The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Family enjoyed close ties
Sister recalls brother killed in shootings
William Knox Schroeder, 19, became part of American history on May 4, 1970, when Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire on anti-war demonstrators at Kent State University.
Schroeder, a Lorain High School alumnus who was a sophomore psychology student, was not an active protester, said his elder sister, Nancy Tuttle, 70, a retired music teacher who lives in Cleveland Heights. He was just going to class. Schroeder remains linked with three other victims who died as the Guardsmen fired up to 67 shots over 13 seconds. Allison Krause, 19, of Pittsburgh; Jeffrey Glen Miller of Plainview, N.Y.; and Sandra Lee Scheuer, 20, of Youngstown, were killed, and nine other students wounded.
After almost 50 years, Tuttle paused only a moment when asked what she would like people should know about her brother.
“That he was a football field away from the man who shot him,” Tuttle said. “He was no threat to anybody. He got shot in the back. He wasn’t a threat to anybody.
“He wanted to be a psychologist that worked with returning soldiers and people with traumatic experiences, and I think that probably he was just observing,” she said.
A photo of Schroeder walking among other students showed he was calm and quiet, just walking and carrying books, Tuttle said.
There has been a lot of conjecture that the guardsmen, some no older than the students around them, were just shooting, Tuttle said.
“I don’t know if anybody was targeted particularly,” she said. “I think they were just shooting. But to be a football field away and have your back turned to them to go on your way to wherever he intended to go in the first place and get shot in the back, just, it’s not right.”
Growing up
The shootings shocked the nation and spurred yet more protest against the Vietnam War.
Long before that day, Schroeder was a son, a brother, a friend, part of the history of Lorain’s east side, starting from the family’s Missouri Avenue home.
“Everybody knew Billy, everybody in the world knew Billy,” Tuttle said.
Tuttle, 13 months older than her younger brother, was close enough in age that she jokingly would tell people she and Schroeder were twins, but he flunked kindergarten.
“We were very close because my parents married late, after the war (World War II), and that’s what they did, they had their families as quickly as they could,” she said.
At age 13, Schroeder became the youngest Eagle Scout in the history of Ohio at the time.
In the neighborhood, he would go out and play pickup basketball games with the guys. The girls also took notice.
“I swear to you, every single female that I’ve ever talked to about him, talked about how handsome he was,” Tuttle said.
Anger
After the shooting, the family grieved, but Tuttle said her parents directed their anger toward the politicians and campus administration, all people making bad decisions in situations they were not prepared to handle.
But they were not angry with the members of the Ohio National Guard.
Tuttle said not many people know her parents later met some of the National
Guard members “because my parents were the only ones that didn’t come after the Guard, you know, verbally.”
Tuttle was not present for the discussions, but said her parents never verbalized any hate toward the Guard because they did what they were told to do.
She conceded that sounds like an easy way out of a situation, but her mother looked at some of the Guardsmen and saw they were not much older than her son.
“It’s not what you expected, and they were stuck in impossible situations,” Tuttle said.
In conversation, Tuttle later returned to the question of anger about the shootings. She said she harbors none.
“There’s no point to being angry — it accomplishes nothing,” she said. “Just so people know the truth of it: There were two young people right up against the Guard, and there were two young people a hundred yards away. So those bullets were not discriminating, and I don’t think the shooters were either. The whole situation was a mess of bad decisions.”
Returning to Kent State
After 50 years, some people ask if it is time for those involved to move on with their lives.
Not yet, Tuttle said. The 50th anniversary of the Kent State shootings will be marked with online programs, telephone calls, social media posts and personal recollections due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.
“It’s understandable,” Tuttle said. “The last thing we want to do is infect a lot of people at such an occasion. It’s sad but the thing is, there will be a 51st and we’ll all be together again.”
As a young mother and student of music and education, Tuttle missed the first few commemorations and did not go to the campus at all.
For her first visit, she met Gregory Payne, the playwright and scholar who had met her brother and corresponded with their mother. They retraced the steps of those involved and saw Solar Totem #1, the metal artwork shot through.
“I was fine until he showed me where the bullet had gone through the steel sculpture,” Tuttle said. “And I thought, if that bullet could go through a steel sculpture, why were they shooting at humans with that bullet? And I lost it, that’s where I lost it.”
She had the same reaction when she saw a Life magazine photo spread of the
Guardsmen lined up with their rifles in firing position and puffs of smoke around the guns.
“They just wholesale opened fire,” Tuttle said.