|southpark stories
Loss and legacy
A CHANCE MEETING, AND HOW THE CAMPUS SHOOTINGS AT KENT STATE UNIVERSITY INSPIRED A LIFETIME OF SOCIAL ACTIVISM. BY KEN GARFIELD
W
e were a couple of long-haired college kids who bumped into each other one snowy November night in 1971 in the Akron airport. I had just landed in a blizzard and needed a ride to Kent, Ohio. Tom Grace had just flown in from a weekend away and was headed back to Kent State University. He was the first person I asked for help. He said yes. I sat in the back of his car packed with friends for the ride to his rental house, where he gave me shelter from the cold. What are the odds? I was a college freshman who had trav-
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eled to Ohio to study the killing of four students during an anti-war demonstration at Kent State on May 4, 1970. Tom was one of the nine students wounded that spring afternoon. Fifty years later, America marks that moment in history, at least those of us who still honor its significance. And 50 years later, two old college students revisit that providential encounter in the airport, those 13 seconds of gunfire, and how it shaped his life and mine. Tom is 70. I turned 67 on May 3. It seems like a lifetime ago. And yet just a moment ago.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY KENT STATE UNIVERSITY NEWS SERVICE MAY 4 PHOTOGRAPHS. KENT STATE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES. SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AND ARCHIVES.
