AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Today, we remember a witness to a key moment in American history. John Cleary has died at the age of 74, but he is best known for speaking up about an event in 1970, when he was 19 years old and a college freshman at Kent State University in Ohio.
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JOHN CLEARY: Most of the people in my major, we were basically just concentrating on getting our homework done and helping one another.
CHANG: He was an architecture student with a heavy course load.
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CLEARY: To be honest with you, politics really didn't come up.
SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
That's what he told an oral historian at Kent State in 2010. Back in the spring of 1970, President Nixon announced an expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia. In May, anti-war protesters set a campus ROTC building on fire, and the governor of Ohio sent over 100 National Guard troops to Kent State.
CHANG: A large campus protest took place on Monday, May 4. National guardsmen tried to disperse protesters with tear gas. Between classes, John Cleary went to take photos.
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CLEARY: I wanted to get one last picture of them before they went over the crest of the hill, so I was kind of getting my camera. I was winding it. I was getting ready to take another shot. And suddenly, they just turned and fired.
CHANG: The troops opened fire, and Cleary was shot in the chest.
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CLEARY: I guess the best way I can describe it is like getting hit in the chest with a sledgehammer. It just really knocked me down.
DETROW: Four students were killed. Cleary was 1 of 9 injured that day. A photo of him laying wounded on a hill made the cover of Life magazine. It became a defining image of the Vietnam era, and it partially inspired Neil Young's protest song "Ohio," recorded with his band Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
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CROSBY, STILLS, NASH AND YOUNG: (Singing) Tin soldiers and Nixon coming. We're finally on our own. This summer I hear the drumming - four dead in Ohio.
CHANG: John Cleary eventually recovered, graduated and built a career as an architect. But for a long time after the May 4 shooting, he avoided speaking about it. That changed when his son was born on a May 4.
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CLEARY: And I felt like God was telling me something. You know, you can't bury this. You can't pretend it didn't happen to you. You can't put it behind you. It's something that you need to confront.
DETROW: That's Cleary speaking to an oral historian at SUNY Binghamton in 2022. He gave similar interviews to historians and journalists, attended memorials on campus and spoke to students, reconnecting with other survivors. He became a prominent voice urging people to remember so that it didn't happen again.
CHANG: At this year's May 4 commemoration at Kent State, John Cleary was chosen to ring a bell on campus to honor the victims. After a long illness, Cleary died in late October.
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CROSBY, STILLS, NASH AND YOUNG: (Singing) Got to get down to it. Soldiers are cutting us down. Should have been gone long ago. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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