Th Price of Inciviliy - Part 1

In general, I plan to let Senator tell his story chronologically, which is the narrative strategy Senator swore by. Already a close student of story-telling, he avoided flashbacks except when a character was in a pensive or contemplative mood, and he did not believe in flash forwards at all. But I think his ghost would—does?—approve of this departure, for reasons that will quickly be obvious.

A complex autumn and difficult winter have passed, dominated by an increasingly intricate relationship with Lorena, a fellow literary aspirant—primarily a poet. Lorena and Senator share a passionate relationship, but a uniquely passionate relationship, best characterized as that of two pen pals who would be all over each other in a New York minute if only they didn’t live four miles apart. I scarcely need to say who wants this arrangement and who puts up with it.

[Lorena and I have recently reconnected—in the here and now, I mean; and she has long since tweaked the modus operandi I have described. I know this because she has been married for many years; and the fact they have several children is fairly convincing evidence theirs is not merely a passionate pen pal relationship of many years. But Lorena, we’ll always have the USPS.

Email does not have quite the same sizzle, particularly given the husband and the kids and the fact that she is an ordained minister. On the other hand, the fact that she is cheering me on in this literary high wire act, is pretty hot, in its own way. Note to Lorena: I wouldn’t have the guts to do this without your support and that of a few others. You’re still magic. Also, I’m halfway through the sheaf of poems you sent me. Good stuff. (I will send you a critique more sophisticated than “Good stuff” once the Semester from Hell is over.)]

But to resume: Lorena has not been the least distressed—make that barely aware—of Senator’s new love interest, a fetching junior named Ellen who conveniently lives barely two blocks away. In early March he and Ellen discover a strong mutual chemistry and a sort of effortless rapport and—and we’ll leave it there for now.

It is Tuesday, April 21. Senator has filled the pages of Notebook Eleven and has reached page 37 of Notebook Seventeen—which despite Senator’s eccentric numbering system is actually the fourth volume of his journal.

Some excerpts from that journal:

[Thursday] 23 April, 7:43 a.m. On Monday I … spent most of the day reading Michener’s “Kent State,” finishing it….

Last week I decided to begin researching the student protest movement of the 60s. Kent State seemed a good place to begin and so I began reading up on the subject. Unlike my earlier studies, most of the people involved in the episode are still alive; I decided to see if I might be able to interview some of them.

Accordingly, during 7th period on Tuesday [April 21] I checked a list of important faculty members who had been involved in the events at Kent State against a list of those presently teaching: Seymour Baron, Glenn Frank, and Robert White. I began composing a letter formally requesting an interview.

[Next day, he sees Ellen in the high school spending “some time chatting with some friends of her. One is a big, burly fellow named Bob _______, who has already tried to persuade Ellen to drop me for himself….” [The sight of a potential rival seated with Ellen] “was not enough to turn me green but enough to make me lose my appetite. Of course, considering the caliber of the cafeteria food, that wasn’t such a terribly great loss. I wound up retiring to the library and immersing myself in a redraft of that letter. …”

Between 5th and 6th periods I showed Ms Curry the finished draft. She made a minor alteration and ordered me to type and mail the copies immediately….

7th period I drove out to see Ms [Teresa] Watkins [a former teacher]. I showed her the letter, which pleased and excited her.

[Three decades later Teresa will introduce me to a fellow teacher who had been friends with Sandra Lee Scheuer, one of the four students killed at Kent State on May 4. On the day she died, Sandra was 20 years old. Were she alive today, she would be 71 years old.

I will let author James Michener, whose “Kent State: What Happened and Why” Senator has recently read, describe Sandy Scheuer’s final minutes:

“As they left the area”—here Michener is speaking of some of Sandy’s friends and fellow classmates, including one Ellis Berns—“they heard a noise behind them, and half-turned to see what was happening. This meant that they were facing right into the volley of shots coming from the hill. Ellis grabbed Sandy, intending to run to a car, but instead the two hit the ground, with Ellis’ arm around her waist. They lay there for a moment until the firing ended. Then Ellis turned to Sandy and said, ‘Let’s go.’ She made no movement, and he looked again and saw that she had been hit somewhere in the neck, and that the pavement was being stained with her blood.” (Michener, 399)

With a stupid insensitivity, I asked Sandy’s friend if I could interview her. She declines, saying sadly and quietly, “That’s not a subject I do well with.”]

“… Ate dinner at home for the first time in memory, then stopped by Otterbein [College Library] awhile. Looking through ‘New York Times’ [microfilm] I was intrigued to find that the May 1970 disturbances at OSU far exceeded those at Kent in size and violence, and wondered how the Guard conducted itself.” [Three years later, Senator will research the question of why students died at Kent but not Ohio State. His conclusion: sheer dumb luck.]

[Tuesday] 26 April, 11:04 p.m. [It is a lengthy entry catching up on recent events.] “On Friday [April 24] I stayed home. Received a letter from Professor Glenn Frank at Kent State University:

Dear Mark,

I have mixed emotions concerning your request. On the one hand, your concern makes me want to talk to you. On the other hand, my emotional involvement and in reliving and rethinking this event is not pleasant.

The real tragedy of this event is that people really did not learn from it. The ultra-conservatives will still suggest shooting anyone who disagrees with the “government,” and the radicals will do everything possible to bring the “bureaucracy” to its knees. Both extremes are wrong but those are still the outspoken and vocal groups. The majority are still not sure of the events leading up to May 4, 1970 and moreover, it is easier to remain uninformed and maintain one’s prejudice.

There are some feelings that I will probably write down someday, but now is not the time. Events are still too vivid in people’s minds to allow them to be objective.

If you would still like to meet with me, I will plan to be in my office, 230 McGilvrey Hall, on Saturday, May 14th between 10 & 12. Please let me know if you plan to be there.

Sincerely,

Glenn W. Frank

Professor

“When I read the letter I war whooped, loud, long, and triumphantly, for I understood the great opportunity it held out. Rereading it later subdued me, for I became impressed with the deep well of emotion I would be dealing with. Ms Curry, Ms McMeekin [a history teacher], and Ellen subsequently read the letter but none were impressed so powerfully as me. Oddly, no one seems impressed with this project I’m undertaking, either. They are interested, but whereas I would be beside myself with pleased surprise if anyone else contemplated something similar, they are nonplussed. It’s curious but not particularly bothersome.”

[Somewhere in the middle of an epic 7-page catch-up entry on May 5, is this line, “I expect to busy the next week or so, mostly in preparing for my interview with Dr. Frank.”]

The entry that deals with Senator’s interview with Glenn Frank is not an entry at all, but rather part of a memo summarizing the content of a cassette tape labeled “Cassette Two,” because by this time Senator is hurtling toward his rendezvous with those eight Tuinal capsules so fast, and there is so much to tell, that for the first time Senator resorts to dictating his entries. The tape, unfortunately, has not survived: the magnetic tape broke a few weeks after the recording.

Thus the only mention of the interview with Glenn Frank is curt: “Saturday, May 14 – arrived 8:30 – breakfast –Taylor Hall – McGilvrey Hall – interview – more pictures – 1:30 left – closed 6:45-11:15.”

The reference to Taylor Hall is a clear indicator that I visited the site of the shooting, taking several pictures, among them the famous Pagoda and the steel sculpture with a small, telltale hole left by a .30-06 bullet that punched through it at a range of perhaps 25 yards. The parking lot where most of the victims were shot was remarkably close by: it is one thing to read about the scene of the shootings, but another to actually walk the terrain and see how constricted was the battlefield—I thought of it that way, but in the sense of hallowed ground, not a battlefield in any literal sense.

By then the “Move the Gym” controversy was underway, with protesters occupying a portion of land, very close to the site of the massacre, because the university intended to use the land to expand its gymnasium facility. One could see at a glance that this would compromise the integrity of the battlefield. I did not have time that morning to visit the Tent City--my schedule was tight because I had to be at Pondo (the nickname for the Ponderosa Steakhouse where I worked) at 6:45 p.m. But on June 4, much to the consternation of my parents, who considered my interest in the shootings a possible reason for my suicide attempt, I attended the rally and in later weeks I visited the Tent City several times, and even seriously thought of getting myself arrested, along with the die-hard activists.

But that’s as far—no, farther—than Senator would have gone in telling the story right.

And as for the interview with Glenn Frank. As a reporter Senator achieved only a gloss on what was already known. The main thing was the respectful, detailed way to which he responded to all Senator’s questions. And unlike the ill-fated Cassette Two, I still have the cassette tape of the interview.

Glenn Frank was one of the most decent men I have ever met. And I have always thought that it was that decency which may have saved dozens of lives that awful day, exactly fifty years ago today.

In my next entry I will explain why.