. And now, there weren’t many inside the pocket, if you would, but remember, these guns will go a long ways, so you could have been on the side of one of these buildings, up and around in here [referring to physical map], and not been a target of anybody, but been a casualty. It would have been easy. My wife said that before she had met up with me over here, she had been—she could have very easily been down there. I mean they could have shot somebody a mile away with one of those things. Those bullets go a long ways. Thirty caliber, pull them up, see what the max—pull an M1 up and see what the maximum range on that thing is. But this is fate, they were at the wrong place at the wrong time.
[Interviewer]: See, and you knowing that is one thing, but the students maybe who would have been along the periphery had no idea that they could have been—
[Greg Long]: No, you didn’t. You could have been walking between classes, knew there was going to be a rally on The Commons, but that was an everyday occurrence. Nobody would have thought. Yeah, you put these protests for years and never have a problem, why would you think that day would have been any different, right? I mean you’re not, “Oh, I can’t go there, there’s going to be some gunfire today. I better avoid that.” Nobody thought that, I mean. They thought, in fact, it attracts people to stand on the ridge above The Commons and just watch. That was not uncommon. But when the National Guard moved out and went up that hill, the crowds kind of scattered because nobody wants to be in—they were shooting tear gas off, and most of them didn’t have a protective mask, they had a wet handkerchief they put over. But I want to tell you, that gas will get to you. I’ve run gas chambers, I want to tell you, my eyes water for hours afterwards and you can’t breathe right, and it gets to your eyes. So most—a lot of people just scattered, and they didn’t want to be anywhere near. Once the tear gas started, a lot of them got out of the way. But they just kept walking and walking and pushing back and then that’s when a lot of them you saw were throwing things back at them. And then that’s when they got down on one knee and the rest is history.
Minute I’d see somebody with an M1 rifle get on one knee and get the gun up like this, I would be laying flat on the ground. Because the odds of getting hit become very low when you’re laying flat. They’re very high when you’re standing up. But these people would have no knowledge of any of that stuff. They wouldn’t know how to do that. They’re not familiar with that. They’ve never been a target before.
[Interviewer]: [00:47:44] Thinking back on this experience, how do you feel it impacted you throughout your life? Did it? Did it not? Did it make you think of any decisions—
[Greg Long]: Well, it impacted me in that I was there, and everybody I meet wants to talk about it. But did it have any negative? No, I don’t think so. But I do a lot of veteran stuff at schools on Veterans Days and give speeches at Memorial Day at cemeteries and stuff. And what happens is, the minute they find out that you’re from Kent, they want to know what you think. So, again, you end up retelling this story in a very brief format. A very abbreviated version. You do it, you tell it a million times. People want to know what you think of. They read about it. When I go to high schools, that’s all—a friend of mine that was in 10th Mountain in Somalia and Black Hawk Down, you’ve seen the movie? You’ve not seen Black Hawk Down? You’re familiar that back in ’92 we had troops in Somalia, and we had a bunch of Black Hawks, we went in to capture Aidid and the mission went sour and about ten people from 10th Mountain Division, Ranger Division, were killed in Somalia. Well, one of my very close colleagues was in 10th Mountain and was portrayed in the movie and had people in his squad die. A lot of those guys ended up today with PTSD. But, when we go to high schools to talk, he and I go sometimes, the first thing they want to talk about when they find out about me is Kent State, the other one, they want to find out about Black Hawk Down, what really happened, because they can relate to it. They’ve seen movies on it, they, you know what, it’s a piece of history. The rest of it, they couldn’t care less about, you know. They aren’t there to recruit, the recruiters aren’t going to recruit them. But they want, somebody was there at an event that’s in my history book, I want to know what it was like. Tell me what really went on. So I get pigeonholed into that role all the time. They don’t care about all the other stuff, they want to know about Kent State May 4th. And I understand that, I do. If I knew somebody that was on the Grassy Knoll in Dallas in November 22 of ’63, I’d want to know whether—how many gunmen were up on the Grassy Knoll, because I believe there were gunmen on the Grassy Knoll, I do. Kennedy got shot from the front. I truly believe, and I believe it was FBI or CIA. I know that’s on a whole other subject, but, you stand up on that Grassy Knoll behind that fence, and you can say to yourself, no doubt in my mind.
But you get pigeonholed, and we all do it. If you meet somebody that somehow—you go to hear a speaker and it’s a subject you like, you want to hear them speak about it. Other than that, it really has not had a major impact. I was what I was long before May 4th. Life events do change you, I don’t believe May 4th changed me one iota. I just felt it was unnecessary. I think maybe what it did do because I ended up becoming—spending a lot of years, decades in military police, I was a provost marshal, I commanded a fiscal security MP company, I commanded a criminal investigation detachment for nine years. I always had guys that were performing military police functions. We gave the use of deadly force speech every day to everybody, and we never, in my entire military career, did we ever have a problem with that. And I believe that was the root cause of why we had this problem. We put the wrong people doing the wrong job and it proved to be fatal, and that’s my opinion. If we’d have had trained military police doing that job, we wouldn’t have had the same result.
[Interviewer]: [00:52:07] So it impacted your, how you—
[Greg Long]: Well, it hardened me that people need to be managed and controlled properly.
[Interviewer]: Right. It reinforced that for you. So it did have an impact for you.
[Greg Long]: Yeah, I guess that part it did do. It solidified for me that if you don’t do your job bad stuff’s going to happen. Left to its own, people run in front of trains, they jump off of bridges, and they hurt other people. And so, you have to be sure that everybody under your control knows what the rules of engagement are. It’s all about the rules of engagement. Everybody should know what his limits are and how far they can go. Unfortunately, a lot of people question authority, and when you identify somebody that questions your authority, you need to move them out, okay, and get rid of them because they become a loose cannon on the gun deck. And if you’ve ever watched a ship in the wind, with the cannons not tied down, the ship doesn’t stay afloat very long, and they’ll take you down with them. We had to identify people that we didn’t feel were—when you’re running around, when everybody’s running around with loaded guns, you got to be darn sure you don’t have any loose cannons. And I never did, luckily. Because I don’t want to be responsible for people doing crazy stuff. And I don’t want anybody losing their life on my watch. If that makes any sense.
[Interviewer]: Absolutely. [00:53:39] Is there anything that you would like to say, or questions that I maybe didn’t ask, or is there anything that you—?
[Greg Long]: Well, you know, you look back and we represented the establishment, the military, to people on campus, but the ROTC Department obviously had no role in any of that stuff. They’re just trainers of future people. But when you’re wearing a uniform that looks like people that you don’t like, you get pigeonholed with them. And I understand that. We were the representatives of the U.S. military on the campus. And so we were the guys that they hated or disliked. But I’m sure that bothered some people.
Well, what’s funny is then, of course, you knew the draft went away and the lottery came in. I remember my junior year—and the lottery, they’d pull everybody’s birth dates out, one through 365, maybe 366 if they used February 29th. But they’d pull them all out and that number then represented where you would be drafted. So if you had a number between one and fifty, you probably were still going to get drafted. The higher you went, the less probability, to the point where if you had a high number, I mean you were never going to go. We in the fraternity had this thing like a roulette and we had all the birth dates up there, and we all put five or ten dollars down and the winner, the last guy out of the pool would win all the money. I was the last guy. I had already signed my contract with ROTC, I was going the day after I graduated and I was the 365th guy drawn. I was the last guy. The first guy, it was almost amazing, the guy that was going to go was the guy that absolutely didn’t want to go. I mean, it’s just the luck of the draw. But I’m sitting there and there are—boy, some of these people, they were doing all kinds of crazy stuff: throwing televisions out the high-rise dorms, they were doing all kinds of crazy stuff here on campus. And you read, some of these guys that had low draft [lottery] numbers were really distraught for a long time.
But that’s what we went to, the lottery, and that’s how—and then, of course, the war ended. Because what happened was, when I was a freshman, they’d call you in for orientation, your freshmen orientation. And I forget where we were sitting, and then the guy said, looked around and he said, “Now, look at the guy to your left, look at the guy to your right, a year from now, only one of you is going to be here. Two-thirds of you will have flunked out or left. We will have notified your draft board and you will be in Vietnam.” They had, the minute you dropped out or flunked out, your draft board was notified, and you were drafted then, in ’67, ’68, ’69. And so, two-thirds of you guys are going to be gone. And I looked at those guys and I said, “Well, have fun over there.” I said, “Because I’ll be there, I’ll join you in four years, but you’ll be there next year.” And they didn’t think that was funny. See, I already knew I was going, so it didn’t matter to me one iota.
Well what’s funny, in the summer of ’70, between your junior and senior year, if you’re in ROTC, you go to your summer camp, your basic training basically. And so, I went over to Indiantown Gap in Pennsylvania, and we were there and they guy’s giving us this briefing and they say, you know, “You’ll all be graduating next year.” It was in ’70, we’d be graduating in ’71. “You’ll go to your basic course and then you’ll immediately be shipped and you’ll be in Vietnam.” Everybody was going. Well, between the summer of ’70 and the summer of ’71, they started the Vietnamization Program, which was the withdrawal of troops from Vietnam. So, we had over half a million troops there. They started, in the fall of ’70, then, with the downsizing to the point where, by the time I graduated in ’71, nobody was going. You couldn’t go. And they not only didn’t—you weren’t going to go to Vietnam, they didn’t want you at all, they would have preferred you just go away and, you know. But they already had an agreement with you that they had to do certain things for you, and then they could just turn you loose and instead of serving two years or four years active duty, you had like a six or eight year obligation. You could just do it in this magical control group in the sky. They had your name and if a war came up, they call you but, other than that, you didn’t have to do a damn thing. And that’s what happened to most of them. They went on, got trained, came back, and never put another uniform on, a lot of those guys.
I came back and immediately went in the Reserve unit a block from my house. My dad had been in it and my dad was a commander of it. I went in as a Second Lieutenant in that unit and then, three years later, I was a commander. And then I never left. See, in the Reserves, if you serve twenty good years, where you’re a full-time Reservist, you get a pension, then, based on what percentage of a whole soldier you are, based on 365 days. But I went in and when ’91 hit, I had my twenty-year letter, so I could retire and then get my retirement checks starting at age sixty. Well, I didn’t do that. What happened was, in ’91, Desert Shield/Desert Storm broke out before I could process my paperwork and it took me three more years because they had stop loss, which meant nobody could leave. And so I had to put three more years in, so I ended up with twenty-three years instead of twenty years. But that was fine.
And I was in the 83rd ARCOM [Army Reserve Command] headquarters in Columbus, and I was the Deputy Chief of Staff for Resource Management, that’s the assistant comptroller. Boring-est job I ever had. It was an accounting job. So the Army didn’t want me to be an accountant when I went in, but they wanted me to be the one when I got out. I was an accountant and I hated the job. So, I rode out Desert Shield as an accountant. God, it was boring. But anyway, then I retired in ’94 basically because my son was crossing over to Boy Scouts and if I would have stayed in, I couldn’t have been with him because I would have had to been in too much Army and too little family. So, I got out and retired and never regretted that because I was putting in two to three days a week down in Columbus during the war and it was fine, but I was tired of it. Everything wears you, too much of a good thing, over time. Each time you get promoted, it requires more time, and more time, and more time, and more time. And I was going to be to the point where I was practically going to be doing as much Army stuff as civilian stuff and I just wasn’t willing to pay that price. But I can’t complain, the Army treated me very well. I got no complaints. And Kent, I love Kent, that’s why I’m back paying Kent back for everything it did for me. It’s why I’m sitting on three boards here. Seriously.
[Interviewer]: [01:01:37] I’m curious about, you spoke earlier about during the time when you were in ROTC and they had told you, just keep your head down, ignore them, with the protestors maybe giving you a hard time or whatever. Did you and your other members of ROTC ever have conversations about how you felt about that, did anything happen or do you recall any of where anybody didn’t do that?
[Greg Long]: If somebody got—we would. When we were by ourselves, we would talk about it. I’d say, “What’d those assholes do to you today?” And you’d look down and you’d have eggs on part of your field jacket or you’d have eggs on—it never happened when you were in civilian clothes, you never had an issue. I mean, they didn’t know, generally, know you from Adam, but whenever you wore your fatigues, they would know, or your Class As, we wore Class As a lot. So now, I had to go and get this thing dry-cleaned. Damn, I got this egg on me. That’s what I didn’t like, it cost me money to get my damn uniform cleaned. But we’d talk about certain people. And guys doing that to you, you tend to not like it.
[Interviewer]: Were there any altercations? Did any of your fellow ROTC get into any?
[Greg Long]: Not that I ever knew. I think there probably were a few, “Just stay away from me,” or, “You get any closer,” but as far as I know, I never heard of an incident. Now there must have been some. We had a lot of hotheads. But as long as they didn’t get in my sphere, as long as they didn’t try to do me bodily harm, and I didn’t consider eggs and tomatoes bodily harm, it just made me mad. But I wasn’t going to do anything. Now, if one of them would have attacked me, I would have defended myself.
But, other than that, no, I wouldn’t have. I never heard of it. Our guys were pretty disciplined. We didn’t like it, but we had names for them, okay, but, you know, we didn’t run around. We had a level we didn’t drop below, you know. We weren’t going to lower ourselves to that level. They wanted that. The Kent Stater would follow them around waiting for a picture on the front of the Kent Stater with an ROTC guy beating up on some protestor. I mean, that would have been front page news. We weren’t going to play that game. Like I said, the only way I would have done that would have been if they physically attacked me, and they never did. A couple times, they tried to take your hat or take your jacket or something, but we were pretty attuned to that after a while. You get to where you watch your 360, you watch your surroundings and you don’t get surprised, let’s just say that. I was much more cognizant of my surroundings than today; I don’t pay much attention. They want to attack me, go ahead. But, you know, they never did. But I’m sure there was some of that, but you just never heard it, because Kent Stater really wanted some pictures of that on the front of the paper. That would have made front page news. ROTC guy beats up on hippie or something, who knows what they would have called it. We still use all those slang words that we had back in the Sixties, you know: weirdos and whatever we called them. There were a few that aren’t printable, but that’s as far as it went.
[Interviewer]: [01:05:25] Well, thank you for your time.
[Greg Long]: I hope that helped a little bit.
[Interviewer]: Oh, I think so. Yeah. Thank you very much.
[Greg Long]: If you need any clarification, you’ve got my information, just send me an email or call me. I’ll be glad to—and I’ll see if I can find anybody else for you, because I see people like that every day. The guys on that panel were all there, just like me, so they would have a little different perspective maybe. But see, nobody was there. I would have thought somebody would have been planted [with] questions at that thing and asked some of the—they didn’t ask any of this stuff. It really just—it was sterilized, pasteurized. I was expecting some really hard-hitting left-wing whacko questions, and nobody asked any. “So were you a baby-killer?” Or, “Did you ever,” you know. I mean something cool. I’m ready for this and nobody asked anything. They asked all this crap that didn’t amount to a hill of beans.
I’m a guy—I confront stuff. You ask me a question, I’m going to tell you the real answer. I might take the four-letter words out of it but I’m going to tell you, when we’re done talking you’ll know exactly how I feel. I’m not somebody that’s ever been able to disguise my feelings much. I’ve found out that it doesn’t work. I’m pretty straightforward. I’m black and white, there is no grey to me. You’re either my friend or you’re my enemy, there’s nothing in the middle. And the enemy of my enemy’s my friend. If somebody’s over in Afghanistan taking on ISIS, I love them. And, if we’re all helping, I don’t have to love you to like what you’re doing. There’s different levels, but I can’t have anybody that I half like or half trust. If I don’t, if I only half trust you then I don’t trust you. If I only half like you then I don’t like you. I got to figure you out and then you’re either one or the other. I don’t have the time and effort and patience to be wondering about you. If I trust you, I give you everything. If I don’t, I avoid you. And I’m too old to be hanging around people that give me heartburn. And I had a rule a long time ago, I pick my bosses. I pick my bosses, that way I don’t complain about them, and I love working for them. And I’ve never been forced to work for somebody that I didn’t want to, and I won’t. When I go into something, I got to go 150 percent. I don’t have only one speed, and that’s just the way it is. And, if I’m not totally behind something, I won’t even touch it, because I know when I do stuff half-assed, it doesn’t come out right. And I like everything to be perfect. I’m one of these guys that the car has to be perfect. It has to not have any crud on it, everything’s got to be just perfect. If something’s supposed—if it’s got a place, it should be there. It shouldn’t be someplace else. So, when I’m done, I pick my stuff up and I leave, you won’t even know I’m there. I learned in the Scouts, you leave it better than you found it. And that’s the way it works. And I’ve always been that way. And I’m not going to stab you in the back. If I stab you, it would be right in front. You won’t have to worry about me. You won’t see me saying nice things then running around bad-mouthing you. I don’t do that. You’ll know I don’t like you. And you’ll avoid me, okay, which is good. But I don’t like people that speak with forked tongue, as the Indians would say. I don’t like that. And I won’t work with people, I won’t hire people like that. I don’t even want to be around them. I want people that are honest. If they can’t do something, just tell me and we’ll fix it.
[Interviewer 2]: [01:09:38] We’ll go ahead and stop it there.
[Greg Long]: Okay.
[Interviewer 2]: Okay.
[End of interview] × |
Narrator |
Long, Greg |
Narrator's Role |
Student at Kent State University in 1970 |
Date of Interview |
2020-01-23 |
Description |
Greg Long was a student at Kent State University in 1970, was a member of the ROTC program, and was majoring in accounting and business management. He discusses his experiences being harassed on campus whenever he wore his military uniform; anti-war protestors threw eggs and tomatoes, along with verbal abuse, at him and his fellow recruits. Long regularly took the campus bus to class and shares an anecdote from one day in 1969: he was in uniform that day, was surprised to see Jerry Rubin riding on the bus, and describes the encounter that ensued. He goes on to relate his detailed eyewitness account of the events of May 4, 1970, from his vantage point at the burned remains of the ROTC Building, where he was working that day to help inventory the weapons that had been stored there. |
Length of Interview |
1:09:41 hours |
Places Discussed |
Kent (Ohio) |
Time Period discussed |
1967-1971 |
Subject(s) |
Civil-military relations--Ohio--Kent College environment--Ohio--Kent College fraternity members--Ohio--Kent--Interviews College students--Ohio--Kent--Interviews Community and college--Ohio--Kent Draft Eyewitness accounts Firearms Garand rifle Kent State Shootings, Kent, Ohio, 1970 Kent State University. Army ROTC Kent State University. ROTC Building Military occupation--Ohio--Kent Ohio State Highway Patrol Ohio. Army National Guard Police training Rubin, Jerry Sessions, Hazel Soldiers--Interviews Students--Ohio--Kent--Interviews Tear gas munitions |
Repository |
Special Collections and Archives |
Access Rights |
This digital object is owned by Kent State University and may be protected by U.S. Copyright law (Title 17, USC). Please include proper citation and credit for use of this item. Use in publications or productions is prohibited without written permission from Kent State University. Please contact the Department of Special Collections and Archives for more information. |
Duplication Policy |
http://www.library.kent.edu/special-collections-and-archives/duplication-policy |
Institution |
Kent State University |
DPLA Rights Statement |
http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
Format of Original |
audio digital file |
Disclaimer |
The content of oral history interviews, written narratives and commentaries is personal and interpretive in nature, relying on memories, experiences, perceptions, and opinions of individuals. They do not represent the policy, views or official history of Kent State University and the University makes no assertions about the veracity of statements made by individuals participating in the project. Users are urged to independently corroborate and further research the factual elements of these narratives especially in works of scholarship and journalism based in whole or in part upon the narratives shared in the May 4 Collection and the Kent State Shootings Oral History Project. |
Provenance/Collection |
May 4 Collection |