Lilian Tyrrell, Oral History

Recorded: May 3, 1995
Transcribed by Lisa Whalen and Kate Medicus 

Note: This transcript includes geo-references to locations that are discussed in the oral history. Geographical names linked in the transcript will open in a new window or tab that takes you to that location information and map in the Mapping May 4 project. To request a transcript without geo-reference links included, please contact Kent State University Special Collections & Archives.

[Lilian Tyrrell]: " L L and " [part of the interviewee spelling out her name]. The Thursday, it must have been April the 31st, I believe--there was a rally and anti-war demonstration held on The Commons and I'd heard about it on WKSU and also I think maybe it was in -- advertised in the student paper, but I definitely heard about it more than once. And, I thought, "Oh, God, there'll be a crowd down there." And I went down, and I took my son because my daughter was in Kindergarten, my son was only 3 ½, so I took him with me. And we went to The Commons and I didn't even think I was in the right place to begin with because there was so few people, there was about somewhere between 30, maybe 50 people at the maximum. And a lot of those people, once I had sat down on the grass, seemed to be keeping on an eye on us more than actually part of the students who were demonstrating. A lot of officious-looking people, or official-looking people maybe I should say, they were sort of walking around. Some of them, I think one or two of them had cameras. And it was really quite pathetic, because they didn't seem to be very experienced--the speakers--they all stood up and starting saying their usual sort of rhetoric. And I had actually attended some demonstrations in London, because I only immigrated like one year before that. And I didn't think anything would happen. I didn't think there was a serious body of students who were willing to demonstrate against the war. And I sat down on the grass with my son and he played around and made sort of noises to the people around me and everyone seemed to be just enjoying the sunshine, basically.

Friday evening, the bars closed, but, I--when the bikers came into town, they closed the bars and I only heard stories about that I wasn't there--from students how they had been pushed out of the bars, how they had to leave their drinks and their food, and how they'd been pushed out onto the street and verbally abused and then a few of them lit fires-sort of little fires in the middle of the road, and tempers rose and people got agitated-but that was--I wasn't there, so basically I can only rely on what people told me who were there.

The next night, Saturday night, was when the ROTC Building closed. I was--I was at a Dick Myers film festival, downtown, in one of the buildings that was close to the ROTC Building. And we were sort of just watching the films, and we were ready to go home-or a little before we were ready to go home--I think it was Craig Lucas, came up and said, "We're locked in the building, we can't get out." And I said, "What do you mean?" And he said, "We can't get out of the building, the National Guard is on campus and we can't get out of the building." And I said, "Well, that's ridiculous, I'm going home! I've got a babysitter. She told me she had to be home by eleven o'clock. I have got to go home, I've got two children to look after!" And sure enough, we went downstairs, they would not let us out and I'm saying--and I'm screaming at the Guardsmen--I'm saying, "But, you can't keep me in here, I've got to go home to my children!" And they said, "Nobody is leaving this building." And we went back into the building, and we searched all over the building for a telephone that worked. Well, for some reason, not one of the telephones that we found worked. I couldn't phone up my babysitter. We were kept in there--oh, at least two hours, two and a half hours, I can't remember exactly how long at this point. But, I was terrified because I was--and everyone was saying, "Don't worry, you know, Jo [Joan?] is a good babysitter, she won't leave the children." And I kept saying, "But she told me she had to, her father is very strict. She absolutely had to be home by this point in time." And I was really angry that these people had locked me into the building and I couldn't get home to my children. And then, finally they let us out--we had realized that the ROTC Building had been closed and regardless

[Interviewer]: Was burning at that point.

Was it still burning? Well--it, by that time it was--1:00. Things had calmed down. And we walked--we didn't go right that way, but we walked close enough that we could see some of the damage and stuff. But, the Guardsmen were a little freaky, a little nervous. And we went home.

Not much happened on the Sunday that I can remember. And it seemed that everything had come back to normal. Now, I had heard that there was going to be a protest on--well, maybe I should talk about Sunday, too because various times during this period of time, over the four days when the Guards were there I had gone onto campus to meet my husband often [?] taking the children. And I remember that the Guardsmen and their attitude gradually deteriorated over those four days to such a point where they were blatantly antagonistic. And, my daughter who was five at the time would like skip ahead of the push-chair. And you'd look up and you'd see Guardsmen with their rifles trained on her head following her down the road with their rifles trained on her. And you'd turn around and look at them and they would laugh in your face as if to say, you know, "We have the power here." And, it was really amazing that they felt free-if they were trained soldiers, why were they behaving in this way? Why were they trying to intimidate us? And I think everybody who was connected with the University felt that antagonism--felt they were being pushed around and threatened and -- well began to be building up [?] a head of steam that we're not going to be pushed around, I don't think you can treat people in that way without--especially not educated people who are used to freedom--treat them in that way and expect not to have a reaction.

So, on the Monday I wanted to go to the demonstration, but I knew there was a lot of people going to be going there. And I also knew the Guard were on campus and because of the atmosphere I wasn't sure I should because I had to look after my son and I would have had to have taken him with me. And in the end [?], I felt angry enough that I was going to go anyway. So, I walked up to the campus with my son. And I wasn't--I didn't actually see the shootings. I was with a group of students who were on the other side of the hill, sort of halfway up, on the level sort of with the Victory Bell, but closer to the Art Building. And I was standing with a group of people there and you could feel the atmosphere getting very tense. And, I was talking to some guys who were standing beside me and they were sort of talking about the Guardsmen and I was basically not saying anything, I was just listening to what was happening. And then it--I heard what sounded like firecrackers and the guy turned to me and he said, "I'm a Vietnam veteran, and that's REAL gunfire, get the hell out of here!" And I said, "Oh, yes, OK." But my first reaction was to hold tight onto the rail because I didn't want to be pushed around. I didn't want to run away. But, I did have my son with me, who was 3 ½, and I--I know I've got to get him out of here. If it was me--just me--I think I probably would have stayed because I felt so angry. But, as it was, I just ran with the rest of the crowd, got out of there, got a bus home. And everybody on the campus bus going --I was going up to the Main Street-everybody was --was silent in the bus. I think most of the people had come from The Commons and had knew [sic] what had happened. It was--and every so often, somebody at the back was swearing and saying, you know, "Fuck," and things like that "Fuck them, Fuck them," you know. So, it was a very strange bus ride. I think the anger that you felt and the frustration And I just got off and started walking up to my street. At which point, one of my neighbors came flying towards me, screaming. And I didn't know what had happened. And as she came by, I grabbed her and I said, "Barbie [or Bobby?], what's wrong?" And she said, "I've got to get to the school, they're killing the Guardsmen!" And I--at that point, I didn't know who had died--and I just, 'cause I could only have one hand--I just dug my hand into her and I said, "Do be reasonable, stop and think about this for a minute. I don't think any Guardsmen are killed. If anyone's killed, it's like students." And I said, you know, "Calm down, no one's going to hurt your children." "I've got to get up to the school to save my children from the students!" And I was saying, "This is ridiculous, you know, the students have children of their own in those schools, no one's going to hurt the children." I couldn't believe this woman had freaked out to that extent. Finally she calmed down and then she started walking, but she was still going to the school. She still was going to save her children. By the time I got home, which was like a few houses down, got into my house. A little while afterwards, my daughter came home from Kindergarten. And she rushed into the door, and she was totally traumatized. She said, "Mommy, is there a war?" And I said, "No, darling, there is not a war, come and talk to me about it." And she said, "Suddenly, we were all rushed into the buses and made to lie on the floor of the buses so that no one would hurt us. And the soldiers were shouting all the time, screaming at us to 'Stay down, stay down!'" And they drove the children home. And the children were traumatized, they--I mean, she was traumatized. She thought there was a war on, she thought someone was going to kill us. And, so I calmed her down and I talked to her. By the next morning--I don't think there was any school the next day for the children, because I remember it must have been a Tuesday morning, but she wanted to go out and play with her friends. It was the children of the same woman I had stopped running down the road. And they had--any day they were at home they went to play with their friends in their sandbox. And she wanted to go and play with them. And William wanted to go and play with them. And I said, "Well, OK"--'cause it was only like two houses down, all they to do was walk across a little bit of grass to get there--and I said, "OK, but that's the only place you're allowed to go and I want you to come straight back home afterwards." And they went out. And it was about ten--well, about fifteen minutes later, ten minutes later, they came charging back for the door again, my daughter was hysterical and she's holding her brother for dear life and screaming and his face was just covered in blood. And she said, "They threw stones at us, Mommy, and I came home!" That all the children in the sandbox that were usually their friends had--I don't know what their parents had said to them, that they thought they could go out and do this--but they'd all collected stones and they threw stones at them when they came. And, well I, I--at that point, I felt, OK, this is a really freaky situation--I'm--you can't trust anybody, these people are [untelligible], they're sort of crazy. And I decided they weren't going anywhere without me. And everywhere they went, even if it was just out into our little piece of garden, I went with them or I watched them from the window. And, the children were really traumatized. And, like I was in Hahn's one day, it must have been a week or two after the shootings and I had turned around to get some things off the shelf to buy, you remember the Hahn's coffee shop in town on Main--on, um,

[Interviewer]: Water.

Water Street, right, then I turned around and I saw my daughter's face, she was sort of cowering and terrified. And there was a big policeman sort of jumping up and down in front of her, you know, I think he was trying to actually be nice to her and--but, it was so frightening because she was so terrified and I remember just leaving whatever I was doing and throwing myself in front of him and screamed at him, "Leave my daughter alone! Don't you get near her! Get away from her!" I guess he professed [?] that I was a mad woman or something, I don't think he was meaning to terrify her, but she was totally terrified. And I reacted like that because I think we were all a little reactional. And I think over that long summer, I think we were all--it was a really horrible summer. We went everywhere with the children, they

(Tape ends mid-sentence)

(Tape 9: side A)

That summer was really very strange. We--we didn't get any mail for a long-- for weeks and weeks, I remember. I don't know if it was because my husband and I had demonstrated in London.

And we had reported that to the people at the Embassy before we had moved -- for when we were applying for our visa. And I -- whether it was because they had a record of that, I don't know, but we didn't get any mail for a long, long time. And then, suddenly, it all came at once. And we had people knocking on our doors, wanting to rent our garages, supposedly because they'd been thrown out of their apartments. But there weren't any students in town, everything was empty. It would have been so easy for them to have rented something.

And they looked so -- they looked more hippie than any hippie you ever saw. You know, they had these awful, sort of, "ban the bomb"-type, nuclear disarmament symbols, but real heavy, with really ugly shirts and things; as if they were trying to be hippies.

And I remember, I wouldn't let them in, and the guys -- one of the guys that came was trying to get in the door -- like really, "hey man", he was acting like he was real friendly with me and that I was just one of -- he was just one of -- my group of people, and it was really bizarre.

And, I wasn't going to let him in, I mean, we were so -- we were so caught up with the mania, that, I mean, he could have planted a bug -- goodness knows what he could have done. But I felt sure he was definitely FBI.

And you met them in town, in the evenings, when you went out for a drink. People would try to buy you beer that you didn't know. It was -- we were being -- we were being watched, and dissected, and everyone was trying to find out about a conspiracy.

And I couldn't understand -- how they thought that, because it was -- I don't think it was about a conspiracy, I think it was about people getting angry because they were being pushed around, and their rights were being taken away from them. I did not like it, I came from a free country. I did not like people pushing me around, I did not like people -- Guardsmen -- pointing guns at my children as I walked down the road. I did not like townspeople sitting on their porches pointing guns at us when we walked down the road. I didn't like people phoning us up in the middle of the night, with harassing calls, night after night -- and waking us up in the middle of the night. I didn't like people coming on to my property, which they did, and smashing flowers and things. I mean, we were so traumatized that, at one point, I remember, we were sitting there -- and we realized we were sitting near a window, and I said, "We've got to move away from the window." And so we went and sat in the corridor, because we thought some crazy neighbor would come and blow us away. And that went on the whole summer. It was really a very freaky experience.

And what was -- the most upsetting, was that you could almost understand why the shootings happened, because it was maybe people losing their temper under extreme, stressful situations.

I don't think the Guard should have done it, I think the Guards were very ill-trained. And the -- the officers in charge of the Guards seemed to be giving inflammatory information. I even passed one group -- on campus, during that weekend of the shootings, where an officer was talking to two soldiers -- and there was four people standing there. I don't know who the other one was -- But he was making inflammatory remarks to his soldiers.

It looked like it could have been -- I mean, I can't tell you who it was for certain, so maybe I even shouldn't tell who it looked like. But he was saying, "We're gonna teach these goddamned hippies a lesson. We're not going to allow them to push us around." I mean, these were things he was saying to young soldiers who had guns in their hands. And I think the officers were totally out of control.

[Interviewer]: What day -- do you remember what day that was?

I think it was the Sunday--

[Interviewer]: It was before the shootings, you believed, obviously?

Yeah, I -- I probably shouldn't say who it looked like, but -- because I couldn't say for certain that it was him -- but a very high ranking officer whose name was mentioned afterwards, it looked like the photographs I'd seen of him in the papers. And I remember being absolutely astounded that he would talk to his soldiers like this, when what he should have been doing was making sure they were well trained, and you know, could function in a situation where you were up against your own citizenry.

And anyway, to go back to the summer, we definitely felt threatened. And although the -- you could understand why the shootings happened, because it could have been an emotional moment, you didn't understand why all your neighbors turned against you. How they could be so unreasonable, just because you were connected with the University. How nobody spoke to you, how they crossed the street when you came towards them. How they would phone you up and scream at you on the telephone. You know, people that -- like -- little old neighbors that you said "hello" to and cleaned the snow away from their pathway, because you thought they were too old to do it, that sort of thing. These were the people that were turning on you. And so we -- we kept to ourselves, or we obviously kept to the -- you know, the other faculty members. And we felt that we were a sideshow -- that whole summer. And basically, I don't know what else you'd like to talk about. But that's basically my story.

[Interviewer]: Continuing with Lilian Tyrrell...

My husband, after the shootings, had put up some black ribbon around one or two of the trees in the fr -- garden. And they had been -- one night -- one morning we woke up and they had -- they had been slashed, as well as the flowers had been trampled. So you knew that people were really antagonistic towards you.

×