My Dad was career military and he served our country in WWII, Korea, and two tours in Vietnam. He also spent a year as the active duty Army liaison with the Colorado National Guard. I was a Freshman at the University of Denver when we got the word about Kent State. We were filled with stunned disbelief, sorrow, anger and yes - even fear.
I was so angry and so unable to accept what had happened. My Dad would most certainly not order the National Guard to do such a thing. Because he couldn't have. He could order active duty troops around, but NOT the National Guard. But that didn't stop me from feeling deeply betrayed. Nor did it stop me from being horrified that a few students with rocks were met with live ammunition.
I was a freshman at the University of Denver when Kent State happened and I had a job flipping burgers at the student union grill. I showed up for what was supposed to be a 5:00PM to 11:00PM stint. But people seemed to be pouring in from everywhere. I had never seen that many people even when I went to my freshman Biology 101 class which was attended by 500 students!
I asked my customers where they were from and some told me that they had been just criss-crossing the country and showing up for protests everywhere. I cooked up burgers and everything else we had on offer while being serenaded by a Youngbloods song that people kept playing on the jukebox:
Come Together -
You can make the mountains ring
Or make the angels cry...
Come on people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another right now.
My boss was a very fussy guy who was a grad student in DU's School of Hotel and Restaurant Administration. I considered him to be hopelessly straight and just hopelessly hopeless on general principles. But that night he surprised me.
The Student Union probably had surpassed its most profitable night ever in the first hour. After 3 hours of being completely overwhelmed and catching the outrage everyone else was feeling, "Doug" told us to just give away the food for free. So we did. AfterI had cooked up every last burger, we were forced to close our doors at 2:00am.
My boyfriend came by to pick me up and we joined other protesters on the lawn of the administration building. Our goal was to shut down the entire university, starting with preventing the university president from getting into his office. My BF used his boots for a pillow while I fell asleep immediately in my sleeping bag.
In the end we did shut down the University of Denver along with many other universities across the nation. The people had spoken, and we did our best to make everyone listen.
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