Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming.
We' re finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming.
Four dead in Ohio.

As a mass of Ohio National Guardsmen inched its way over one of Kent State's grassy hills, John Filo hurried out of Taylor Hall to see what was happening.

He was armed with a Nikkormat camera with a zoom lens that he had borrowed from Chestnut Burr yearbook editor Howard Ruffner.

Filo, then a 22-year-old senior photo-journalism major, did not own a camera. He had enough trouble just paying for food and rent.

"I don't want to say I was in abject poverty, but pretty damn close," Filo recalled nearly twenty years later. "I'd always work deals with The Chestnut Burr yearbook to get access to their equipment."

Filo, deputy director of photography for Sports Illustrated, is best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a young woman kneeling beside the body of slain student Jeffrey Miller after he had been killed by the National Guard.

Now, nearly 20 years after guardsmen killed four students and wounded nine others on the campus, Filo finds he still is overcoming the "survivor syndrome" from the events that day.

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago
What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground
How could you run when you know?

Filo had been home in Natrona Heights, Pa., the first weekend in May 1970, and he returned to Kent State that Sunday. Students at KSU and college campuses around the country were protesting Thursday's invasion of Cambodia by U.S. and South Vietnamese troops.

Another student protest was being mounted Monday in front of Taylor Hall, and Filo, who worked more than 40 hours a week operating the journalism school's photography lab, saw many opportunities for dramatic photos.

"Word had traveled so fast that basically all the students on campus were there to see what was going on," he remembered.

Click.

One photo Filo shot was of a student waving a big black flag in front of the guardsmen. Later, Filo discovered the student was Alan Canfora, who was wounded in the subsequent shooting and has been active preserving the memory of the shootings.

In the faces of Ohio guardsmen, Alan Canfora protests the American invasion of Cambodia. (© John Paul Filo)

"I was really proud of it," Filo said of that photo. "It summed it up for me - students protesting the armed forces. It didn't seem there was ever going to be any direct confrontation."

Then, Filo said, he could feel the tension building as the guardsmen moved over the hill, their rifles aimed at the students. Filo was standing on the steps in front of Taylor Hall, and he realized he was the only one standing between the guardsmen and the protesters.

With horror, Filo looked up from his camera to see one guardsman aiming his rifle at him.

He saw the guardsman pull the trigger. The bullet meant for Filo pierced a dime-sized hole in a metal sculpture between them, leaving a cloud of rust.

"They say you can see the bullet that kills you," Filo said softly. "The difference between my shooting (my camera) and my getting wounded or killed - we're talking inches."

To the horror of the nation, the Ohio National Guardsmen had opened fire upon unarmed student protesters. It was the first violent reaction by the government to the growing number of campus protests of the Vietnam War.

That violent reaction became a pivotal moment in Filo's life. He turned and saw everyone on the ground. Slowly, the students started to get up, except for the 13 who had been shot. Those who had not been shot circled those on the ground.

Filo saw Jeffrey Miller lying face down in the parking lot with blood gushing out of his body. "There was nothing you could do," Filo said, sounding as helpless as he felt 20 years ago. "It was like a garden hose pumping out the last of his blood."

Filo moved into position, looking for the right viewpoint.

"Ohio" (Neil Young)
1970 Cotillion Music Inc. & Broken Fiddle Music Inc.
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