Reflections In Stone

For more information on Reflections In Stone, visit Kent May 4 Center

Reflections In Stone

"When troublemakers have long hair, use bad language and go barefoot and even destroy property, they have to be stopped." Comments in the FBI Report to the Special Grand Jury of Portage County, Ohio

It's lunchtime on a spring day at a university in Ohio. Bill Schroeder, an athletic young psychology major, is heading across campus on his way to class.

Sandy Scheuer, an Alpha Xi Delta sorority sister is walking the long way to a lecture in speech therapy, trying to avoid the crowd gathering near the commons.

Suddenly, shots shatter the air. Screams. Blood and chaos. Safe places vanish-everyone's a target, with nowhere to hide.

Bullets ricochet around Bill Schroeder. One pierces his back. He falls, bleeding.

Students Allison Krause and Barry Levine run from the gunfire, toward an open parking lot. Sheltered between cars, Barry cradles Allison as blood gushes from her wound.

Across the way, a young woman desperately presses a bloody handkerchief to Sandy Scheuer's badly mutilated throat.

After 13 seconds and 61 gunshots, the campus is covered with the injured and the dead.

It's like a page from today's headlines-the deadly shootings at Columbine High School, Littleton, Colorado. Heritage High, Conyers, Georgia. The Jewish Community Center, Granada Hills.

But it's not a scene from today. It happened almost 40 years ago, on the campus of Kent State University. Four students were shot and nine others wounded by members of the National Guard, called in to suppress a "potential riot" following protests during the Vietnam War.

The End of the Sixties

This is a film about May 4, 1970--the day the Sixties died. It's a tragedy that was building throughout one of the most tumultuous eras of modern time. From rock music and the free love movement to assassinations and the Vietnam War, we'll see how divisions between right and left, young and old, hippie and conservative grew into a "generation gap" so wide that for an instant, firing a gun at your own chidren became an acceptable way to express frustration.

We'll delve into the mindset of the Sixties to understand how years of mounting social tensions literally exploded out of the guns of the National Guard. We'll examine in detail the moments that led to pulling those triggers-and why, in that instant, the Guardsmen lost all restraint. And we'll consider how the killings at Kent State have hauntingly familiar parallels in the climate of violence that threatens our society at the beginning of the 21st Century.

The war comes home "If it takes a bloodbath, then let's get it over with." --Ronald Reagan Governor of California

People were shocked and outraged over the use of violence on an American campus.

But perhaps more shocking to some was the fact that the majority of Americans supported the actions by the National Guard.

Media reports of the day reflected the establishment's point of view-that the Guard was protecting life and property against a dangerous, rioting mob.

But history would prove that story to be biased and inaccurate.

The killings at Kent State marked a new page on the national calendar: the war in Vietnam had truly come home. And the public's general acceptance of the shootings carried a message that today, seems strikingly familiar: that public institutions can use violence to bring about a justifiable end. Even gunning down unarmed students to preserve law and order.

"Reflections in Stone" is being produced as an almost 40 year remembrance of a dark moment in American history, a moment that marks the end of an era--and the start of a long march toward the end of the Vietnam War.

"Reflections in Stone" will tell this complex story through the eyes of five individuals who are impacted by the events of May 4, 1970 at Kent State University. The narrative is told with first person accounts, in their own words throughout the film.

These include: John Filo, a student photographer who unwittingly was in the middle of the action; Charles Fassinger, as Colonel in the National Guard on the day of the shooting he played a major role in the Guard's defense throughout the civil trials which lasted for ten years; George Janik, who was a member of the Kent State University Board of Trustees on the day of the shootings, was also the administrator assigned to deal with tent city in 1977 and was instrumental in the building of the memorial dedicated in 1990; Florence Schroeder, whose son Bill was killed on May 4th; Chic Canfora who was indicted in 1970 for the events of May 4th, and speaks at commemorations regularly.

Lastly, a National Guardsman who has never spoken in public, tells his story of what happened on that fateful day and on his long journey to heal his emotional wounds.

The Film captures not only the essence of the time when four students were killed and nine were wounded on May 4th, 1970 but looks at the impact and how the events are remembered and how the events have changed our political climate amongst the war issues of today. From the struggle for the University to survive to individual struggles on how to commemorate the shootings, from the gym struggle on the campus to the struggle in the courtroom. Finally the most bewildering is the struggle on how to appropriately memorialize and remember the event. Each individual has his or her personal story to tell. Each has his or her own way of looking at the event. For many, the commemorations are a long journey to heal the wounds that left a mark that day.

The film is sprinkled with moving commemorative speeches by national figures such as George McGovern who spoke eloquently of Kent State's place in history in 1990; to Peter, Paul and Mary who sang on the commons in 1995; to the friends and family who recall their loved ones in 2000.

Crosby, Stills and Nash appeared in 1997 and Ron Kovic in 1998 inspired a sit-in to close the four parking spaces where Allison Krause, Sandra Scheuer, Jeff Miller, and Bill Schroeder died.

What emerges is a portrait of a community who never wanted to remember or admit that a tragedy of this magnitude could happen. In the end, the community embraces, through passage of time, their rightful place in history. May 4th's lessons include the sanctity of freedom of speech, the necessity of responsibility for making choices, and the right to defend the honor of one's name. For when all is said and done - it is the names engraved in a piece of stone that make the events of May 4, 1970 real today.

A Jump-Start on Production

To produce this documentary filmmaker BJ Metro, a Kent State graduate who has spent 18 years chronicling the remembrances that take place annually at the beginning of May and interviewing the key players and victims, has teamed with producer-director Brian Weidling and writer/producer Paul Galichia to finally create a definitive piece to tell the story of Kent State.

To this end, these filmmakers have joined forces after years of separately shooting and chronicling the events of May 4,1970. The project jump-starts with these filmmakers combining more than 30 hours of videotaped research, 30 hours of film research, access to the most complete sets of archives available on Kent State, interviews with people who were at Kent State, on both sides of the gun barrel-men and women who were wounded, who were scarred, who survived.

And the parents and friends of those who didn't.

And National Guardsmen…including the possibility of securing an interview with the man who believes he fired the first gunshot.

Dr. J. Gregory Payne, Professor of Communication at Emerson College and author of "MayDay: Kent State", is also advising us. Dr. Payne's book was re-released in early 2000, with new information he has uncovered over the past 30 years. Dr. Payne's longstanding relationships with key players, and his familiarity with archival materials and historical facts give "Reflections in Stone" an immediate advantage in telling the definitive, most compelling story possible.

Through interviews with survivors, Guardsmen, politicians, Kent State officials, witnesses, townspeople, artists and activists, plus a return to the sites where the tragedy took place, we'll see how Kent State galvanized America on an average day in May 1970.

We'll hear about the choices that people made that day, with impacts that have lasted a lifetime. Weaving together a tapestry of new material with news clips, stock footage and the sights and sounds of the era, we'll reach an understanding, of how the turbulent Sixties led to the end of innocence at Kent State-and how the shootings marked the end of an era in American history.

The path taken at Kent State was not an easy road. It is one wrought with many conflicts over the last thirty-seven years. The campus is once again serene, though forever changed. The granite markers will remain. "Reflections in Stone " tells the story as to how and why these markers came into existence.

"Have we come to such a state in this country that we are killing our kids?"

Florence Schroeder Mother of Bill Schroeder