Mary Goodwin, Oral History

Recorded: May 2, 1995
Interviewed by Connie Sickels

My name is Mary Goodwin. I am guidance counselor at the high school -- the Roosevelt High School in Kent. I'm forty years old.

On May 4th, 1970, I was a sophomore in high school and I can remember getting the news and really not believing it -- feeling as if things really had gone haywire. I was somewhat involved politically -- as much as a fifteen and sixteen year old can be, but pretty much stayed up with what was going on -- was very involved against the establishment and the military, and a lot of the things that most people, my age and older, were against at the time. And things were starting to crumble and I was beginning to question a lot of that. We kept apprised of it. We did some things in our school, but people know we were not only informed of it but that we were outraged by it and nothing violent in nature, just -- just passing out flyers and talking about it. In fact we did that a lot, we'd go over each other's houses -- friends of ours and just talk a lot about what was going on, and trying to figure out what it was all about. And of course now that I look back on it -- trying to figure out what I was all about and life was all about. So that -- that fit in actually pretty well on one hand but actually chose to confuse the matters even, even more.

As I look back on it, now that I'm forty, and I've just been watching some of the clips and news reports again being the twentieth anniversary of Vietnam, the twenty-fifth, of course, of Kent State, I realize now how truly outraged I am, and the perspective has changed. I was just talking to a friend the other night, saying "I can't even believe that, that this happened." And I almost can't put it in words the -- the extreme stage of disbelief I now feel, at forty looking back, than I did at the time and shortly after. I think because -- maybe I was living it, maybe because I was confused, maybe because I was younger. But looking back, it -- it is, the whole thing was so absurd and -- and absurd doesn't even justify it -- so foolish.

And I remember hearing a lot of townspeoples' reactions and still hearing at this point of the game, 1995, townspeoples' reactions and older peoples' reactions, actually people my age reactions saying "well, I think that they deserved it" and that whole thing. All I can say is that the intensity of my utter disbelief has, overwhelmed me -- the other night as I was watching a particular interview on a program on CNN -- and people, some people say this will happen again, some people and I don't know -- I don't know where we're going and what's happening. I know things have changed. All I know is, it was a senseless tragedy -- one that should've never happened. And it's one well worth remembering. And it's about time it has been remembered as it has been, and I know it's something I'll never forget.

 

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