A local journalist is remembering the shootings on the campus of Kent State University, and the massive impact it had on him.
Richard Zitrin was about to graduate from KSU when on May 4, 1970, National Guard Troops opened fire on anti-war demonstrators, killing four students and wounding 13 others.
Zitrin, who later wrote for the Times Union and Canandaigua Daily Messenger newspapers, said what he saw was a “scene from hell.” He says he was traumatized by the events that unfolded that day, and shortly afterward, when his sister was diagnosed with a brain tumor that eventually took her life. He says those two traumas merged.
“It's had a massive effect,” he says. “There's still anger. I'm still angry, although I went to some very dark places.
Zitrin started his journalism career as a sportswriter shortly after the shootings. He says the job didn't feel like it was fulfilling a great need and thought he should be some kind of revolutionary instead.
One positive, he believes is that the Kent State shootings hastened the end of the Vietnam War.
Commemorations were planned to mark the 50th anniversary of the shootings, but the coronavirus pandemic canceled those events. Zitrin says he's only attended one commemoration for Kent State – and that was on the first anniversary of the shootings.
“At 12:24 every May 4th, I look at the clock and I realize this is that moment when my life changed, when so many lives changed forever,” he says. “I don't feel that I need to be there.”
Zitrin says he can commemorate the Kent State shootings in his own way, and adds he can do that very well from afar.