The Final 50th Anniversary Post: Remembering the Kent State Shootings of May 4, 1970

On this date in the year 2070, someone will be writing about how the Great Coronavirus Pandemic of fifty years earlier changed the world and why we are better off for it in some ways, worse off in others, and how mystifying it is that there are still those lingering issues that haven’t yet been settled. And, isn’t it about time we finished the job and stopped repeating history?

Anniversaries are important to make sure we ask those questions. It’s why, over the past two years, I’ve written posts about the anniversaries of so many events that shaped the world during the time frame of my novel The Fourteenth of September and still resonate today: the Bobby Kennedy Assassination, the 1968 Democratic Convention, the Moratoriums to End the War in Vietnam: October 15, 1969 & November 15, 1969, the First Draft Lottery and the Kent State Shootings.

This will be the last anniversary post on the history behind my novel; the cycle is done. The story takes place roughly between the first Vietnam Draft Lottery and the Kent State Shootings, two seminal events that book-ended a six-month period wherein I’ve always felt the character of my generation was formed, including its early feminism. The novel ends shortly after Kent State when the country fired on its children, the turning point incident in support of the war when the country went too far and knew it.

Fifty years sounds so long, but in many ways has gone by so fast. What we haven’t learned in that time frame is legion. Just this past December, the Washington Post published a report, “At War With The Truth,” about the war in Afghanistan, that sounded like the playbook for Vietnam: falsified data to show we were “winning,” admissions that the strategy wasn’t working, and the objective unclear. On the positive side, we learned to treat our vets with respect, to never have another draft, and we keep coming close to electing a woman president. Two steps back, one step forward, another we just can’t seem to get quite right.

We are still so in the thick of this pandemic that, yes, it’s difficult to focus on anything else. But it’s illustrative, on today’s anniversary, to consider how we might try to learn the lessons of how to be the admirable country we consider ourselves to be, the first—or the fifth—or the fiftieth—try instead of so often falling back into the hamster wheel of history.

A high school friend of my vintage found this recently among his late mother's things. He had no idea she'd been a protester.

"RIGHT ON, Mrs. Gustafson," It worked.

Following is a post I wrote on this day two years ago, that includes the story of what happened at Kent State University on May 4, 1970, and why it still matters today. In rereading it, I see that we were only thirteen months into the new administration, dealing acutely with school shootings and already hearing about alternative facts and incredible re-interpretations of reality. I asked readers to look ahead and think about what would be on the conscience of the country on this fiftieth-anniversary date to which we should also be saying “No, that’s not who we are.”

The issues have changed, but not the question. How we’re dealing with acceptable percentages of pandemic deaths and knee-jerk 180 turns in policy that impact lives and livelihoods. I ask again. Haven’t we learned how to be better than this. Are we ready again to stop and say, “No, that’s not who we are?”

The following published on May 4, 2018 under the title:

Remember Kent State, May 4, 1970: An Iconic Moment For A Generation... A Coming of Conscience for a Country

The Iconic Kent State Photo

Recently, while promoting the fall publication of my novel, The Fourteenth of September, which takes place during the pivotal 1969-1970 years of the Vietnam War, I was asked if—of the many iconic moments in American history that happened during that time period— one had impacted me more than any other.

I paused to consider the word iconic... icon — a symbol. No question. It was the Kent State Massacre, a symbol at the time of the total chasm between the government and the youth it was supposed to be protecting: the bridge too far that blew away most of the remaining support for the war, though it’s death throes dragged on another five years. 

48 Years and We Still Remember

Every May fourth since 1970 there has been media coverage of the shootings, always featuring the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of fourteen-year-old Mary Ann Vecchio with arms outstretched in agony and disbelief, kneeling above the body of twenty-year-old Jeffrey Miller. An iconic image of how we felt. Agony and disbelief. This is America? How had it come to this?

We know the facts: The National Guard fired into a crowd of students protesting the war’s expansion into Cambodia. Sixty-seven rounds over thirteen seconds killing four, wounding nine, permanently paralyzing one. The massive national student strike after. A turning point in how the country viewed the war. It was just too much to kill kids. 

Early Alternative Facts

It all began with a lie—and it was bald-faced. Nixon was elected because he said he'd end the war—something his predecessor, Johnson, hadn't been able to do. His Administration said we were winding down. Hard as it may be to believe from the vantage point of today, media was limited. We only heard one side and assumed what we were told was true—though obviously that was disavowed later on many levels, most recently in the Ken Burns documentary The Vietnam War.

But, suddenly, on April 30, 1970, it's announced we just bombed Cambodia. It was earth-shattering. The war was being accelerated, not contained. Of course, there were protests; of course, they were full of anger; of course, those protests would be on a campus where the populations of draft-age men were among the largest. We had just been through the roulette of the Draft Lottery and the news about My Lai. Nerves were raw, the rage was high.  Above all, trust was waning, and this Cambodia lie just wiped it out. How could we believe anything the government told us ever again?

And then, to top it off, unbelievably, students were shot dead at one of those protests. It was the very definition of a word we were just beginning to use to describe what we thought were mind-expanding experiences: surreal. 

The Memorial to Jeffrey Miller, Bordering Where He Fell, on the Kent State Campus

Where Were You When You Heard?

I think many people of my generation can tell you where they were and what they were doing when they first heard about Kent State, just like all the assassinations that punctuated that time—King, the two Kennedys. I remember walking into the Student Union with a few others and being shocked to hear my friend, Tommy Aubry, screaming from the top of the stairs, “They’re Shooting Us! They’re Shooting Us!” We didn’t know what he was talking about. He pointed to the only television set in the Union and ran past us to shout the news to others.

We didn’t believe it at first. Who would? They must have shot over their heads. It had to be an accident. Surely no one was actually dead. It was too fantastic to comprehend... until we had to. The truth of it was horrible. It wasn’t enough that we could be sent to Vietnam to die; we could die here.

They Could Shoot Us, Too!

I came across a quote by the survivor, Gerald Casale, that summed up a student’s point of view. “It completely and utterly changed my life. I was a white hippie boy and then I saw exit wounds from M1 rifles out of the backs of people I knew...”

Abraham and Isaac Sculpture in Commemoration of the KENT STATE Shootings, at Princeton University

In an era of embryonic diversity awareness, it was astounding that supposedly the most cherished of us all were now being killed just outside a quiet Midwestern town. Anything could happen next. Casale founded the band Devo, creating music and a movement as a result of his experience.

I have a chapter in my book you can read here that’s based on what happened at the campus I was on. It was not something I had to research. I still remember every second.

Within days after the shootings, the National Guard actually did arrive on my campus, and we thought we were also going to be killed—another chapter, another iconic situation. We were still teenagers and most of us had been pretty sheltered, but now we understood what it must be like for those fighting for civil rights in the south, for anyone living day in and day out in any country at war. It was a sobering lesson. We were truly in what we called "the war at home."

According to the final report on the Kent State Massacre by the President’s Commission on Campus Unrest: “It was unnecessary, unwarranted, inexcusable”—an iconic symbol of the war that caused it.

A Coming of Conscience Moment. America Said No!

The subtitle of my novel is “A Coming of Conscience,” because it was a time when we weren’t just growing up and Coming of Age. In addition—by the way we chose or were forced to cope with the situations presented by the Vietnam War—we were each defining our own character. We were each faced with decisions where integrity could—or should—trump consequences (pun intended). Would I go to Vietnam or to Canada?  If I join ROTC (Reserve Officers' Training Corps) am I being realistic or complicit? If I put my head in the sand and try to ignore it all am I being apathetic, cowardly or just understandably self-preserving?

We’re in a period now where we’re questioning our leadership and taking our positions on matters to the streets in massive marches. It’s our right and our privilege, and they don't fire on us—we feel safe. One reason is that on May 4, 1970, the country looked aghast at the bodies of those dead children and decided that this was not who we were. This was not our character. It was a coming-of-conscience moment for the country.

It all reminds me of watching Apocalypse Now, a brilliant film that I admired greatly but could never see a second time. Viewing it made me feel I’d personally been through the war. It told the Heart-of-Darkness story of Colonel Kurtz, who embodied "the horror," as he put it, of how we would actually have to behave to win such a war. In the movie, the government has sent an assassin to eliminate him, because as a people we couldn’t accept that Krutz is what we’d have to become to do what Washington considered so essential—continue as the country that had never lost a war.

With Kent State, the horror rang through every level of America. Is this what it’s come to? We answered, “No.”

 May 4, 2020, will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the massacre. Over the coming years, let’s remember and honor what happened at Kent State. And, in this current moment of dubious facts, incredible re-interpretations of truth and Never Again, let’s think of what else is on the conscience of the country to which we should also be saying, “No, that’s not who we are.”

---

Coming of Conscience Scholarship Recipient Announced

Isabel Odom-Flores & Rita Dragonette

As I wrote back in February’s blog post, the Coming of Conscience Scholarship that was created in the spirit of the journey of the main character, Judy Talton, in my novel The Fourteenth of September had attracted a record-breaking 200+ applicants. The scholarship was open to all students (undergrad and graduate) at Northern Illinois University (NIU), the real-life model for the fictional university in the novel. It was designed to encourage meaningful activism and bold personal responsibility. Applicants were asked to write an essay to describe their understanding of Coming of Conscience, to share an example of a Coming of Conscience moment of their own, if possible, and, above all, to indicate their plan for how they will use their degree to help change the world. Essays were evaluated by a faculty committee established by the NIU Foundation, who chose the final recipient.

I’m very pleased to share with you that the scholarship has been awarded to nineteen-year-old sophomore Isabel Odom-Flores, a Communication Disorders major, in the College of Health and Human Services.  

A Generation Committed to Giving Others a Voice

"Coming of Conscience is as simple as 'doing the right thing' and as difficult as realizing 'your whole life depends upon it'"

— Scholarship Applicant

Isabel’s essay was one of so many who told the stories of lives changed by brushes with injustice, tragedy, and violence as well as the day-to-day courage it takes to live a life of integrity. If anyone is worried about how committed the allegedly self-absorbed younger generation is to making a difference in the lives of others, these stories will disavow any concerns. Students wrote, not surprisingly, about bullying of all kinds, cheating, sexism, and drugs, but also about abuse, gun violence, difficulties with trusting the police, and overcoming restrictive cultural norms in first-generation immigrant households. In the main, applicants had faced situations that inspired them to train for careers in law, political science, and advocacy to help address what they feel strongly are injustices and issues that must be overturned. A second majority of those are going into medical school or nursing and teaching to help those who need assistance. The commitment to using the personal fear and rage of what they went through to help others is universal.

Many are unexpected: A young woman who still had to fight to convince her parents to let her go to college. Another who became a nutrition major after the death of a young, obese cousin because of the unhealthy diet of a culture. A Christian aspiring actor and singer who turned down a major role in a play because of skimpy dress, who is now a dance major dedicated to art with modesty. Each is a story of integrity trumping consequences. Some have learned the hard way.

As one student put it. “Do I regret the choice I made that hurt others and eroded their trust and confidence in me? Most definitely. Do I regret the lesson I learned and carry with me each day? Never.”

Isabel’s Coming of Conscience

With Judy Ledgerwood, Acting Dean, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences & Ray Earl-Jackson, Director of Advancement, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Coincidentally, as Isabel and I discovered when we met recently, she and the fictional Judy Talton share a struggle to be able to afford to go to college, the life-line of a scholarship that could make all the difference in their futures, and issues of integrity that could cause them to give it up. She’s agreed to allow me to share her story in this post. Read full essay here.

In her essay, Isabel Odom-Flores recounted a painful yet instructive moment of Coming of Conscience. She always knew that college was going to be hard to pay for and was “going to take any help I could get.” As a gifted softball player, her answer came through athletics when she was offered a scholarship to play on a new team at her community college, joining other girls who were excited to play the sport they loved as well as pay for the education they sought.

It soon became obvious the promised funds were to come “later,” according to their coach, and in exchange for serious ongoing harassment. After a year of this, Isabel was faced with a dilemma, turn the coach in and give up her scholarship, putting her future and that of the other team members at risk, or, as her teammates urged, just put up with it for the vital scholarship money—a #METOO moment at the tender age of eighteen.

“I was signed to be on full scholarship for the next school year. I was promised sophomore team captain and a starting position. I had worked hard the last ten years to become a leading student-athlete in college. I knew all of that was at jeopardy if my coach were to lose his job.” But she realized that someone had to put a stop to this. “Harassment in the workplace is wrong. Harassment in schools is wrong. Harassment everywhere is wrong.”

She tried to turn the coach in twice—once as a single, complaining voice that wasn’t believed—and mustered amazing courage to try again, finally and successfully, by convincing the team to join her in a collective complaint. The coach was let go, the integrity of the softball program restored… but the team members each lost their scholarship money. Isabel had already used the money her parents had saved for her education and was struggling to apply for burdensome student loans.

At the same time, the payoff in integrity was character-forming. Isabel now knows her mind, and has found what she calls her “firm voice” and plans to use it. Her plan for her Coming of Conscience scholarship money is to ultimately obtain a master’s in speech-language pathology to help others, literally and philosophically to have a voice.

“I will advocate in my workplace for anyone who is experiencing harassment anywhere. Spreading knowledge on what qualifies as harassment and what does not. Spreading knowledge on how to file a harassment claim under the equal employment opportunity commission. Spreading knowledge will break down the barrier that separates people from staying quiet to finding their voice.”

“I have grown to have a firm voice and use it when there is an injustice. I especially feel compelled to advocate for other women. Equality and harassment in the workplace or anywhere must be taken seriously. I will never again turn a blind eye in any setting.” 

I’m particularly glad to learn that the Coming of Conscience scholarship will more than compensate for the scholarship funds Isabel lost through her decision of valor—a contribution to the voice she will never again question.

A Coming of Conscience Journey

What a surprise, Ruth Sender, Isabel's grandmother met me at the Wheaton Author's Fest to thank me for funding the scholarship.

I had a bit of a push-back on using A Coming of Conscience as the tagline for my novel. But I was convinced that Judy’s story, a metaphor for what the country was going through during the Vietnam years, was beyond a typical Coming of Age. The latter follows a young person on their journey through complications from which they emerge ready and resilient enough to face the world as an adult. Judy goes through this as well. However, her journey is deeper: the issues she weighs are beyond her maturity and experience and will define her character for the rest of her life. Coming of Conscience works better. As Isabel and the other applicants’ essays illustrate—this is a complex world of diversity, 24-hour news, and social media that amplifies everything, where character is being formed at an increasingly younger age. We watch world figures hashing out issues of integrity every day on the news. Children are listening… but as these applicants demonstrate… they are also learning.

We Can STILL Change the World

My intention for the scholarship was to allow young people to take pride in the hard decisions they’ve had to make and use them to become bold and active, never settling for something that they can impact. The world will always need changing for the better. I’m ever so much more confident after reading these stories. I’ll be sharing excerpts with you in future posts.

These brave young people are on the front lines of the future, as we have been. I couldn’t be more proud and confident that history doesn’t have to be a hamster wheel and we won’t need to keep starting over.

Coming of Conscience: A character-defining personal decision or action where integrity trumps consequences.

---

Women’s History Month: A Matter of Standing

Standing: status, rank, position, station, level, footing, reputation, estimation, stature, eminence, prominence, prestige, esteem, illustriousness, importance, consequence, influence, distinction, noteworthiness, validity, sway, clout

The women of new congress

Women’s History Month isn’t an anniversary I typically celebrate or to which I pay much attention. Early in my career, in fact, like so many of us, I worked hard not to differentiate. Making an issue of being a woman in the workplace seemed to underline the very differences I was trying to equate. However, as I type this, I admit to feeling ashamed of myself and that—though I’m dying to meet Gloria Steinem in real life—I hope she doesn’t inquire about the details of my feminist record. It’s there, but in my younger years I did work harder for what seemed more immediate, achievable goals, like ending the Vietnam War. I would say I don’t feel tragically ashamed, more like the descendant of a suffragette being admonished by her ancestors: “Do you realize what we went through?” I’ve always been on the right side—but not raging. I wanted my career and achievements to speak for, not themselves, but for me. I had earned that standing, regardless of gender, I felt. Looking back, after learning how hard it was to be heard, even when you did everything right—even way beyond right—I wonder what on earth I was thinking about. Why did I feel I had to prove anything?

Standing: That Which Is Assumed for Others Often Needs to Be Earned or Proven for Women

Lori Lightfoot (right) and Toni Preckwinkle, run-off candidates for mayor of Chicago

Shame is certainly not the word I apply to this past year. This is a shout-it-from-the-rooftops time. From the speak-up success of #MeToo to the feminism of Congress (I love saying that) to the fact that in my city of Chicago, we are going to have an African-American woman as mayor. She might even be a lesbian. Those aren’t the reasons I’d vote for a mayor, but it’s all pretty cool to see that the field is feminine, so the choice is gender neutral. I’m hoping the campaign will be civil and issues-oriented. The road is rocky ahead, as we can already see from snide comments about these remarkable women. Yet, to be standing tall on this road is significant.

The Issue Is Long-Standing

The extraordinary and hard-earned events of the year aren’t, however, why the standing of women has been on my mind. I launched a novel in the fall, The Fourteenth of September, a woman’s story of Vietnam. I’ve been talking about it across the country and answering continuing questions about why I would write a book about that war from a woman’s point of view: What was my intention? Why would it matter? How could there be a story if women weren’t even in the war? Their lives weren’t on the line, were they? These aren’t judgmental questions, they come from a point of genuine curiosity, and an eventual thrill that there even is a story about women during that war.

The discussions have been like peeling an onion. The first comments are usually from men, sharing their experiences of the Draft Lottery, but then, slowly but surely, the women’s questions begin. They have stories of experiences as well—of impact, not combat. As the queries deepen, so do my answers, and I find myself going back to my childhood where issues of inequity began for so many of us. Mine was a bit unusual, so the disconnect was clearer.

Both my parents were in World War II. My mother actually saw much more action than my father (I’ve always loved saying that). She was a nurse, a first lieutenant, overseas for three years. My father was sent to Panama, out of the war, and came to Europe after D-Day but in time for the Battle of the Bulge. I don’t want to compare their experiences and assess which one had it worse, since that will undermine my whole point, but the details are significant to set up the issue.

Edith Finnemann Hoey, 1st Lt., Army Nurse Corps

My mother had stories (and scrapbooks) that we pried out of her years later that were amazing: in Patton’s army, helping perform meatball surgery in twenty-hour shifts in a tent on the front, dipping her cup into a tub of cold coffee to keep awake before rotating behind the lines for a little rest before it would start all over again; part of a team on VE day that liberated Stalag 11 in Heidenheim, Germany. As the daughter of Danish immigrants she could understand German, and when the captured men smiled and called the Americans names—just like in the movies—she giggled that she could wait for the killer moment, then answer back in their own language, showing she had understood all along, stunning them that this twenty-six-year-old farm girl could smack them back in place. It was cold in Heidenheim, and the prisoners had little clothing. They were huddled in the fetal position to keep warm . . . for years. Her job, as head of triage, was to take their limbs and try to pull them apart to see if there was any range of motion, any hope for life. Just take a moment to imagine what that would be like. But she didn’t want to talk about it. Not, we thought, because most vets didn’t, but because she had found that “no one wanted to hear it.”

When conversations began, she was usually shut down with “but you were just a nurse.” It was my father who was the sanctioned target of a bullet that could kill him, so his stories were the real war stories. My mother didn’t have the necessary standing to be taken as seriously, so she went silent. Eventually she began to agree—maybe what she’d been through hadn’t been that important after all. Maybe her contribution hadn’t been that significant.

Even as a child I remember thinking it so odd that the war experiences of my parents would be assessed and weighed differently. It didn’t make sense. They were equally brave and patriotic. What they went through was equally dangerous and horrific. Why would a scale be applied? Though my mother’s life could also have been lost, it wasn’t technically on the line. She didn’t have standing. Therefore, she didn’t have respect. And yet, though I could imagine my father shooting someone, I couldn’t picture him having the patience and compassion to slowly coax frozen limbs away from bony rib cages and out into the light.

Do We Need Standing for Respect?

When it came to Vietnam, the war of my generation, I was surprised to see similar circumstances happen firsthand. In the antiwar movement, where so many women were involved, despite early feminism it was often very hard to be taken seriously. In the depths of the terror over the Draft Lottery, you could participate, organize, empathize, comfort, but—as you could be told in a snap—you could never really understand what the guys were going through because you would never face a bullet or wonder if you could kill someone. We were often marginalized, just at the point when we felt we were breaking through with our own contributions. We didn’t have the standing to be taken seriously.

The Fourteenth of September is a story of those women. My intention was to pose a female dilemma with the same gravitas and emotional intensity as the decision the men had to make about going to Vietnam to die or to Canada, another kind of death. I call it a Coming of Conscience novel. I wanted to explore how a woman would approach the decision of integrity trumping consequences, how she’d weigh the same factors of duty, security, future, and conscience. It’s as close as I could come. I wanted to give my character Judy the standing she deserved, and, I suppose, however little and late, my mother.

Before my mother died, she talked about how disappointed she was. She’d felt her daughters would fare so much better without the many restrictions of her time. Though there’d been a lot of change, she thought that in her long ninety-year lifetime, we’d have settled this issue of standing.

Standing Tall

My mother has been gone for over a decade but would have been gratified about the achievements of women in this year, celebrated in this Women’s History Month. We’re far from settled, but we are certainly standing taller and perhaps, at some point, we’ll naturally loom so large we won’t have to think of it at all. And someday Women’s History will just be History.

In the interim, I won’t let it pass. I’ve scheduled posts and Facebook ads on the issues I’m writing about, and I’m celebrating. Today, I totally assume standing for my story, for my “record,” and I’m standing up—just like Mom.

My mother, sometime in the 1940’s, standing tall and fearless. I have no doubt she’d pull that trigger.

---

Thank You: The Coming of Conscience Scholarship Is Fully Funded with 200+ Applicants to Date

SOCIAL GIVING CAMPAIGN

Coming of Conscience: A character-defining personal decision or action where integrity trumps consequences.

The tag line for my book The Fourteenth of September, which came out this fall, is “A Coming of Conscience Novel,” a designation intended to echo yet distinguish it from the typical coming of age experience. In the story, which takes place during one of the most difficult times in our country’s history—The Vietnam War—the main character, Judy Talton, is plunged into a dangerous journey of self-discovery. She ultimately makes a character-defining decision with huge ramifications for who she is and what she will become. Her dilemma parallels that of America at the time: What are we if we stay in Vietnam? Who are we if we leave?

I call her decision a “Coming of Conscience,” which I define as an issue of character—when integrity trumps consequences. One of the concerns at stake for Judy is the hard-won scholarship that is her ticket to the independent future she desperately desires.

Paying It Forward

In the spirit of Judy’s journey, as part of the launch of The Fourteenth of September, I initiated a social giving program to fund a scholarship at Northern Illinois University, the real-life model for the fictional college in the novel. The scholarship is intended to encourage young people in today’s equally challenging times to engage in meaningful activism and bold personal responsibility. It’s to be awarded to the student who best demonstrates their understanding of what Coming of Conscience means to them, and their plan for how they will use their degree to help change the world in whatever way their beliefs guide them.

When the program was launched, I asked you to help me fund the scholarship either by sharing my posts or a photo of your copy of the novel, or by making a short video to share your own personal Coming of Conscience moment. For each involvement I donated money to the scholarship fund, and some of you also gave direct cash contributions.

I thank you so much for your participation and I’m happy to report that the $10,000 scholarship is fully funded and that there are a record-breaking 200+ applicants.

We Can STILL Change the World

WATERGATE PROSECUTER AND MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR, JILL WINE-BANKS.

Back in Judy’s day, young people spoke out and ended a war. Here in the present, we’re faced with many issues and choices… all of which have consequences, many of which involve integrity. Now more than ever, we need Coming of Conscience moments to define the character of each of us, and of our country.

The essays of the scholarship applicants speak of dreams and plans that are bold and meaningful, and I’ll share some of them in future posts. Meanwhile, thank you for your help in making those thoughts crystallize, the first step in making change happen.

Help grow the Coming of Conscience Scholarship at Northern Illinois University and inspire more talented students toward activism and growth into their personal, social and political maturity. For information on ways to give, please call our toll-free number, 1-877-GIV-2NIU (1‑877-448-2648)

---

December 1, 1969: A Date Which Will Live in Irony

First birth date being selected in the First Vietnam Draft Lottery

Forty-nine years ago tomorrow was the date of the first Vietnam Draft Lottery, the day the phrase “to win the lottery” became, not a prize, but a death sentence. It was also a marker for a generation not unlike December 7, 1941, the date of the Pearl Harbor attack, characterized by then president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, as a “Date Which Will Live in Infamy,” a phrase which itself featured an ironic word referring to the dark side of famous. Perhaps that’s what war does to us? Keeps us mired in subtext, unable to talk straight.

I named my debut novel The Fourteenth of September, the birth date of the Number One lottery “winner” drawn on 12/1/69—straightforward, and crystal clear. All irony upfront and intended.

When Your Birthday Became Your Destiny

CLICK TO SEE VIDEO CLIP OF ACTUAL LOTTERY DRAWING ON 12/1/1969

It was the day a new program was implemented to determine the order of the draft-age men who would go to Vietnam at a time when the life expectancy under fire could be as low as six seconds. Pieces of paper with each of the 365 days of the year were placed into individual plastic capsules, mixed together in a giant container and pulled out, one by one. If your birthday was the first date pulled, you were Number One, and so on. If your number was 100 or under, you were most likely a dead man walking, on your way Vietnam. If your number was 300 or higher, you were considered safe, and could feel free to “live your life as you’d planned,” and also, according to President Nixon, stop protesting the war, which was the whole point. If you were in the 200s, you were in limbo. The new system would be “fair,” they said. And, in fact, the definition of a lottery is “an event with an outcome governed by chance.” And chance is always fair, right? Just like destiny.

But it’s also something you can’t hide or protect yourself from. All you could do was hold your breath and pray as you waited to hear your birthday, a date once so joyous, to be called in fateful order. You’d never think of it the same way again.

A Real-Life Horror Story

Click to read Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”

I’d already learned not to trust the word lottery. The first horror story I’d ever read was “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson’s Twilight Zone-like story of a drawing where the “winner” is stoned to death. It was magnificent and terrifying. I read it in school, as so many of us did. The New Yorker just ran it again for Halloween and I shared it, netting an angry comment from a Facebook friend who’d had the wits scared out of her by being forced to read it in sixth grade by a teacher she still can’t forgive.

That’s how I’ve always felt about the actual Draft Lottery. It scattered our wits to smithereens. And, though people with high numbers felt they were “lucky,” and if pressed you’d had to concede it was “fair,” no one thought it was humane. Even today, it’s still impossible to forgive.

All those capsules with “winning” birth dates, mixed up really good, chosen, opened, and pinned in order to a bulletin board. Seriously? Regardless of how it worked out in the end, on December 1, 1969, the Draft Lottery presented as a sick game show to determine who would die first—and on television! This was a formal government program being administered as a spectacle. Not quite Wheel of Fortune, but right up there. Hunger Games without the panache. How had this already surreal war come to this? I was astonished at the time, wondering if Jackson would demand royalties for having her concept usurped by the military. The last line of “The Lottery,” sums it up best. “It isn’t fair, it isn’t right.”

The Stories We Still Carry

milo ventimiglia in Vietnam Arc of NBC's This is us

During this fall’s launch of my novel, which coincides with the time frame of the build up to first Draft Lottery, I’ve had many audience members share their lottery numbers, or those of their fathers or other relatives. I get emails with only a number in the subject line: 151…263…319… and from a surprising number of people who were born on September 14. Those of the time still want to share their stories of chance won or lost, survivor guilt, close calls, friendly doctors, fortunate injuries, mixed-up records, turning the upper age limit of 26 just in time, being thankful for once in their lives for being too short, too tall, too fat, too thin. All are touching, surprising, different. Many comments are about the generation gap between patriotic WWII parents and Vietnam-era children, who knew this war was very different but not how to articulate it to be understood by mom and dad. Some are terrible: a friend called his father with his 300+ number and instead of rejoicing was told he should now be a man and enlist. Some are wonderful: a business leader’s father told him later in life that he’d had it all planned that if his son was drafted, the entire family would move with him to Canada.

Those of one generation want to share; those of another have questions. Younger audience members are curious. They want to know the details; they can’t believe the details. They can’t believe no one talks about this. Lots of them saw the lottery episode on The NBC television program This Is Us back in October. The show is in a story arc where a son is seeking to learn about his father’s experiences in Vietnam so he can better understand himself and the dynamics of his own family. That’s it in a nutshell—why it’s important to remember and understand history. It teaches us, if we confront it unafraid, for the lessons it holds. It also shows us we still don’t have the answers we didn’t have back then.

The Stories We Have Yet to Tell

The story I tell in The Fourteenth of September is a rare female point-of-view of that time, specifically of women on college campuses. There, the largest concentration of draft-age men in the country were their classmates—frantic and furious—waiting for their lottery numbers, and for the long war to end before they graduated or flunked out and their numbers would kick in.

Lottery Night from a women's POV, as read by the author 10/4/2018

I spent December 1, 1969 being nudged out of the communal television room in my dorm. The Lottery drawing would be telecast that evening. The room was small with limited seating. No room for the girls who’d gathered there for support. We couldn’t possibly understand what the guys were going through, or so we’d been repeatedly told. That wasn’t fair either.

I vividly remember the day I came up with the idea for the female protagonist of my novel to have the same birthday as the Number One. Read the chapter here. I’d long been seeking a dilemma for my main character that would be as emotionally intense as what the men of the time were going through—a way to exemplify how deeply, and equally, women were involved, not because their lives were on the line like the men, but because their generation was on the line. We were all “in it” together, side by side.

I don’t recall the sequence of events that led to the aha! moment, but I do remember thinking the title idea was good. I had dinner with a friend that night and told her. The shudder that went through her was all I needed to see. That shudder is what I want every reader to feel. That with the flip of the chromosome coin, anyone could be Number One. On December 1, 1969, we were all Number One.

But that’s still only one story of women of the time. At a recent book event I met the daughter of Curtis Tarr, the government official charged with revamping the selective service system which, until it became the Draft Lottery, had been insufficiently random. Tarr had been vilified during the day, the target of many of the people I wrote about in The Fourteenth of September. She remembers suffering through it as a teenager, about it being unfair. There are so many stories we’ve been afraid to tell.

The Fourteen of September is one; perhaps hers will be next.

The Lessons of the Lottery: It’s Time for Another Coming of Conscience

In a famous Star Trek episode, the population of a planet in a future world took pride in the fact that they’d eliminated war. Instead, after times of political conflict when war would be inevitable, it was instead simulated by computer. After, individuals identified as those who would have been casualties had the war been “real”—would get notices to report to extermination centers, where they would obediently submit to painless and efficient deaths. They were so proud they’d come up with such a civilized way to conduct war without damage to their fine cities.

Throw birth dates into a container, draw lots from a box, computerize casualties, create volunteer armies of those with few other opportunities. Civilized? You’d think we’d have figured it out by now.

War may be pointless, as the Ken Burns documentary The Vietnam War illustrated so well, but it’s apparently also irresistible, as evidenced by the rapidly multiplying hot spots around the globe. It’s also ever random. Anyone can be in it. With a blink of an eye, one less chromosome, or an emotional tweet, we—or someone we love—can become a soldier deployed to a war zone, a refugee fleeing civil strife in Syria or gang wars in Honduras, or their mothers facing loss. All of us casualties of chance.

How we choose to confront war/conflict shows who we are—our character, our conscience. Do we unite or separate? Sacrifice our young or disadvantaged, or find a better way? Chance is the lottery of life. As long as someone is in a war, we’re all in it.

The subtitle of The Fourteenth of September is “A Coming of Conscience Novel.” It’s about the development of character. My female protagonist’s journey of self-discovery mirrors what the country was debating at the time. Who are we if we stay in Vietnam? What are we if we leave?

On this anniversary day of the Vietnam Draft Lottery, the country is in another Coming of Conscience moment. We’re again fighting for our character, on many fronts. What do we stand for today? What are we to be relied upon for and by whom? When does integrity trump consequences? We’ve come full circle in the hamster wheel of history. How ironic.

Back on December 1, 1969, I’d never considered what my own number would have been had chance dictated I’d been born a boy. I looked it up as I was considering the title for my novel, hoping it would be a single digit, for optimum dramatic effect. I was born on November 4. I would have been #266…

I would have been in limbo…

With no more control over my life than a Central American mother fleeing certain death for her children, a poor inner city kid who enlisted for college money stationed in the Middle East, or a war orphan in Yemen.

---

Fifty Years Ago Today: When the Whole World Finally Started Watching

They always say that Vietnam was the first war we saw in our living rooms as we watched the nightly TV news. I don’t recall those images as much as I should have, but I absolutely remember the night I watched the war at home—as I sat on the ’60s-splashed orange-flowered couch in the living room—when the police jumped out of the paddy wagon and began beating young people. This was happening in my hometown, only an hour from the suburb where I lived. And I was watching it with my mother—a World War II veteran. It was when the generation gap disappeared for us for a brief moment. It was the first time we agreed in months, and the last time we’d agree, for a long, long time. This was inexcusable. This was not America.

Another Golden Anniversary from the Year that Turned the World on Its End

It was fifty years ago today that the Democratic Convention in Chicago was held, finishing off a long reign of the Democratic Party that began with the great hope of John Kennedy and ended in tragedy—with major achievements undermined by an inability to end the Vietnam War. It also shattered the image of Chicago as the City that Worked, super-charged the antiwar effort, and polarized the nation.

Until the violent images appeared on television, I remember that, though the war was heavy on our minds, it was hard to get really engaged around the convention. It seemed the country’s leaders were offstage or running out of gas just when we needed them the most. The two candidates of hope were gone or fading. Bobby Kennedy had just been assassinated, and after that, Gene McCarthy seemed to have lost heart and energy.  We were left with Hubert Humphrey, the VP of a president that by this time was so reviled and exhausted he gave up and didn’t even try running for another term—and Nixon. I was too young to vote, but I knew that whatever happened, it would be my age group the next administration would be putting on the line.

Meanwhile the Vietnam War was Raging

There’s a lot of coverage that will be coming out today, talking about the specifics of what happened here in Chicago during that time, and why. There’s already been pretty heavy examination. The Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern just finished a remarkable series on “The Media Legacy of Chicago ’68,” that reminded us that this is where the phrase “The Whole World Is Watching” began. The convention was also the first instance of politicians claiming what we now call “fake news” and vilifying the media. It was the event that caused police to be trained ever after in crowd control and, significantly, it was the first time raw footage went right to broadcast: No editing, no editorializing—YOU WERE THERE. Twenty seconds of film of cops jumping out of a paddy wagon and clubs doing what they shouldn’t be doing, and more and more after that. We’d see worse soon enough at Kent State. But this was first. This got the attention of the world. This was a police state in Chicago: Vietnam on Michigan Avenue.

We Were Already Pretty Spooked

By the time of the convention, we were in the eighth month of a year that every quarter had brought us a new horror—from the Tet Offensive to two assassinations. We weren’t numb yet; your faith that regular life would—had to—prevail was still pretty strong. You felt like if you just kept your head down... you could duck until it all settled back into rationality.

I’d just graduated from high school and made a bargain with myself to get the thing I most wanted—the future promised by a college education—but from the military, the entity that was involved in what was to become the greatest tragedy of my generation. A year later, the "deal" seemed almost Faustian to my teenaged self. But at the time I was trying to make it work. My induction ceremony had taken place only a few weeks earlier.

My mother had encouraged/pushed the move (it’s what she’d done), and she wasn’t broaching any second thoughts. Both my parents were vets from “The Good War” and couldn’t really see that you couldn’t say that about this war... until we saw the paddy wagon pull up.

I remember my mother covered her mouth with her hand and held it there, long after the clip played—this woman who had weathered twenty-hour surgery shifts in field hospitals on the front and the liberation of a prison camp.  We were both stunned, both grasping for a comment that would encompass the horror of the moment. When her hand came down, she couldn’t look at me—her gaze was still fixed on the screen. There was just a deep, long sigh. I joined her. We sighed and nodded. Words wouldn’t bridge the gap, but this did.

My Coming of Age

I think it happened in that moment, quick and profound. I spent the rest of the summer winnowing the piles of what I was planning to bring to my new dorm, from clothes to record albums. I fixated on those, for some reason. I knew the Beatles had to come with me, but I was going to college, maybe I should listen to more grown-up music—maybe it was time to give up childish things.

I chose a Johnny Mathis album, one of Sinatra’s, and gave The Association Greatest Hits to my ten-year-old brother.

Nothing actually changed between my mother and me, but when we argued in the future we were both aware we knew better. We were aware that way down deep we agreed at least on this one fact—“my” war was nothing like “her” war.

Eventually, I gave up my military scholarship and took back my Association album. My brother called me an Indian-giver, and I bought him a new one. We both still have them.

---

First Look: Premiering My New Book Trailer

It’s time to take a break from marking all these important—but sad—anniversaries of events that happened around the time frame of my novel and share some fun stuff as I move toward the fall publication of The Fourteenth of September.

Grab Your Popcorn

Sylvia Perez Productions, the namesake company led by the multi-talented television news anchor, video producer and long-time friend, has assembled a powerful trailer that capsulizes my complicated story, sets it firmly in its historical time frame and underlines why it’s important. Take a look.

Chew Fast—It’s Only Two Minutes

Discover & share this Reactions GIF with everyone you know. GIPHY is how you search, share, discover, and create GIFs.

Share Your "Review"

Let me know what you think. 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼

---

Remember Kent State, May 4, 1970: An Iconic Moment for a Generation... A Coming of Conscience for a Country

The Iconic Kent State Photo

Recently, while promoting the fall publication of my novel, The Fourteenth of September, which takes place during the pivotal 1969-1970 years of the Vietnam War, I was asked if—of the many iconic moments in American history that happened during that time period— one had impacted me more than any other.

I paused to consider the word iconic... icon—a symbol. No question. It was the Kent State Massacre, a symbol at the time of the total chasm between the government and the youth it was supposed to be protecting: the bridge too far that blew away most of the remaining support for the war, though it’s death throes dragged on another five years.

48 Years and We Still Remember

Every May fourth since 1970 there has been media coverage of the shootings, always featuring the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of fourteen-year-old Mary Ann Vecchio with arms outstretched in agony and disbelief, kneeling above the body of twenty-year-old Jeffrey Miller. An iconic image of how we felt. Agony and disbelief. This is America? How had it come to this?

We know the facts: The National Guard fired into a crowd of students protesting the war’s expansion into Cambodia. Sixty-seven rounds over thirteen seconds killing four, wounding nine, permanently paralyzing one. The massive national student strike after. A turning point in how the country viewed the war. It was just too much to kill kids.

Early Alternative Facts

It all began with a lie—and it was bald-faced. Nixon was elected because he said he'd end the war—something his predecessor, Johnson, hadn't been able to do. His Administration said we were winding down. Hard as it may be to believe from the vantage point of today, media was limited. We only heard one side and assumed what we were told was true—though obviously that was disavowed later on many levels, most recently in the Ken Burns documentary The Vietnam War.

But, suddenly, on April 30, 1970 it's announced we just bombed Cambodia. It was earth-shattering. The war was being accelerated, not contained. Of course, there were protests; of course they were full of anger; of course those protests would be on campus where the populations of draft-age men were among the largest. We had just been through the roulette of the Draft Lottery and the news about My Lai. Nerves were raw, rage was high.  Above all, trust was waning, and this Cambodia lie just wiped it out. How could we believe anything the government told us ever again?

And then, to top it off, unbelievably, students were shot dead at one of those protests. It was the very definition of a word we were just beginning to use to describe what we thought were mind-expanding experiences: surreal.

Where Were You When You Heard?

The Memorial to Jeffrey Miller, Bordering Where He Fell, on the Kent State Campus

I think many people of my generation can tell you where they were and what they were doing when they first heard about Kent State, just like all the assassinations that punctuated that time—King, the two Kennedys. I remember walking into the Student Union with a few others and being shocked to hear my friend, Tommy Aubry, screaming from the top of the stairs, “They’re Shooting Us! They’re Shooting Us!” We didn’t know what he was talking about. He pointed to the only television set in the Union and ran past us to shout the news to others.

We didn’t believe it at first. Who would? They must have shot over their heads. It had to be an accident. Surely no one was actually dead. It was too fantastic to comprehend... until we had to. The truth of it was horrible. It wasn’t enough that we could be sent to Vietnam to die; we could die here.

They Could Shoot Us, Too!

I came across a quote by the survivor, Gerald Casale, that summed up a student’s point of view. “It completely and utterly changed my life. I was a white hippie boy and then I saw exit wounds from M1 rifles out of the backs of people I knew...”

Abraham and Isaac Sculpture in Commemoration of the KENT STATE Shootings, at Princeton University

In an era of embryonic diversity awareness, it was astounding that supposedly the most cherished of us all were now being killed just outside a quiet Midwestern town. Anything could happen next. Casale founded the band Devo, creating music and a movement as a result of his experience.

I have a chapter in my book you can read here that’s based on what happened at the campus I was on. It was not something I had to research. I still remember every second.

Within days after the shootings, the National Guard actually did arrive on my campus, and we thought we were also going to be killed—another chapter, another iconic situation. We were still teenagers and most of us had been pretty sheltered, but now we understood what it must be like for those fighting for civil rights in the south, for anyone living day in and day out in any country at war. It was a sobering lesson. We were truly in what we called "the war at home."

According to the final report on the Kent State Massacre by the President’s Commission on Campus Unrest: “It was unnecessary, unwarranted, inexcusable”—an iconic symbol of the war that caused it.

 

A Coming of Conscience Moment. America Said No!

The subtitle of my novel is “A Coming of Conscience,” because it was a time when we weren’t just growing up and Coming of Age. In addition—by the way we chose or were forced to cope with the situations presented by the Vietnam War—we were each defining our own character. We were each faced with decisions where integrity could—or should—trump consequences (pun intended). Would I go to Vietnam or to Canada?  If I join ROTC (Reserve Officers' Training Corps) am I being realistic or complicit? If I put my head in the sand and try to ignore it all am I being apathetic, cowardly or just understandably self-preserving?

We’re in a period now where we’re questioning our leadership and taking our positions to the streets with massive marches more than ever before. It’s our right and our privilege, and they don't fire on us—we feel safe. One reason is that on May 4, 1970, the country looked aghast at the bodies of those dead children and decided that this was not who we were. This was not our character. It was a coming-of-conscience moment for the country.

It all reminds me of watching Apocalypse Now, a brilliant film that I admired greatly but could never see a second time. Viewing it made me feel I’d personally been through the war. It told the Heart-of-Darkness story of Colonel Kurtz, who embodied "the horror," as he put it, of how we would actually have to behave to win such a war. In the movie, the government has sent an assassin to eliminate him, because as a people we couldn’t accept that Krutz is what we’d have to become to do what Washington considered so essential—continue as the country that had never lost a war.

With Kent State, the horror rang through every level of America. Is this what it’s come to? We answered, “No.”

 May 4, 2020, will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the massacre. Over the coming years, let’s remember and honor what happened at Kent State. And, in this current moment of dubious facts, incredible re-interpretations of truth and Never Again, let’s think of what else is on the conscience of the country to which we should also be saying, “No, that’s not who we are.”

Publication Date: September 18, 2018

Now available for pre-order.

---

Hell No, Never Again. We Are All In The Shot Together.

Watching the news on Valentine’s Day about the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, my mind raced back ten years—Valentine’s Day 2008. That year, too, broadcasts broke a story of horror mid-day, shattering a holiday celebrating love. A young man with a shotgun and two pistols had killed five students, injured seventeen and shot himself at my alma mater, Northern Illinois University, in a lecture hall where a few decades earlier I had taken many classes. More than one student in my preferred section of seating didn’t make it. At any random stroke of time one of those casualties could have been me, could have been one of my friends, could have been my second cousin who was a senior at NIU at the time. I wasn’t there, but I was. I was in the shot. It goes without saying the 2008 shooter was mentally unstable. You don’t kill kids if you’re fine. But nine years after Columbine, all I could think of was how did he GET THOSE GUNS? Why did we in a modern society HAVE THOSE GUNS?  From then on I voted with my anger. A pro-gun stance by a candidate was no longer just “on the list,” it was enough to reprioritize a lot of other issues. As an adult, I had standing—the power of a vote. I’d waited a long time for that standing, thought it was enough. Thought, as we said back in the day, the system would work if we were just part of it. Alas…

Hell No, We Won’t Go

Back in 2018, I put down the remote, and my mind raced again, back farther to a time when I didn’t have that power, to a time when, like the Florida kids, I didn’t have standing. Those issues of that era propel the characters in my novel, The Fourteenth of September. The details were different, but the essence was the same—a complex issue standing in the way of life for children. In the time of the Vietnam War, another generation were teenagers. The average age of draftees was nineteen; voting age was twenty-one. Life expectancy under fire was measured in seconds. We were being killed, and those who should have protected us—our government, our institution—were mired in what ifs and, as we said, were “part of the problem, not the solution.” Our WWII-era parents were upset but not so much that they were mobilizing to successfully vote out the hawks. At Kent State, legal guns were turned on us. No, not the same as mass school shootings, but we knew what dead kids dropping around us felt like. We knew how the endless series of more and more dead bodies terrified us, whether in a jungle far away or in a school demonstration gone bad. Yep. Got that. It could be me. Or, you right next to me. We were in the shot. Remember?

THIS IS BS! … but in good way

Emma Gonzalez: presidential potential some day?

Today, Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg, and a generation of other young people are also without standing and very much in the shot. Gonzalez, a wonderfully outspoken girl from Marjory Stoneman Douglas called it like she saw it, and she’s right. She cuts through the crap of all the “why not” reasons—"The Domino Theories” of gun control—and gets to the core of how it should be seen—as bullshit!—and I finally feel that real change has a chance. The response of these amazing, angry kids from Florida is so tragically familiar, and wondrously hopeful. 

For the first time in a long time, all the ingredients for real action are in place.

Fear—they’re targets and they’re being killed. Anger—they aren’t being protected by the government and institutions that are there FOR THAT REASON. Disappointment—many parents are trying to vote out the gun guys, but the lobbies are strong and multi-issue voting hasn’t worked. Outrage—those of us with influence have had enough time and sufficient opportunities to do something, and we haven’t. Lack of power—they don’t have the vote. And, it’s personal. They are in the shot.

Abbie Hoffman & david hogg: too good at this? must be Professional instigators or actors really?

These are the factors that in my day stopped a war. These are the factors that ended racist Jim Crow laws in the South. Today, these are the same factors that can stop guns. These kids are making us understand, with fury and social media, and more than a few tricks from our day. I smiled in solidarity as they walked out on March 14th, and plan to do it again every 14th, just like our Moratoriums Against the War.

Things are already starting to turn. There’s even talk of moving the voting age to sixteen. As Laurence Steinberg said in the New York Times on March 2, “The proposal to lower the voting age is motivated by today’s outrage that those most vulnerable to school shootings have no say in how such atrocities are best prevented.” Sound familiar?

 

 

Wild in the Streets or Protesting at the Polls? Our Choice

In 1968 a popular movie  came out called Wild in the Streets. Kids took over. The new President was only twenty-five. People who hit thirty were dosed with LSD, draped in white togas and left to wander through the forest. It was a cautionary tale. Things can get pretty outrageous when you aren’t being listened to. No BS.

I don’t think we should get rid of everyone over thirty, nor am I ready to say the voting age should be sixteen without a lot more thought. But I am here to say that we—the anti-war generation—knows how to do this, and we can help by marching with and voting for these kids, in their place, on their behalf and in every sense of the word.

We Can Still Change the World

This all means we can STILL change the world. That rallying call was the obligation of my generation—our noblesse oblige, if you will, for being the first generation living in enough freedom to follow our passion. We knew how to do it—we stopped a war. We lowered the voting age to eighteen. We didn’t think we could do it, but we did.

These kids can stop the mass shooting war raging around them. But without standing, they need our help. This is a time for marching and voting.

Be their proxy. This week and beyond vote for candidates who know where guns belong—and where they don’t. Join the students in the streets on March 24th. Join them anytime on social media. With all of us standing for and beside them, even the NRA can stand down. And the world will change.

---