First came the tear gas. Second came the 61 bullets. Then came the loss.

Columbia Peaceworks Director Mark Haim lost a childhood friend, Jeffrey Miller, on May 4, 1970, when Miller and three other Kent State students were killed by Ohio National Guardsmen after protesting the Vietnam War and the U.S. invasion of Cambodia.

“It made it much more,” he said, pausing to hold back tears. “Something hit me personally.”

Haim and about 50 others gathered at MU’s Peace Park on Wednesday to mark the 35th anniversary of the killing of four anti-war protestors from Kent State University and the two Jackson State University student protestors who were killed at an anti-war protest 14 days later.

“They were just a tip of the iceberg,” Haim said. “Literally millions of people had their lives interrupted, some terminated, because of the war.”

Haim said the government’s suppression continues today with the Patriot Act and covert action, such as the infiltrating of peace organizations by government agents.

Speaker Bill Wickersham, an MU adjunct professor, said the present day protestor needs to be organized and knowledgeable because protestors with signs can “stand on the corner until hell freezes over.”

Wickersham led 4,000 MU students in protest of the events at Kent and Jackson 30 years ago at Peace Park and was then fired by MU and Columbia College for his actions.

Debra McGrath of Kingdom City said she remembers crying and being appalled after seeing the events at Kent State on television.

“I had the same gut reaction after seeing the protests of Jackson State,” McGrath said. “This is supposed to be America.”

Cat Johnson, an MU junior, wasn’t born yet during the protest but remembers her second father crying as he explained how he had been shot at Kent State.

Her grandmother received calls from people wishing her son dead while he recovered from injuries at the hospital, Johnson said.

“I can’t imagine having to go through that with my own child,” Johnson said.

Haim said he didn’t put the death of his friend’s life into context until five years later after he heard folksinger Holly Near sing, “It could have been me.”

Those in attendance lit six candles of remembrance and then formed a circle as Carolyn Mathews and Susan Woodbury sang that very song: “It could have been me, but it instead was you, so I’ll keep doing the work you were doing as if it were two.”

Copyright © 2005 Columbia Missourian

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