Shame

So, I was a freshman at CMSU, at Warrensburg, Missouri, in the spring of 1970. What I remember of the time was another art student's image of Mr. Filo's famous photograph of the girl - 14-year-old Mary Ann Vecchio, I found out later, screaming beside the body of a young man, an Ohio college student. His name was Jeffrey Miller. Did I know that then? In May, 1970? I don't remember; nor do I remember knowing that the names of the other students shot and killed that day were Allison Krause, Sandra Scheuer, and William Knox Schroeder. Did their friends know them as Jeff, Ally, Sandy, and Bill? I don't know. I'm pretty sure that they were excited high school students once upon a time, opening business envelopes (I still remember the scent of fine paper.), containing the news that they'd been accepted at Kent State. Has my memory gotten so puny? Or, more likely, was I paying no attention to the outside world? To the fact that soldiers of our government shot unarmed college students?

In any case, I'm paying attention now, rueful, grateful, for the 40 years of life I've had since then, four decades denied four young people, forever young.