system. thank you all so much for coming out tonight. tonight we are hosting the photography for howard ruffner, who during his college years i can say university, was a photographer for the yearbook as well as the newspaper. his book tonight, moment of truth is a collection of more than 150 of his photos that surround the kent state massacre of 1970, in which four students lives were lost. so without further ado, please welcome howard ruffner.

well, first of all, i have to say it's nice to see familiar faces out here. lots of people from pasadena village and relatives by my daughter is out here with her. my son in law. his parents are here. and it's really kind of people from the area where i live. but most of all, i've got to thank my my wife for being here. my wife, laura, because she'll just raise her hand. as most of you know, whenever you endeavor on a real good project, your spouse is the one who picks up the other stuff. and la kept me organized, kept me going and made sure i didn't lose too much of a focus of where i was going with this. so let me get started. the intention of my book is to let you know more about me. in the beginning, before i attended kent state. my introduction to photogs fee

and then the rest of the story starts with when i enrolled at kent state in march of 1969. and i'll give you a glimpse of the campus life i knew before may four than the rest of the book is about my photography and experience photographing the events on campus from may one through may 4th. that's me in the photo standing next to my mom, looking up at my newest brother, rick. so that's really something that rick all. the cleveland press back in those days thought a family of six boys made a good human interest story. so they titled it sing a song of six pants. yeah. and the son of photographer our home kept an image of us while i watched as a photographer came into our house, looked around and found a place to gather us all together. he positioned us and took the picture. the photo ran on the front page

of the afternoon paper. the next day above the fold. friends and neighbors couldn't wait to share this front page. we were famous, and this was 1953. here we are, 24 year, 18 years later, we are now seven boys in eight years. my youngest brother, mick, is on the far left. he was still in high school. three of us have been in the service to air force one army. two more will be joining one air force and the other one of the navy. so it was about a year after high school when i enlisted in the air force. during my first two years as a writer in the information office, in waco, texas. i applied was accepted to a group called danfoss defense. the department of defense broadcast specialist course at fort benjamin harrison, indianapolis, indiana. during the eight weeks of

broadcast journalism, we were taught how to write for tv news and incorporate news, film and slide and television broadcasts. after dinner was i was assigned to the american forces philippines network. my duties included editing film. running a television camera during our live news shows. and also broadcast. and this sharp my ability to quickly frame and choose pick compose pictures whether behind a television camera or a handheld 35 millimeter slr. my visual awareness was growing, and later i became the primary news director and got all all the shots at the station. so the base offered me lots of opportunity to take photographs of celebrities, celebrities who visit doing uso shows, many uso shows through the clark airbase with comedians, singers, movie stars, entertain the troops and families and the uso shows were on the way to vietnam.

general benjamin o'day was in this photograph, the highest ranking african-american u.s. air force officer with bob hope upon his arrival at clark air base. davis would later be asked to serve on the president's commission on campus unrest to investigate the shootings at kent state in 1970. many of the photos i took then were used in our daily television show. so it was at clark airbase, where we got seriously involved and photography. this is where i bought my first nikon off camera and lenses. now i had a professional camera. the hobby shop on the base was my escape from work. next came printing my images. here they really taught me how to make a really finished photograph. i had heard watching your own photo appear in developer was just like magic. i was now giving myself assignments and taking pictures daily and printing what i

thought was good. after a while, the photo lab techs encouraged me to enter an air force photo competition. with their encouragement, i entered this photo, which won first place for portraiture. another photo editor. i entered one third place for landscapes. now, having completed in one, gave me a real sense of accomplishment, encouraged me to even get even better. so now that my photo card for now that my photography was taking off, so to speak, i decided to submit a recent photo i took to the news space newspaper. this was my first published photograph. it ran with my credit and it took some planning to get exactly what i wanted. and now i feel that i'm beginning to really become more accomplished as a photographer. so now it's march of 1969, and i've enrolled at kent state university ready to pursue my degree in broadcast journalism.

spring on campus was a time for students to get out and play and enjoy college life beyond books. these students had been involved in anything as silly as a mud fight, probably since they were in elementary school. it seemed like a perfectly natural way to break the ice. get to know your fellow classmates. this helped me realize that there was a lot more to college and just going to class and studying. while i was surprised by seeing this, it just reminded me that it was safe in a playful way to relieve the tensions of school. from what fights to dating, casual friday said not been invented yet. few students for jeans and sneakers were for gym class. it was date night for a sly the family stone concert that spring. sly arrived on stage with mutton chops, long hair in an outrageous hippie outfit. students, however, were their best date night clothes. you know, they looked like they're going to job interviews.

chance student conservative side was apparent at the concert. this was my first student protest photograph. up until now, school is pretty quiet as far as protests were concerned. students had been working on signs and banners during the week and the morning of the anti-war march. it was thursday morning, october 1969. students grabbed signs on a banner as they left the university campus and headed to downtown kent to protest the vietnam war. and they did this on thursday because kent was a suitcase campus. a lot of students went home to akron or canton or nearby kent canton, ohio. it was the kind of school where friday afternoons, weekends, the campus was deserted. the woman standing behind the word l all is alison krauss. i'll tell you more about her later. the anti-war sentiment was on

the minds of many kent students, especially the young men who knew they were deferred from the draft as long as they remained in school. this would change, however, on december first, that year, when the draft lottery was put into place. as a photographer on campus, other than this protest march, most of the protesting i heard was in the classrooms and the student union. the next large antiwar gathering wouldn't occur until may 1st, 1970, when 3 to 500 students would attend a rally to protest nixon's expansion of the war. vietnam war to cambodia. by the fall, the anti-war movement had grown off college's campuses to the mall in d.c. for us from the daily kent state or to decided to drive to washington d.c. to join the anti-war protests on november 15th. just a few weeks after our own homecoming. we arrived friday evening in time to watch people honoring the soldiers who had died in

vietnam. that night, 18 of us slept in one room of a friend's dorm. our feet pointed in, in our heads out. the next morning, we headed to the mall and i was impressed by the size of the crowd and by their focus and steadfast just to be part of something. so big it would make the government take notice. well, this was my first trip to washington, d.c. everything was very new and exciting. the resentment of how familiar people of this continued war could be felt. as i moved my way through the crowd. their determination to have their voices heard was deafening. with the us capitol, the background of these protesters demanded an end to the war. i needed to push my way through the crowds to find out where the march began. and after a lot of walking and nudging my way around, i came to the beginning of the parade. i stood in awe as i spotted coretta scott king and george mcgovern at the front of the parade. i nudged my way through to get as close as i could and took my

photos locked arm in arm. mcgovern and king and others showed the strength or unity of their unity and commitment. and i was moved to be so close to such committed and important people who opposed the war. now, it's may 1st on campus. my first 1970 history graduate student, steve shroff urges a rally of about 300 to 500 students to understand the severity of nixon's decision to invade cambodia. the nixon did this without the consent of congress, and according to steve sherriff nixon murdered the constitution. therefore it was dead and needed to be buried. and with the constitution buried and the crowd beginning to leave, the grad students packed up and went on their way. but one last grad student sees this as an opportunity to speak to the dwindling crowd, to

remind them how important the rally was, and that the discussion about the war needs to continue. and he urged students to return to the same place on june monday, may 4th. and this rally on may 1st took place between 12 noon and 1:00. and both students started leaving just before the lunch period ended. so after the rotc building was set on fire saturday evening, i set up late saturday night into sunday morning and watched as a national guard took up positions on the campus. i had a surreal feeling as i observed the movement of the term troops. where did they come from so quickly? how did they get here? what kind of trouble would happen when students arrive back on campus after the weekend. well, students walked around the burned out rotc building sunday morning as a return to campus. a flimsy wooden fence had been erected. well, they were gone. and national guardsmen were

posted at the building to keep gawkers forgetting, getting too close. the protesting at stop. there are no were no rumors of more protesting or more buildings being set on fire. everything had quieted down. so why weren't the national guard leaving. well, one reason was that around 10 a.m. on may third, ohio governor james rhodes and an entourage of officials arrived on campus. they were there to survey the damage on campus and to determine what they would do about student protesters. the governor was running for a u.s. congressional senate seat and the election was may 5th, just a day later, two days away. and when i heard this, i realized this is viewing of the burned out rotc building was just likely a planned event to get media coverage so he could be splashed across the newspapers and tv around the state. he wanted to impress voters that he was the law and order

candidate so they would send him to washington. they didn't. just using streetlights in searchlight from helicopters. sunday evening i took photos as students staged a sit in at the center of town. they wanted to hear from the mayor of kent and from university president robert white. they wanted to know what was happening, who was in charge, what was a national guard's exact role, where the town and school now under martial law and confusion, reigned all around. on may 4th, around 11:30 a.m., students gathered on the comments to continue the rally of may 1st. i have adjusted this photo to allow specific students to stand out, and if you can't see it very well in the front row are the legs and arms of jeffrey

miller, who is standing behind a female student. so this is jeffrey miller. he was a native of plainville, new york, where he was born in 1952. his right a dog as mary ann vecchio, gesturing to the guard. she'd become the most recognizable man. university student, protester, the most iconic photograph you remember is the day after the cheeseburger. 14 years old, a runaway from florida. there are two shaded individuals in the middle right of the photo. these students are carrying their books as they pass on the way to class. on the right is william schroeder. he was a native of cincinnati, ohio, where he was born in 1950. to his left is sandy scheuer. to compare.

sandy scheuer is a speech therapist, honor student, fully attentive, going to class. she was born in 1949 in youngstown, ohio. i watched a lot as a line of guards, students reached the crest of the hill and the guard continued to advance on them. on the right just under the pagoda is alison krauss. again, that's the person i took a photograph of in 1960 leading the protest parts of the city. alison krauss was a freshman honor student and she was born in cleveland in 1951, 51. and this photo was particularly difficult for we look at because i see her holding hands with the boyfriend very levine and i go back to 1969. remember the original photograph i took of her and the banner that read bring all the troops home? so at this point, the guard seemed to have completed its objective. they were supposed to disperse the students from the crowd that gathered in front of taylor hall

that i showed you earlier. yet the guardsmen were still advancing. now, what more did they need to accomplish? what was their real objective here? what they really wanted was for this all to end. so they could go home. so as the guard continued their marching, they reached the corner of taylor hall. i witnessed the group at the rear turn in unison. some crouched down while others stood. then the gunshots began. of course, i thought they would be shooting blanks. i took a photograph as they turned and fired, and i stood there. then a moment later, i thought to myself, i better get down anyway. i probably look like a good target with these cameras hanging around my neck. and back then the lenses were pretty long and we didn't have a little tiny lenses or cameras. so what i did is i swung my left arm around my camera, my camera bag, and mike went down onto my

i went down to the ground and just as i was getting down, dropping to my knees, i heard a young woman scream, oh, my god, get down there using real bullets. they're shooting real bullets. i was 80 feet in front of the guard when they turned and fired. this --. photo shows the ground in front of taylor hall where the national guard turned and fired. it does not show evidence of anything thrown at the guard or anything that they would have that would have put their lives in danger as they would later testify at the civil trials. and i show this because when you look at a photograph, sometimes you look at what the photographer intended for you to see and what an interest in the first photograph you see the the guns pointed in the air or the bayonet and people looking in. if i go back, you'll see what i mean. and then when we'll talk about somebody, maybe you're not in

the right spot. there was this photo here. the other go next to it, kind of getting close to looking at me in my direction. and i looked around from my crouched position. i spotted john cleary lying wounded to the ground just to my left and a little bit behind me. he was at the base of the metal sculpture in front of taylor hall. i couldn't tell if he was dead or alive. cleary was lucky. he survived a shot of the chest. the first time i saw this photo was more than a week later on the cover of life magazine. someone from life had called me a week before, about 2 a.m. to let me know they had chosen one of my photos from the may 15 for the may 15th cover because i sent unprocessed rolls of film to life in chicago. i had no idea how my film turned out or what my images looked like or what i had captured. i never knew exactly what the cover shot was. and till life hit the newsstands

later that week and i'm sure some of you might remember this cover we got up here. so at the memorial site of the shootings, visitors see these engraved words as they enter the memorial plaza at kent state. if you've not belva morial or kent state recently and you have a chart where you will be getting there from here, but it's a thing to see if you go there. the first word is inquirer. and as i wrote this memoir, i asked myself hundreds of questions about what truth my photographs really captured. who was the blame for killing an unarmed students? what role did the students have where the guardians lives ever at risk? and was there in order to fire for the word learn. shortly after the kent state shootings, i realized that kent

protests and subsequent killings of subsequent killing of students precipitated the closing of colleges and universities around the country. i remember reading about this in the local paper and watched it on television news. it was later estimated that more than 4 million students got more than half the 2551 colleges and universities in the country went on strike during the week of may 4th in response. this is all in response to the kent state shootings, making it the largest student protests in history. then the last word is reflect. i always have been open and willing to share my kent state photos and memories. i have given talks on public schools to all grade levels, college classes and local community groups. however, my proudest moment happened in october of 2016. i told my story about the kent street tragedy and protest at hanoi university, where i was

invited to speak to 200 english speaking graduate undergraduates. and this could never possible without the help from kent state international department. these youngsters that heard about the protests united states had heard about the protests in the united states from their parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles. but this was the first time they had heard the story from someone who actually was there. it was a primary witness. and the other thing that. made this so important to me was just the students at hanoi university in their parents and grandparents recognize that the sacrifice at kent state and all the college campuses, the protests of the war in 1970 was what actually determined the ending of the vietnam war, because then within ten months

of what happened at kent state, 90% of the troops in vietnam were either leaving or scheduled to leave, and they say they recognized that and they i think this they really responded to what i had to say. and actually, the people i told you about, alison krauss, sandy scheuer and jeffrey miller, those are the four students who died, nine, nine students were wounded. and one was crippled for life from the waist down. so i'd like to turn this over to any questions that anybody would have, because i'd be sure to share more than i have here. yes, i'm interested in your transition from a family that had many people in the military and the military that you served in. and how if how your your

experience in the military affected your view of what was going on. if you became an anti-war activist, still some point or or just even anti-war without being an ex? i'm just interested in that that transition or relationship. well, growing up in a family of seven boys born eight years apart and my parents, my dad never drove, we actually didn't have money for college. and as a young, you know, poor middle class kid, i stayed out of school for about a year, working several jobs and trying to go to an extension school, but realized it's not all going to work out very well. and a friend came in one day and decided he was he had just joined the air force and asked me if i wanted to join too, and didn't take but a half a second. i'm with you. you know, i was ready to go as far as the war goes. sure, i was against the war, but

i knew that if i didn't enlist and get g.i. bill money, i could be something other than what i was. because in 1965, when i enlisted, when you got to your draft place, if they drafted you, if the marines didn't have enough marines to fill their quota, you're a marine. you're a marine air force. the navy didn't have that problem. so i thought it was better to enlist. and instead of taking my chances of being an army or marine, and then when i was in the service, i probably didn't have the same experience lots of people did. i have a brother who was a mechanic in vietnam, another one who built roads in vietnam for two years. i wrote press releases in waco, texas and directed tv in the philippines. my view of the war was still the same. i didn't think it was just i had no reason to believe that we needed to be there. and when i got to kent state, i held that view. but my personal desire to do

photography was stronger than my desire to be a protester. and so i chose that in that way. and i had to keep myself a little bit more objectified than trying to do one thing, one side or the other. okay. yes. why do you think the national guard. no, i can i can explain that. really. and it's quite strange. when governor rhodes and all this is in the book. but whenever governor wrote, when governor rhodes arrived on campus, he went and he had his public appearance, but then he had a private appearance in the firehouse office with the. i don't even believe there any kids. it officials or administrators there. fire chief state police, national guardsmen, some

reporters. and he his words were being broadcast also to the i don't want to commodore materials but the facilities where the national guard were being bivouac at. and he made it very clear in his pronouncements that the fire at the fire station that he said these students are worse than the brownshirts of world war two. and we are not going to let them get away with anything. this kind of stuff is going to stop here. they are no longer going to burn or divert on $1,000,000 buildings. building the burnt down was 1942 world war two barracks worth about $100,000, maybe. but he. he gave the guard in that talk, which people could hear permission to use any force they could to stop the protesting. and what became comes were confusion confusing.

and his probably something that needs more answering than whether or not the guard had an ordered fire was why did the university administrate he should give up their role and protect their students. and why did they feel they had to give up their position to let the ohio governor at that time when the ohio governor when governor rhodes gave up, took control of the university, he gave permission to the generals to do whatever they could to stop rioting. and that included that there would be no protests of any kind, peaceful or otherwise, no gathering of students. so a 12 15 on may 4th, a jeep went around the where the students were gathering with excuse me and told the students they had to disperse or suffer the consequences. at that point in time, we didn't know it, but their guns were locked and loaded.

their bayonets were out, they had their gas masks on and even though. if i were to go back to that one photograph, the people in the in the front of the crowd, maybe 3 to 500 protesters. okay. behind them were people who said, yeah, you know, maybe cheerleaders or whatever. and behind that, you just had onlookers at kent state. this was a school of 18,000 students at this time in the number of real protesters was fairly small. so without any further i mean, the the guard just said that you know, they had permission to disperse the crowd. problem is, they didn't have a plan b because kent's a huge campus. like many college campuses. and they chased them and they disappeared. but when you look at the book, you'll see that the guard ended up in what they call a practice

football field, which was surrounded on three sides by a six foot chain link fence. and they had nowhere to go themselves. and the students gathered again right in front of them. they could have gone down back to the rotc building very easily and avoided any kind of intrusion. but they chose to again disperse the students. but from a military standpoint, they chose to do it by chasing them up a hill, giving the guard a 20 foot advantage over the parking lot in the football field. so when they reached that spot, there's a certain number of guard who just turned and fired. we don't know if there's, you know, a lot of conspiracy things about whether in order to fire some people say there were some people sure, there might have been a gunshot, but it really doesn't matter because the guard claimed their lives were in danger. and we know that to be a lie. so regardless of what the guard had said, they shot and fired. and it took ten years for the

one guardsmen to admit to a reporter from the akron beacon journal that he intentionally stood there and shot two bullets into joe lewis, the student who was 60 feet in front of the guard where they fired. so there's a lot of secrets, a lot we don't know, but we do know the guard got away with murder that day. a lot of that lying. there was a report that there was a tape where the word fire was heard. right. and have you heard that or any opinion on that? i've heard that. i heard about the tape. i know who has the tape. the person who? the audiologist who did all the you know, listening to it. he's passed away. so he can't testify to anything anymore. i think it's interesting. i was 80 feet in front of the guard when they fired. i didn't hear anything.

it could have happened. but to me, it doesn't matter. i feel that there was a group of guardsmen. there were a group of older, more seasoned guardsmen and it seems that they are the ones who stayed back as they marched up to the hill. and it was only that certain group who turned and fired in a few. go back and look at that picture. you'll see that the general was far ahead. that's one of the things that is confusing about it, because no one knows who had control over the university martial law was never officially proclaimed, but is often thought that it was there. the ohio telephone associate telephone operators, they have a procedure that if a school or any unit or any place where town is under martial law, they cut off telephone lines.

so they were the impression it was under martial law. you said they were they were under the impression it was under martial law, but had never been officially documented. peter todd, back to comment about whether somebody should fire. how much noise were the protesters making per your recollection at that crucial point? well, actually, there was no noise. i mean, the guard were walking up the hill. the students were watching them. i was watching them. and i was kind of alert for because i was a stringer for life magazine at that point in time. and i was just keep my eyes and ears open and trying to be ready for anything that might have happened. that's why i look back a couple of times and look for rocks to be thrown. i didn't see anything. i didn't feel anything. and, you know, i just you know,

i didn't hear anything. so it wasn't i you know, there wasn't really any noise at that point in time until they turned and fired. and then it became, you know, to this day, i still get shook up or have reaction to helicopters flying overhead with searchlights or ambulances racing down a street. and then i could still see the kids being put on gurneys and roll away from the campus that day. so, yes, i'm just sort of as a recap. how did this incident compare to any other university campus violence at the time? i mean, what was this, a huge deal or i mean, as far as i can sort of remember, being really young was that there was violence in berkeley and ucla had a riot. i mean, was this vastly larger than those other larger places? it seems like ohio is kind of, you know, not really on the

forefront. i can't speak completely for those other universities, but i know that i had gone to ohio state several times before the incident at kent state and i had seen national guard in parking lots and protesting. and i think it was more pronounced at other schools, but not. but the burning of the rotc building, which happened on kent at that particular time, was the straw that broke the camel's back for the governor. and and the fact that he was running for public office at a high level, i would think that that's what i would attribute kent state's situation or tragedy to be all about. yeah, i know that schools in east columbia, a lot of violence. berkeley had violence, but not the kind of violence that precipitate hated the national guard to stop anybody physically like they did at kent.

you know, it's just i really it was it became a political thing because governor rhodes was and the mayor it was a new mayor. and on friday evening, there was some rough housing going on and down in the downtown kent after the cambodians asian some trash cans were set on fire at midnight. and so the mayor immediately called for a curfew for town and demanded there be a curfew on campus and in down to who's in control of what? well, one other quick slight. we didn't know who was in charge and for the record, the president, of course, that university, robert white, at 12:00 on monday, may 4th, was having lunch at the brown derby, 20 minutes away with one of the other generals who was in charge of the national guard. give you an idea what's going on.

so. post may 4th, then there were massive demonstration at universities across the country. i lived in seattle at the time and at the university of washington, maybe as many as 10,000 students decided to march downtown to the federal courthouse in protest. and they marched out onto interstate five and shut down the freeway for but to you, in effect, say i did and certainly implied that it was not unusual for universities and to insist public as well as private, to insist on their police forces, the universe, city police retaining control over law enforcement on the campus for and that's what was the case

with the university of washington at that time. the university president. absolutely insisted that the state patrol nor the seattle police department were to come on campus without express permission from the university. and i think that's what happened at kent. they just the mayor gave in very easily to some violence that took place, called governor rhodes. rhodes said the troops in and the troops came in. it was friday. the building was burned on saturday. and i was watching the troops roll in, you know, cleverly under the darkness of the night at 2:00 in the morning, students are still in the dorms. no one can see them. why? you wake up and here we have the national guard. you know, the national guard hadn't been there. i'm not sure they've got a problem at all. stood students, went to rallies back in those days. for one thing. right. to get information and really you know rally wasn't to storm

or take over a building that was decided at the rally but the rallies were to get information and see what you're going to do, what you believe, that what you didn't believe in. we didn't have instant information. and and throughout the book, i try to remind the younger readers that, you know, we didn't have cell phones. you didn't have a tv in every room. well, let me say one of the thing about the book before we close this out, any more questions? but another intent of the book 50 years later? you know, it's very timely right now is that back in the sixties and early seventies, we saw a lot of passion. i mean, and the war i mean, government stuff. we there was a lot of passion with students and our schools. but today their passion is just beginning again with the youth. the united states to end gun violence, climate control. and i'm hoping that the book will help them understand that, you know, keep your passion, keep the