Steve Gerkin

The Legend of the Protestor with the

Molar Bandana

AI think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound? Everybody look what’s going down. —Stephen Stills, “For What It’s Worth”

ttending Iowa for dental school in the early seventies, I was safe from the draft and the possibility of placing my life in jeopardy amidst the steamy jungles of Vietnam. My sentiments were with those protesting the war, and I considered jumping into the fray. The consequences of such a bold move seemed to be more than I was willing to accept. I was conflicted between my emotional and practical sides; to risk my young marriage and my lifelong dreams of becoming a dentist would take courage. My conscience told me I should join the movement, but the inevitable backwash kept me back.

Then one day, standing on top of a towering retaining wall across from a bridge over the Iowa River, I watched anti-war protesters commandeer the highway intersection a dozen feet below me. Their action violated new Iowa City and University of Iowa laws. Technically, so did mine.

It was my first exposure to student militancy—antagonizing armed law enforcement. While it was foreign to me, I found the scene thrilling. My parents would be appalled.

Organizers taunted several hundred highway patrolmen and other law enforcement at the opposite end of the bridge, adjacent to a water-driven power plant propelled by river water that dropped suddenly down from the low-head dam; its below-the-surface undertow sucked branches and debris back into the dam’s undercurrent. Like the turbulence of the water that moved vigorously in random directions near the surface, I felt my inner self churning. Some of the protesters were likely prime draft bait. Others might have been wagering their enrollment status. If they were willing to take personal risks for their convictions, why couldn’t I?

Standing above the fray, staring at the turbulent water, I took inventory. I needed to inspect what I expected of myself as a member of a broader community. Why did I choose to watch this demonstration but not be a part of it?

Occasional flashes of cops’ gunmetal shone under the streetlights at the east end of the Burlington Street bridge. Orange snow fencing reached across both ends of the crossing; Iowa farmers used the physics of wood slats lashed together with wire to subdue snow drifting onto rural roads.

On this night, the barrier symbolically and physically restrained warring tribes, if only for a while. I didn’t know it was a roadblock until I moved away from home.

Raised in a conservative, Republican Iowa household with elephant-motif wallpaper in the dining room, I drank from the cup of my parents’ political philosophies. Sitting in our faux-wood paneled basement TV room as a sixties teenager, I subconsciously began forming my militant viewpoint; King and Kennedy murdered, Nixon acting like a warmonger. During that period, political activism thrived on the University of Iowa campus, 312 miles east plus a million miles (mindset-wise) from my family’s hometown of Sioux City, Iowa.

Following his 1943 high-school graduation, my father marched with classmates to the Navy recruitment office and signed up. He became a Navy medic who served as the medical doc of a marine commando unit. Dad made two landings in the Philippines and one in Okinawa. Like the others, he had a bayonet fixed to the end of his rifle. Like the others, he had to defend himself, while tending to his mates’ bloody wounds and screams and dealing with their deaths. As an adolescent, I found his combat helmet in the storage room. The gray-painted head armor showed numerous nicks and several suspicious dents. I took it to Dad, who was sitting in the den, sharing his nightly martini with Mom. When he spotted it, he rose slowly and made his way over to me. He took the reminder of war in both hands, stared at the scarred surface, rotated it to see all sides. He was quiet. Looking sadly at Mom, he said, “I can’t talk about this,” and returned the gear to its hiding place. The sadness on his face is still fresh in my mind’s eye. I barely recognized him. While I was too young to truly understand the moment, the impact of his apparent grief hurt my heart. His ashen face told a story that I could not understand then, only now. His demeanor at that moment startled me, created an instant I will see forever, an emotion I will feel forever. As I revisit this today, was he reliving the bloody horrors of the landings, the deaths of close buddies?

Despite beatdowns by local police and the press, large-scale protests gained traction over the issues of racial justice and the Vietnam War. Protesters honed their protesting skills during the sixties, providing on-campus experiences that groomed future generations of students for actively supporting socially and politically controversial issues.

Nationwide, students sickened by war, political corruption, and racial fouls cried out for revolution. Their agenda cried out for widespread change in social mores. Student vigilance found its voice over the Vietnam conflict during a benchmark protest at Columbia University in 1968, stimulating

others to form groups, whose rancor sometimes advocated violent behavior. Similar sights and sounds invigorated campuses in all the time zones. They organized over a variety of desired freedoms. Racial justice advocates at the University of Iowa brought King to the university for a speech (1959), gained approval for the establishment of the Committee on Human Rights (1963), and provided volunteers in the Freedom Summer in Mississippi in 1964. Black football players boycotted spring practice in 1969.

In April of 1970, Nixon invaded Cambodia. Legions of students from more than four hundred American universities and colleges organized protests. Monday, May 4, 1970, was a typical school day at Kent State University in Ohio, except for Army half-tracks and other military hardware stacked strategically around campus, and the cacophonic presence of numerous Hueys circling overhead. Reportedly a thousand observers stationed themselves atop the hillsides dozens of yards from their colleagues and several battalions of Guardsmen. It felt as if the British were coming. At 12:24 p.m., the reservists fired sixty-seven shots over thirteen hellish seconds. Four students died. Nine other students were wounded, one permanently paralyzed.

These thoughts played like a movie in my head as I stood above the students demonstrating below. The Iowa students repeated anti-war slogans, the shrill sound of their voices turning adolescent as the tension rose and the temperature—chilly for mid-october— dipped toward freezing. I empathized with my compatriots who wandered back and forth along the highway below me. They swore and shot middle fingers at the armed opposition. Nervous energy riddled their systems.

The fence clattered to the pavement in front of the lawmen. The sound of bootheels in cadence grew as the legions gained their stride, advanced over the bridge. Student bullhorns blared, “No more war. Brains, not bombs.” Protesters echoed the chants and punched the air with clenched fists. The militia reached the midpoint of the concrete expanse, prompting some onlookers to turn and run. The faithful held steady as the second fence fell, and the enforcers waded into the student body, most of whom were in full retreat. One of the patrolmen below looked up, spotted me. An adrenaline rush sent me stumbling through a forest of bushes, snagging my sweatshirt sleeves, gashing my arms into rivulets of blood.

Here was the moment that changed me. Or didn’t. Perhaps I jumped on my Schwinn, savored the thought of participating in the protest and becoming a bona fide activist, and pulled a Budweiser from the refrigerator when I returned home. Maybe that was as close as I got. Or maybe my close call galvanized me to act, finally. But then again, maybe I’ve always relished the tension of a good story more than any real-life consequence.

For the time being, let’s examine this particular fork in the road a little more closely.

To be a successful activist, I needed a plan of action. One element should be an external symbol of revolution—a badge—that could immediately identify me as a dangerous force. Thumbing through a magazine, there it was. Che Guevara, the handsome rebel with long locks and a devilish grin, looked back at me from the shiny black-and-white page. He wore a beret with a five-point silver star of his military rank front and center. I bought an oversized red bandana and painted a white molar on it, front and center. I looped it around my head with the excess dangling down my back, paraded around the tiny apartment, and openly verbalized my emergence as a budding extremist, which irked and troubled my wife of two months. Setting aside my textbooks, I took up with Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhousefive. Knowing that he had been on campus recently to teach for several years at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop added to my excitement about the anti-war messages on its pages. Vonnegut gave me intellectual insight into the social movements of the sixties—the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King Jr., who objected to the Vietnam War on moral grounds. The book was a treasure trove of anti-war sentiment. Slaughter reinforced my commitment to stand up against war. At weekend gatherings of dental students with my trusty bandana in place, I held court, reminding them that the war drained much-needed funding from domestic programs. I joined the SDS, listened to, and learned activist jargon spoken by our leaders; the atmosphere rivaled any regional Amway meeting. My blood boiled with contempt for the social status quo.

I became a friend with other members who were frequently interviewed by the campus newspaper, The Daily Iowan. Like other activists nationwide, Carole Auerbach, an Iowa senior from New York, feared the loss of fundamental American rights, a loss beyond Vietnam, sexism, and racial issues. “Many of our freedoms are under a serious threat from the government,” she said, “a fear that permeated much of the recent activities on the nation’s campuses. The Constitution cannot guarantee freedom—it must be fought for. It must be in the hearts of people. But when one minority group is persecuted, no one’s freedom is the same, no one’s freedom can be guaranteed.” Right on. My activism went public with several cowritten pieces with editor Durham. We berated President Willard “Sandy” Boyd for perpetuating personal oppression and promoting the D.C. war agenda.

My distinctive red bandana with the white molar became my brand. I draped it on my backpack, wore it to lunch meetings in the student union with fellow dissidents between classes. Dental-school mates looked on in disbelief. A few of my SDS colleagues were Black Panther wannabes. I was curious. They invited me to their apartment in Mayflower Hall. Over a

cold brew, my associates laid out their plan to make small, but disruptive explosives.

At a student assembly organized by the administration of the dental school, as the president of the freshman class, I sat near the front and placed my molar bandana around my forehead, put my right hand into a black leather glove. As the dean began his speech, my time to support the protest movement arrived. I stood up before two hundred students and faculty members, pulled my carefully crafted statement from my back pocket. “None of this matters,” I shouted. “What matters is we are fighting a corrupt war that has killed thousands of humans for the benefit of weapon makers. We have been lied to during the Johnson regime and now throughout the reign of Richard Nixon—just like we were lied to about the benefits of World War II without regard for the extensive collateral damage endured during both unjust wars.” Neil Lubke, a burly adjunct professor, headed my way, but I ignored him. “We need to put our efforts into the great and important societal shifts that must happen in the United States. Free our black brothers and sisters, empower women’s freedoms and understand that gay people have rights and privileges, just like all the rest of us.” Lubke grabbed my arm and led me from the room, my leather fist raised high. I took a parting shot at the president of the University of Iowa: “Lose Boyd, regain student power. Protest!”

As I stormed out of the building, my sense of moral conviction overshadowed the possible repercussions of the last few moments. I headed for the Union to join fellow SDS colleagues in a sit-down strike that blocked the Defense Intelligence Agency from interviewing potential Iowa employees. A couple dozen of us clogged the byway. A group of campus and Iowa City cops announced we had to clear a path or face the consequences. I applied Vaseline to my eyelids and nostrils to protect against possible sprays of mace. Still full of bravado from my dental-school speech, I stood in front of the lead officer. He got my best extemporaneous criticism, which was not fully appreciated: “My country, right or wrong, is like saying my mother, drunk or sober. This country needs to return to a state of sanity.” His cohorts descended on me, spun me around, threw me against the wall, and cuffed my wrists. To the cheers of my brethren, they led me away, charged me with disorderly conduct, inciting a disturbance, and resisting an officer. After several hours at the lockup, I was allowed to leave. Adrenaline pumping, I headed for the Daily Iowan office to meet with Durham. We discussed my idea of challenging Boyd to meet with me to discuss SDS concerns. A janitor emptied wastebaskets, swept the floor. As he moved my backpack off the floor, a baseball-sized rock fell from a side pocket, hitting the linoleum floor with a bang. He shot me a glance; I tilted my head and shrugged. He put it back.

Settling behind a Smith-corona, I advanced the ink ribbon—pounding out my newest piece was cathartic, invigorating. The bit appeared in print the next day. I swatted the university administration for not speaking out about racial and sex discrimination. I assailed Boyd for endorsing the war machine mentality of the national government by maintaining the presence of the ROTC program. It was, I wrote, “time for the leader of this university to address his administration’s suppression of civil rights and its endorsement of military aggression.” Hours after the release of the paper, the administration arranged a meeting time and place. My suggestion of using the House Chambers in the Old Capitol was accepted. I was a hero to my SDS friends, a pariah to my classmates and relatives.

At the appointed time, I ascended the steps of the iconic building. My swagger took me confidently through the front door into the grand foyer. Standing in silence, I looked up the spiral staircase to the second-floor rotunda. Boyd stood with his arms crossed. Neatly dressed in a black suit, the president wore a white shirt and thin black tie, his brown hair coiffed Beatles-like. He must have been assessing me as well. I figured my blue sportscoat and gray slacks might impress. The bandana remained in the apartment, but I did wear my nappy, dark-blue tie with a self-painted molar near the bottom that I wore to dental school to protest the requirement to wear a tie to class. The crown of the molar was navy blue with white fivepoint stars. The two roots of the design sported barbershop-pole red and white stripes. At the top of the stairs, he reached out his hand; we shook. A flashbulb went off.

Within the Chambers, we sat casually opposite each other, close-range like duelers in oak armchairs. The door closed with a click as his secretary left. The room was magnificent; so was the moment. I had come so far, now sitting across from the president of the University of Iowa. There was some hi, this-is-who-i-am chitchat. He smiled. “I read your editorial.” (No shit, I thought.) “I understand your concerns, but I will not allow you or the SDS to interfere with the rights of students who want to go to class, get an education.” Leaning forward, I fired back, “Well, the presence of the ROTC program paves the way for more deaths and destruction. What the university should promote is peace, understanding, acceptance, and promotion of minority groups.” The mostly civil back-and-forth lasted an hour; then it was over. He left me where he met me: “We should do this again sometime.” What a load of crap (I said to myself). His secretary walked me to the door.

During the celebration of Earth Day in April, we marched into the administrative offices of Maclean Hall on the southwest quadrant of the Pentacrest. We occupied the east steps of the Old Capitol and staged multiple draft-card burnings in the center of the expansive parklike acre

age. Sporting an “Honor Earth” T-shirt, I picked up trash while my friend Dorothy took to the streets, her sign protesting the automobile industry’s contribution to air pollution. But the scene was party-like, bands playing on the Capitol steps beneath stands of large elm trees. Still, there was always potential for violence. Kenneth J. Heineman in Put Your Bodies Upon the Wheels estimated that four million students at 1,350 universities took to the streets over the Kent State killings. Previously non-agitated students became radicalized by the atrocity at Kent.

The same month as the first festive Earth Day, in the early afternoon, an explosion rocked a building in downtown Iowa City. The Johnson County election service office caught fire. After the Ohio slayings, a column of riflebearing National Guard soldiers lined Clinton Street along the east margin of the Pentacrest. Demonstrators stood at close range, throwing flowers at the soldiers. Despite the peaceful approach, I quaked in fear that some protesting factions yearned for conflict. My suspicion proved justified. An American flag was burned near the Quadrangle Hall dormitory, as legions of Iowa City students marched on the National Guard Armory, the Old Capitol, and the Civic Center. In the middle of a mob that unleashed a volley of rocks, I stood with a rock in my hand, but I didn’t hurl it...that time. The ordeal ended with fifty-one arrests, but I escaped, yet again.

Or maybe not. Maybe the purpose of this essay is to examine what I escaped and what still confines me? Was I really there or am I merely recreating it now? What purpose would that serve? The problem, as I see it now, is that you often don’t know the full consequences of your actions or inactions for many years, if ever. Let’s follow those rocks, hurled and unhurled. What shatters at the moment, and what takes many more years to buckle, to give way?

Before I went to dental school, my lifelong friend Doug Batcheller, with whom I swam on the Mariners swim team for a decade and served as the best man in my first wedding, talked down the cops like a seasoned lawyer when a security officer arrested me for possession of beer outside a party at Lake Okoboji in 1968. He sprung me from custody, and we headed back to the festivities. Who knew we would end up at Iowa together decades later? Batch chose (and who could blame him? not I) to keep away from the protests as much as possible.

Over the din of a campus rock ’n’ roll band in the Gallery 117 basement venue, Batch heard the ruckus of protesting students who earlier blocked the interstate and principal Iowa City streets. Climbing the concrete stairs lit by a bare light bulb, the only beacon of the establishment’s existence, he looked down Clinton Street. Hundreds of us had assembled, singing songs

and carrying signs. Others carried baseball bats and large sticks of lumber. The frenzy of the crowd grew before his eyes.

Along with Doug, I witnessed a disabled girl trampled and injured as the surging crowd ran to avoid police. The difference was that I wanted to be a part of that crowd, and he didn’t.

Stoked by the adrenaline rush of the moment, let’s say I heaved a baseball-sized rock into a storefront window. I wasn’t alone in this action, and as long as everyone else was doing it, it seemed right.

A block away from Batcheller, large sheets of plate glass covering the fronts of the University of Iowa bookstore, Bremmer’s clothing store, the Iowa State Bank, and the historic Airliner Bar gave way to various implements of destruction hurled by passionate students. The sounds of exploding glass stimulated me. The clamor of the crowd grew as we advanced down the street towards Batcheller. He says he hurried down the steps, locked the door and turned off the outside light. What I did that night, I’d rather not say.

On the night of May 8, a Pentacrest celebration was in full swing. Some revelers entered an open Jessup Hall without permission. Others broke into the Old Capitol, setting off a smoke bomb to create a fake news story that the venerable building was on fire. At 2 a.m., Boyd ordered the clearance of the Pentacrest free-for-all. Batch left. Police arrested and handcuffed 228 students who defied the order to disperse. Loaded into four buses, they headed for lockup at several area county jails, charged with disorderly conduct. Several unidentified Iowa City businesspeople provided the $100 bond money for those arrested, arraigned in the light of day, and released in the afternoon.

Just after 3 a.m. a day later, Iowa City firefighters got a call. They arrived on the scene of a towering fire that engulfed “Big Pink,” a two-story wooden structure near the library, known as the Old Armory. Fire Chief Dean Bebee claimed arson from a flammable substance in the eastside entryway, insinuating that protesters set the fire. Sentiment against the Iowa rebels grew. (A Des Moines Register article on October 3, 1970, detailed the five-month investigation into the cause of the “Big Pink” demise, which proved that faulty electrical wiring started the blaze.)

Amid some local citizens claiming the protesters were a “bunch of hippies attempting to get out of the draft,” President Boyd urged “calm and reason.” Governor Ray mobilized three hundred National Guard troops, as the community dealt with the upheaval.

Campus dissidents finalized a list of grievances. They called for a student strike beginning Monday, May 11, stating, “Our educational and daily activities can no longer take place while irrational policies guide our nation and

University.” Responding to students who feared physical harm from campus violence, Boyd presented a memorandum of options on Sunday, May 10, to students who wished to leave for home before finals. He stated his sympathy with those who condemn the war but would not let the university be a political agent for them.

Did the students fear more an injury from the bruising of a rock-throwing protester or the bullet wounds of a gun-toting lawman? Could the increasingly tired, frustrated, angered, and vulnerable guardsmen camped in Iowa City explode with a quick burst of lousy judgment, adding to the number of wounded and slain collegiate protesters and innocent bystanders of Kent State? Would law enforcement temper their use of lethal weapons to control student rallies?

While 11,796 students headed out of town down slabs of concrete to the safe confines of home and five hundred others prepared for an evening rally, the Faculty Senate championed a resolution to end ROTC as an academic program. The Student Senate issued an official statement aimed to protect the peaceful protesters who have the right to voice their convictions and all students’ unrestricted right of free choice to complete the semester unfettered.

Boyd was off the hook. The Pentacrest became deserted. On Wednesday, May 13, Governor Ray ordered the National Guard to leave Iowa City after five days of occupation, substantially reducing the threat of violence on the Iowa campus.

Despite the similarities of downtown merchant property destruction, the burning of an ROTC building, rock-throwing, and protest disruptions, Iowa did not become a second Kent State.

It was a relief that the Pentacrest did not suffer bloodstains. During the spring of 1970, the prolonged period of discontent pitted brave students who stood up for their convictions against Boyd and administrative others, who made delicate decisions aimed at defusing tensions, placating funding sources, and reassuring parents their offspring were safe. While my belief systems echoed much of the jargon and actions of Iowa war dissidents, I lacked the guts to take their risks.

During my dental school days of the early seventies, accounts of the protest days became lore. Everything in the activist paragraphs of the essay happened, but not to me; I have put myself in the role of a person who acted upon his convictions at a crucial time in America’s history, not to take credit for the creditable actions of courageous students, but to remind myself and guide the reader through actions taken or not taken and how they continue to reverberate through the decades as we wonder if these early choices were the right ones.