Four Dead in O-Hi-O I'm old enough to vaquely remember this 34 year-old photo: Young Mary Ann Vecchio witnessed the killing of student Jeffrey Miller in the parking lot of Kent State University on May 4, 1970. Three other students were killed and nine others were wounded. Ohio National Guardsmen had been called in the day before in response to some rioting centred around the campuses' ROTC building. The mayor also instituted a curfew. Students and professors were responding to President Nixon's May 30 announcement of the invasion of Cambodia. Many eye-witness accounts of the atmosphere on the Kent State campus that day point out that many students simply wandered onto the Commons, the main gathering place for students, after their classes let out at around noon. There was a protest, but there were also many students simply sitting on the grass, enjoying the sun, and trying to figure out how to get their lunch from the cafeteria--access was blocked by the National Guardsmen who had taken postion on top of Blanket Hill, directly overlooking the Commons and en route to the cafeteria. Many of the protesters presumed that the National Guardsmens' rifles contained rubber bullets. No one thought they were going to die. The Guardsman, in retreat from the easily quelled tear-gassed protesters, suddenly turned around and fired 60 bullets into the crowd. No Guardsman was ever prosecuted, although some thirty protesters were brought to trial. The ten-year old me saw Mary Ann's picture in the newspaper and wondered "why"? And I guess I'm doing the same today, juxtaposing that image with recent images of American soldiers humiliating Iraqi prisoners of war.