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Alan Canfora Alan Canfora's image is forever etched in a photo by Pulitzer Prize winner John Filo. The 22-year-old Canfora stands at the bottom of a hill with a bandanna tied around his long hair. In his right hand, he waves a black flag at the Ohio National Guardsmen, who are kneeling at the top of the hill. The barrels of some of their guns are pointed directly at him. "When I see that picture, it's a reminder of my anger and my despair," says Canfora, who graduated from Kent State's Stark Campus in 1972 with a degree in general studies. "I was still pretty angry and desperate due to the recent death of a friend of mine in Vietnam. I felt that if at that moment I had to risk my life to make a powerful war statement, I was willing to do that." And Canfora was an obvious presence at the May 4 rally. Canfora was also in the "thick of the action" at the riots in downtown Kent on Friday, May 2 and the burning of the ROTC building on Saturday, May 3. Considering the extent of his involvement in that weekend's disturbances, Canfora says he was quite relieved when he found out he was only charged with second-degree riot, a charge that was later dismissed. But for Canfora, who still lives in his hometown of Barberton, this was all just a sequence of his political journey.
-- Erin Kosnac Ron Weissenberger Ron Weissenberger knew exactly what he was doing when he was arrested days after the May 4 shooting. Actually, he wanted to be arrested. "The draft was hot after me," he says. "So I knew the only way to get around it was to get arrested. I had to somehow get arrested." So when Weissenberger saw the protest march coming down Main Street on Saturday, May 2, he jumped right into the front line. "I was always in the front, kind of like a leader," Weissenberger says. "I wanted everyone to see my face, because I was hoping eventually someone would get my picture taken." The plan worked. Weissenberger isn't sure of the exact date, "but it was quite a while after the shootings," when two policemen found him in the bar and arrested him on charges of first-degree riot and inciting a riot, interference with a fireman and second-degree riot. The charges were later dismissed. "It worked," he says. "The draft board never bothered me again." He graduated from Kent State in fall 1970, then moved to Provincetown, Mass. He has lived there in a small cottage ever since. "I wanted to drop out of society as much as I could," he says. "I feel the same way now as I did then. Students were murdered that day. Kent State has never looked the same to me since. I had a lot of good times and lot of great friends while I was there, but it has never felt the same." Weissenberger has worked as a restaurant manager for 30 years, but he is now planning on moving to New York soon to start a career as a playwright. "I feel lonely and uncreative," he says. "It's time to start over." -- Jason Lloyd Bill Arthrell Bill Arthrell hasn't allowed his life to dwell on the events of the Vietnam War or May 4. Today he is a high school history teacher in Cleveland at John Marshall High School. The Vietnam War and political movements are part of the curriculum, but Arthrell says he is fair and presents both sides of the conflict in his classroom. In 1998, he traveled to Vietnam.
"It took me 28 years to be ready to go," Arthrell says. "It was a lifelong dream to go and make a personal peace with that region. I wanted to personally go there and compensate for American wrong-doing in southeast Asia. To see the battlefields with the bomb craters still there, to meet children with defects from (the defoliant) Agent Orange. It was really moving and heartbreaking."
In his poetry, Arthrell describes what it was like at the time: "I had an iron will and a finger for Nixon."
Arthrell says he has moved on.
"Coming out of May 4, I had a little edginess," Arthrell says. "But it's not my whole life.
"The experience imbedded itself in my psyche and I finally surrendered to it. I accepted what it taught me: Oppose war and stand for peace."
-- Lauren Worley    |
