"It was very traumatic to the staff here," says Dorothy Stoessner, director of volunteer services. "No one wants to talk about it, some don't want to even read about it. They just want to forget."

Stoessner worked at the hospital on May 4, 1970, when it was in the seven-story brick building on South Meridian Street in Ravenna. That building now houses the Portage County Administration offices.

The emergency room staff there on May 4 now maintains an unflinching loyalty to each other with their silence, Stoessner explains.

A reason Stoessner is more willing to talk is that her duties that day weren't in the emergency room or Intensive Care Unit. She was asked to stand in for the woman who did admitting. The woman lived in Kent and, like all the other residents, was blockaded within the city, which was closed off immediately after the shootings.

Robinson Memorial called her to fill in about three hours after newscasts of the shooting interrupted television programming. She says she had somewhat eerie memories of congregating with her neighbors in Ravenna shortly after hearing "sirens and sirens and sirens."

Stoessner was responsible for assigning rooms and beds based on reports of the patients' conditions.

"I got a lot of calls: did you admit this one, did you admit that one," Stoessner says. "Dean Kahler's name seems to stand out in my mind. He was the most seriously hurt."

Kahler was listed as critical, according to The Akron Beacon Journal of May 5, 1970. Allison Krause was also listed as critical, the only student of the four killed who was still alive on arrival at the hospital.

The closest contact Stoessner had with the wounded students was with the parents of Sandra Scheuer, who was dead on arrival. When they reached Robinson around 5 p.m. that day, she escorted them down the hall to the emergency room, where they would be told that their daughter had died. At this point Stoessner also was not aware of Sandra's condition.

"They were very nice. There was just small talk," Stoessner says about Scheuer's parents.

The phone call that was made to the Scheuers, who were living in Youngstown, followed the hospital policy forbidding staff to reveal a patient's death to loved ones living far away. Stoessner says this was to protect the safety of the family's long drive. She said most hospitals use this policy, and there is seldom an argument with it.

"My God, if they called and said, 'Your child is dead,' over the phone, that would be inhuman. I wouldn't want to find out that way," Stoessner says.

The identities of deceased patients cannot be revealed without consent of the next of kin, according to hospital confidentiality codes. Stoessner says the building was a mob scene with reporters from around the world.

Stoessner says that she and her co-workers were overwhelmed and confused by the deluge of wounded. Who was responsible and why it happened were unclear to them.

"We didn't know who shot who," Stoessner says. "All these young people wounded, some dead. We've had accidents, but nothing of this magnitude."

The hospital had to use its disaster plan, which Stoessner credits with maintaining order.

"Everybody is trained to do a job. Emergency procedures and routines are in place and then activated," Stoessner says.

Tom Grace was one of nine students wounded that day, he was shot in the foot. He was transported to Robinson Memorial Hospital in the same ambulance as Sandra Scheuer. Grace says he met the ambulance driver a few years later at a hearing involving cutbacks in ambulance services and thanked him.

But Grace says he never had the opportunity to thank the hospital, even though he has been asked to reflect on the shootings numerous times.

"I'm grateful for the care I received. I got good care," Grace says. He particularly is indebted to Dr. McCormick, the emergency room physician whom he says saved his foot.

Yet, the staff and wounded were not the only people at the hospital that day who have memories.

Timothy DeFrange, a media specialist for Aurora city schools, and Kent State student at the time, was at the hospital that day, paying a final visit to his father, Nick, whose pancreatitus had begun to take a turn for the worse a month earlier.

The necessary tunnel vision that his impending grief created blocked the growing political turmoil from his mind. Ironically, the crisis point of these events culminated with his own.

DeFrange remembers watching the flames of the ROTC building through the trees from his home in Twin Lakes the night of Saturday, May 2.

"I had an idea something really terrible was brewing on campus, but I didn't care. I was more worried about Morn and Dad," DeFrange says.

The rumor that two guardsmen were shot reached him before the truth that four students were killed, as it did with many others. It was about the same time he was given news that his father was dying.

"At about 2 o'clock in the afternoon I got a message to get to the hospital fast," DeFrange says. "I did my best. I had a critical-patient pass that let me through the national guard blockade."

His father had died by the time he got there.

Elender DeFrange, his mother, was there when the wounded students arrived. She has since died, but DeFrange created personal archives of her recollections. She told her son:

"I was just told that time was up and that I would have to leave his bedside when I heard all this commotion at the far end of intensive care. The next thing I knew they were wheeling in all these young college students into intensive care. The doctors and nurses were all crying.

"Then I saw one doctor go over to a wall light and hang an X-ray up on it. He called another doctor over and pointed to it saying, ' You see that? This bullet is lodged in this boy's spine. This boy is never going to walk again. In all my years of medicine this is the most senseless thing I've ever seen."'

Mrs. DeFrange then recalled going to the window and praying.

"Dear Jesus, you've given Nick 55 good years, and these young people haven't had even 20. I know I've been asking you not to take him, but I just can't ask for that any more after what's happened to these young people. If you have to take him, I'll accept it as your will."

Anyone fated to cross paths with the small-town hospital on May 4,1970, witnessed one of the worst tragedies in recent American history. Political and historical analysis has designated the Kent State shootings as the event that "brought the Vietnam War home" in the most ironic of settings: a conservative, rural town. But for those at the hospital, unaware of the turbulence on campus that day, the tragedy hit home the most. The painful truth, as only they know it, will forever be a secret carried in their hearts.

- Sarah E. Tascone is a senior magazine journalism and applied conflict management major. This is her first contribution to The Burr.