David Hansford, Oral History

Recorded August 3, 2007
Interviewed by Craig Simpson
Transcribed by Kathleen Siebert Medicus

[Interviewer]: Good morning, the date is Friday, August 3rd, 2007. My name is Craig Simpson. We are conducting a May 4 oral history today for the May 4 Oral History Project. Could you please state your name?

[David Hansford]: My name is David Hansford.

[Interviewer]: Where were you born, David?

[David Hansford]: I was born in Akron, resident of the city of Kent my entire life.

[Interviewer]: And what were you doing in 1970?

[David Hansford]: In 1970, I was a senior at Kent Roosevelt High School. Yeah, that's all. [laughs]

[Interviewer]: How would you describe the city of Kent prior to the events of that year, having lived there all your life?

[David Hansford]: Kent was a small town with a university. Town involvement with the University was special events, sporting activities. It was a big school, but the city of Kent and Kent State, I think, in my opinion, got along pretty well. There was good rapport between the both of them.

[Interviewer]: What memories do you have of those four days in May, starting with May 1st?

[David Hansford]: Being underage and not being involved in the downtown Kent bar scene--except knowing exactly where everything was, of course--the turmoil in the evenings was pretty--unsettling I guess would be the word, because there were lots of rumors of bombs and fires and all kinds of activities going on, half of which never happened or were just untrue. The fires in the street, that was true. But, there seemed to be a change in the feel of what was going on. My recollections were there was a different group of individuals involved than normal people that were in the downtown area in the evenings. Now, I don't have anything to say as to who or why because I wasn't there. But the feel of the town went maybe--somber. I don't know what that word--it was a different feel. There was an edge in the air. It started on May 1st and all through that entire process. It was just unsettling--it was a real unsettled feel, I guess would be the right word.

[Interviewer]: By different, you mean people who were not affiliated with the university, not students?

[David Hansford]: I mean different in that you could drive through town on any evening up to that point and yes, there was a lot of crowds going in and out of the bars, at that 1970s, but, now when you went through town, you didn't feel safe. You felt unsettled. You didn't know if a rock was gonna come flying out, you didn't know what was gonna happen. Whereas before, you just watched for somebody to walk in front of you, and it was normal traffic and normal people and normal crowds. When this all started, that feeling changed. There was a real problem with safety forces going though town. I'm sure that, and I don't know this for a fact, but I'm sure they were verbally abused. Things were thrown at them. It was just a completely different feel.

[Interviewer]: Did your family own a business here in town?

[David Hansford]: Our business was out on west Main Street, so our business was away from the downtown area. My grandfather was the mayor of the city of Kent from 1960 to 1964. And my mother was the mayor when the city-manager form of government took effect. She was the mayor for four years in the mid-'80s. So, we've had a city affiliation for years, I know a lot of the people through the years involved in city government. I've known a lot of the problems with--problems or discussions between Kent State and the city of Kent through the years, but it was completely different in '70. There was, in my opinion, there was a lot of outside influences that were being pushed, whether by people or by material being passed out. But, there was an unsettling feeling.

[Interviewer]: What other memories do you have of that weekend?

[David Hansford]: On Friday [i.e., Monday], they closed the schools. And I don't know the exact time, it was early in the afternoon. And maybe it was, well, it was May 4th. I don't remember what day that was. But, being a senior, I had a car at the high school. We were simply announced over the loud speakers that, You will go home, you will not deter from that path, you will go straight home, and you will stay home. The school buses were loaded, they left first, then cars left second, if I remember correctly, and we went straight home. My home at the time was on west Main Street right at the Kent City limits, and when I got to my driveway there was two military vehicles parked at the top of the hill on Route 59, blockading the road. So, if you were leaving, you went through the blockade and nothing was coming into Kent on Route 59. It was completely shut off.

[Interviewer]: And what day was this again?

[David Hansford]: This was May 4th.

[Interviewer]: This was May 4th itself, okay.

[David Hansford]: We sat--our house was on Main Street--we sat, and there was a--I guess the term would be pilgrimage--of people leaving the city of Kent. And a lot of them were walking because, for one reason or another, they didn't have transportation on campus, or they couldn't get to the transportation on campus but they were leaving campus; the school had been closed. A lot of those people stopped and we talked to some of them and I can't really recollect what all we talked about. But, there was a look of astonishment, or amazement, or--I don't know what the real word would be, but it was almost like a void in their eyes, of the students that weren't directly involved, but were maybe going to class or had heard of what they thought were the events at the time, because nobody knew exactly what was going on. But they were--and I'm talking 25 or 30 people--that were just wandering out of town, really had no place to go, were just getting out of town. Whether they had called home and they said, We're getting out of town, come pick us up at the city limits or whatever, they were just wandering.

And I, on 9/11, when the tragedy happened on 9/11, I was in Cleveland doing some state education--continuing education classes--our classes were in the basement of the IX Center. I went into the basement of the IX Center at a quarter of seven in the morning and I was the president of the Rotary Club in Kent that year and it was a Tuesday. And I had to run the meeting in Kent at 11:30. I left the IX Center, came up out of the IX Center to find out about 9/11 at which time the Cleveland airport was completely closed and locked down. And I left the IX Center--this still bothers me--and as I left the IX Center I came past the airport, those people had that same look. It was eerie and that was the feeling that you had on May 4th, it was that void, eerie feeling of those people's faces.

[Interviewer]: Backing up just a little bit, you had mentioned that your family had owned a business on Main Street? And what business was that?

[David Hansford]: That was Greer Heating and Air Conditioning.

[Interviewer]: Did they--over that weekend, starting in with May 1st, did they encounter any damages to the---?

[David Hansford]: No, because our business was out off of Main Street, away from everything. We're out almost to the city limits. So, the problem was getting around town and dealing with areas that you just didn't want to get in and out of. You couldn't really get on campus, that's the reason we did very little work up here. But no, we had no damage to our businesses or vehicles the whole time.

[Interviewer]: Do you remember anything that Saturday and Sunday, the 2nd and 3rd?

[David Hansford]: I remember the paper and the headlines and I can't tell you what they were now, but they were eye-catching. And here again, you didn't know exactly what was going on. The reporting of what happened was I'm sure true, [cell phone goes off] but you didn't really know what exactly what was going on. Because of that, you felt unsure about what was going on on campus. And, really, the people--I would say the majority of the people in the city of Kent didn't understand all the areas of campus. We'd all had been through it, but we didn't know where the ROTC Building was, We didn't know where the Commons were, we didn't know exactly where these things were happening. So, you didn't know, is this right next to a building? Is this out in the middle by the new stadium? [cell phone goes off] So, that weekend was very unsettling. Everybody that I knew friend-wise at the time, everybody wanted to go downtown and very few did. Basically because of parental guidance or whatever, it just wasn't the place to be although, I think probably fifty percent of everybody made it through town before late night on Saturday night. It was busy, very busy, with people everywhere. A lot of bad feelings.

[Interviewer]: Do you remember any dinner table conversations about what was going on?

[David Hansford]: The feel around our house was, you know, I think our family felt that it was, at the time we felt that it was probably people from the outside, agitating, stirring up--whatever that term is for those days, finding fault with a lot of little issues, or leading people into--a crowd into a bad situation that got worse. And here again, there's been lots of talk since that time and maybe that's true and maybe that's not. But, that was our dinner table. It was no fault or blame in our house as to which side was wrong. I think we probably lean towards the city's and the state's side of things because there was turmoil, there was rioting, there was damage to personal and private property. And that's not, that's not correct. I mean, it just isn't correct. And because of that, I think the feeling in our house was, Something's going on, we don't think it's the students entirely from Kent State, we think they're being agitated by a given group of individuals. And that was just our feeling. I don't know if it's true or not, to be honest about it.

[Interviewer]: And where were you again, when you first heard the news, on May 4?

[David Hansford]: In school. Everybody--that was, of course, the buzz around the school of the happenings over the weekend. But, we were in school, and in class, and it just came over the--Kent State has been officially closed, this school is being officially closed and you are to go straight home. The buses will load first, you will stay here until the buses load and you will leave in an organized and fashionable manner and you will go straight home. And I did. [laughs] It was a scary day. Because you didn't--it didn't say what was going on. They did say that there'd been a confrontation, if I remember correctly. But you didn't know until you got outside that there had been shots fired in the rumor mill that started. When you got home, when I got home, and you actually saw the military driving on the streets, the half-track and the big jeeps and the big trucks and the troop carriers and whatever you want to call them. That was an eerie feeling. I've done a little traveling and seen that around the world, but you don't expect to see it in your side yard. Especially sitting on your front porch. And when the streets were closed, it felt very unnatural to think that you couldn't come in and out of your town.

My wife was at Kent State at the same time, she was a transfer student from Bowling Green, and she lived over towards Cuyahoga Falls and had an apartment in Kent and she says the same thing, that is was very, I mean, the event happened and they were told to go home and campus was closed and she actually finished that summer via mail. It was just unsettling to think that you saw that many army vehicles and troops driving on the city and no one else. There were no cars and trucks on the roads, it was strictly the military or state and highway patrol and police and safety forces. So, it was a different time.

[Interviewer]: What was the reaction among your peers at Roosevelt?

[David Hansford]: There were, as all high schools, groups of individuals that supported the administration at the time and there were also groups that supported the antiwar activities. I myself was in between both because of family history and because of the Vietnam War at that time. I carried a draft card. I had a high school deferment at the time which went on to a college deferment. But, after that the lottery was intact. We'd all drawn numbers. We'd all knew our draft order in Portage County and very few wanted to go to war, if you would. Probably maybe the same amount wanted to be actively involved in an antiwar movement and the rest of the population kind of laid in limbo in between. I personally was not--at the time--was not against the war in Vietnam because we didn't know that much about it. As I look back on it I think it's a completely different set of rules, because history has now published. At the time, it wasn't a good war, there never is one. I was not antiwar at the time. I don't think I was pro-war at the time either, but we were all kind of in the middle. That was still early enough--I had family that had been there for the Tet in '68 and had gotten out alive. But there were still a lot of unknown issues in that war that we didn't find out until '71 and '72 and '73 that changed my mind later.

[Interviewer]: Did you have classes the next day or was the school still closed?

[David Hansford]: School was closed, if I remember right, the school was closed the next day then opened up on Wednesday. And I don't honestly remember for sure. It was a different day, it was a different week, and the feeling was odd. Just real odd. It's funny that a whole town could change. I don't know what the population was then, 24-25,000 maybe. And, of course, there were those that were very opinionated that we heard of in the paper. And there were those that, after the fact, a year later, expressed their opinions because they got more facts and they felt they knew more then to speak maybe more intelligently. But that week is kind of a blur in my memory at this point in time. Back then, I'm sure it was very clear but it's kind of been a long time.

[Interviewer]: what do you think the consequences were for the city of Kent?

[David Hansford]: The consequences. I think it made them aware that they can't control the university, as far as student population goes. Probably made the safety forces a little more unsettled about the numbers of people that could be involved and could be actively involved in any type of a demonstration, at that time, definitely antiwar. But, in any issue that was brought up there was a lot of talk at the time of registering college students into the Kent city political system--registering them here as opposed to their homes, and swinging the vote through the city through college students. And it was perfectly fine, but the city of Kent got their eyes opened, I mean they all knew that there was a lot of students and a lot of people on campus, but I think it changed the city in the way that they looked at the campus, perhaps safety-forces wise. I think it also opened their eyes to the fact that there needed to be more communication. Maybe not automatically calling the National Guard from the university but maybe the university calling Kent city and sitting down before these things now happened and trying to have a little bit more--the term "town and gown" comes to mind--it's and old term. The city needs to be more actively involved with the university. And always has been, I think. There's always been a separation. But I think the city realized there's a lot of people on this campus that can make a difference.

[Interviewer]: Did the voting idea ever transpire?

[David Hansford]: I don't think it ever came about because, in my opinion, it's that you still have to go out and register to vote, and it was that, "Yeah, let's get actively involved," but, "Oh, now I have to do something," and it's tough. I know there was some tries through the years of students that wanted to run, and, whatever side of the table they were on, it doesn't matter. But it was the apathy of, "Okay, well now I've got to change my registration and then I actually have to get up and go vote and maybe I'll change my registration if we do it at a table at the Student Center but, that day, will I actually remember to go vote?" And I don't know if that can be proven, but, it's apathy, it's happened for years and it will probably keep happening.

[Interviewer]: Did any of the efforts to improve communication transpire or did communications deteriorate, in your opinion, between the town and the university?

[David Hansford]: I think as the presidents changed, through the years, there may have been more communication, whether anything was ever accomplished by that communication, I'm not sure. But, I really believe that there was a lot more communication about what the university is doing across the board, in construction, and the way they wanted to reconfigure the campus, to this side of the campus versus the frontage on Main Street. I think there was a lot more communication with safety forces on, "How can we access these buildings if something does come up?" and that was all part of probably because of state mandates also. Because of maybe some of the things that did happen on May 4th. But I think communication did improve, whether it made any difference or not, I'm not sure.

[Interviewer]: Are there any other thoughts you'd like to share?

[David Hansford]: I can't get over that hollow look in people's eyes. It bothered me then and it bothered me on 9/11, and I still get a lump in my throat when I think of that. It just really was a look that you don't want to see. It really--it's scary to think that we could change that many lives with a news report because, you know, we obviously weren't at 9/11 and we obviously weren't all on the campus at Kent State University, but to think that that many people in that short period of time, were that affected by that, is really, it really is unsettling to me. But, it was an experience. It was a life experience that I suppose we'll add to the list of life experiences that we go through.

[Interviewer]: David, thank you very much for speaking with us.

[David Hansford]: Thank you.

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