"It became a part of my life," Lewis says, kneeling over piles of paper that don't fit into his four 6-foot filing cabinets while searching for one of his studies on May 4. "I think it was much harder for my colleagues."

Lewis started to write his first paper about May 4 almost immediately. Although he told his story a number of times, it wasn't until 1990 that he wrote a first-person account of what happened to him.

"It was very cathartic," Lewis says. "I was crying like a baby."

John Gargan, professor of political science, agrees that Lewis had an impact on those around him.

"Within four hours, Kent State closed. The Campus reopened later, but it would never be the same."

"There was a chilling effect right after," Gargan says. "He was amongst guys who dealt with it. He helped to hold the academic community together. We would patrol the bars... to be seen talking to students." "We thought we should go out and be seen," Lewis says. "People wanted to talk and the university was closed.

"It was like losing a loved one and not being able to talk about it."

Because Lewis became so well known, he would get calls from students asking him to talk to their parents and siblings to help them understand what happened.

The Guard, meanwhile, had moved beyond Taylor Hall and past most of the students, finally stopping for several minutes on a partially fenced-off practice field next to the parking lot. Students and guardsmen lobbed a tear-gas canister back and forth, and there was rock throwing. Just as I reached the lot, the troops began climbing back up the hill toward the Pagoda. As the guardsmen withdrew, they were met with a great deal of shouting and booing that sounded like a victory cry; the students felt they had "beaten" the soldiers. As the guardsmen approached the Pagoda, the students gave them a wide berth. "Well," I said to myself with a sigh of relief, "no one is going to get stuck." It seemed clear that the Guard was on its way back to the ROTC building on the other side of the hill.