In Memory Of...
The 20-year search for a quiet May 4 monument

Story by Laura Putre
Photos by Scott Schwegal

Between Princeton University's library and chapel, just down the road from Picasso's "Head of a Woman" cast in concrete, is not where blood poured out of the bullet hole in the left side of Jeffrey Miller's head. Much nearer the Atlantic than an Ohio hillside, a day a moment long is written in bronze.

Just down the road from "Head of a Woman" is George Segal's "In Memory of May 4 1970: Abraham and Isaac." Cast in bronze.

The knife of the father is always ready in the moment before thrust, a guided missile directed at his son's heart. Nobody dies.

The work intertwines two moments - one Biblical, one historical. The Biblical moment is from the book of Genesis, the Segal work capturing Abraham in the moment before he is to kill Isaac, his son.

This is also the moment before the Lord intervenes. Abraham is to spare his son and sacrifice a lamb instead, says the Lord. Nobody dies.

March, 1978. The Mildred Andrews Foundation, a Cleveland-based private fund for public art, commissions a May 4 memorial for the Kent State campus. Segal, internationally known for capturing human expression in plaster, is chosen as sculptor by the foundation.

July, 1978. The KSU administration, headed by President Brage Golding, unanimously rejects the Segal work.

October, 1980. Segal's "In Memory of May 4 1970: Abraham and Isaac," is dedicated at Princeton University.

The hole left by a bullet in the Solar Totem sculpture

Ten years earlier than the 13 granite slabs dedicated in May 1990 on the hillside behind Taylor Hall, Kent State could have had a May 4 memorial by a renowned artist at no cost. But 10 years after the May 4 shootings, the Segal work was not quiet enough for the Kent State administration. "Most people, when they erected statues of commemorative things," says Robert McCoy, executive assistant to Golding in 1978, "chose subjects that appeared not to incite violence."

Shootings on the Princeton campus over an artwork have yet to occur. Since its installation there, the Segal work has suffered one injury -somebody broke off the knife in Abraham's hand.