News photos that have grown whiskers and have become history
This is a little different from my usual Memorial Day photos of flags and grave markers for veterans.
I was making the rounds of cemeteries for Mother’s Day when I approached this statue at St. Mary’s Cemetery from the back side. The yellow flowers, blue sky and the shadows that modeled the figures caused me to pause and roll down the window.
I’ve been here before.
Chief photographer John J. Lopinot and I took buyouts from The Palm Beach Post 10 years ago this summer. Cox sold our paper to another Chain on the first of May. I wondered if this would be the first year I wouldn’t get the usual cryptic message from John: “May 4 – Never Forget.”
All is still right with the world. The message, reminding me that on May 4, four students at Kent State were killed by National Guardsmen showed up like always. It’s getting harder and harder for me to find photos of that era that I haven’t published, but here is what happened when Ohio University students occupied the vacant Chubb Library on the Athens campus.
It was a chaotic 24 hours. It started with a rally in Grover Center attended by more than 2,000. John Froines of the Chicago Eight was of the speakers. (Click on the photos to make them larger.)
After the rally broke up, some of the students headed to the Main Green to the Chubb Library. A new library had been built, and the building had been standing vacant for about a year. Gail Schnitzer’s story in The Athens Messenger said someone broke the glass on a locked door and shouted, “Now, it’s open. It’s free. It’s yours – let’s go.” Most of the hundred or so people milling around were less convinced that this was a good idea.
Throughout the night, though, many people – some estimated as many as 150 – entered the building. They included students, faculty and staff, even though faculty marshals at the door were warning that this is “illegal – forcible entry”
Froines showed up to speak to the students. He urged them not to shut down the university, but to open it up by repurposing unused spaces like this one.
Some of the students argued that the library should be made into a “free university,” a place to study “relevant issues” and to form a Radical Studies Institute. “Freedom University” was the most popular name, primarily because of its initials.
Discord and debate were the order of the night. Many votes were taken and discarded as the students tried to decide if they would stay or leave, or if they should take the university’s offer of three meeting rooms, an office and a lounge in the Baker Center student union building.
Not everybody was into speechifying. This group picked a quiet corner to sing folk songs.
This pipe smoker must have figured it was going to be a long night, and he was going to be as comfortable as possible.
Athens police officers in riot gear stayed outside, watched by anxious students.
Some of us media types figured that our presence might create a buffer that would discourage students from becoming destructive, and keep the police from over-reacting.
Dr. Edward Sanford, a physics professor, one of about five faculty members who remained throughout the night, cautioned the students to let Ohio University officials remain in control, “not the people in Columbus,” a reference to Gov. Rhodes’ calling in the National Guard at Kent State.
Reporter Schnitzer wrote that a blond-haired student stood up on a table and shouted, “You’re all fools, man! You’re all ego-tripping. Everyone wants to do their own thing. You’re having a civil war right here – I’m sick of this, and I’m leaving.”
There were cheers from some, and “Shut up! Shut up!” from others. He walked out, and little by little, the crowd dwindled.
At 6 a.m., the remaining students were ordered to leave by Robert Guinn, OU director of security. President Claude Sowle said that all present complied with the order. At about 6:10, police officers entered the building. No arrests were made, and no force was necessary.
Right after I left the library, I found out that someone had firebombed two buildings on campus that were under construction. Instead of going home and to bed, I had to shoot the damage and make a morning deadline.
So far as I know, the culprits were never identified. Most of the usual suspects were in the library when the fires were set.
The firebombing wasn’t the biggest blaze in Athens that night. It seems that Wife Lila, not too far from being a newlywed, had planned her first big dinner party where all the newspaper types were invited. Everybody who would would have shown up was busy with the night’s news, so she was left with lots of leftovers.
I tried to explain that there were no phones in the library, and that I was afraid to leave because I wasn’t sure I could get back in. That’s why I didn’t warn her that nobody was going to show up.
Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned this. Maybe she’s forgotten it after 48 years.
Here are some of the earlier stories I’ve done about the era.
When I walked out the front door the other day, I noticed that the tulips that Mother had planted years and years ago had started to bloom. I snipped off a few, along with some other flowers from the yard, and started looking for something I could put them in at the cemetery.
It was pretty windy, so I thought I’d better get a vase of some kind with a spike on the bottom. After going to three places, I found a small, white plastic one, but it had plastic flowers in it. I hate plastic flowers when real ones are available.
I turned to an elderly woman in front of me (if I call someone elderly, you KNOW they are old), and asked if she’d like some flowers. Her face lit up like she had won the lottery. It was the best thing that happened all day.
By the way, you can click on the photos to make them larger.
Brother David passed through St. Louis and Cape doing a honk ‘n’ wave on his way back home to Texas. He brought along a wreath to put on Dad and Mother’s stone.
Unfortunately, we didn’t have a way to secure the wreath, and the winds were blowing so hard that we were afraid it would end up in Perry county. I promised him I’d come back the next week to rig something up.
The cheap plastic vase I bought wouldn’t hold water, and the wind had whipped the flowers around, so they were looking a bit ragged when I went back on Monday to rig David’s wreath.
If you look closely, you can see the head of two big spikes I pushed into the ground, and some fine green wires leading upwards from them.
Two similar spikes and wires hold on the front of the stone secure the wreath. When I messaged David that I got the display up in time for Dad’s birthday, April 17, he pointed out that he would have been 101 years old this year.
Wow! That boggles my mind.
Mother loved to sit on the porch and watch the birds and squirrels.
I was feeling guilty the other day that I hadn’t put out any feed in over two years, so I bought a bunch of feed and put a couple new feeders in the back yard so I could see them if I got up from the computer.
Even though Brother Mark calls them “fuzzy-tailed rats,” I enjoy watching squirrel antics, so I hung an ear of corn off the maple tree. In two days, it was mostly gone, so I replaced it last night.
This morning, I looked out the window and the corn was gone. I don’t mean the kernels had been stripped off; I mean the WHOLE darned thing was gone. I looked all over the back yard, and there was not a sign of it anywhere.
So, which of you had a hankering for corn in the middle of the night?
You can click on the photo to make it larger if you want to check for fingerprints.