On November 7th, an obituary appeared in The New York Times about John Cleary, whose name I was not familiar with (though I remembered, distinctly, a well-known--and grim--picture of him, from the cover of an issue of Life magazine in May of 1970). Mr. Cleary died on October 25th at age 74.
When I read about his death, I looked in my apartment for the 1970 Life magazine issue (an image of which appeared in the Times obituary).
I have perhaps fifteen or twenty issues of Life that I saved, from the 1960s and early 1970s--and thought I had the issue with Mr. Cleary on the cover. I did have it (image at left); it was stored with other old magazines in a closet.
The magazine's cover photograph, taken by Kent State University student Howard Ruffner, is riveting. It shows Mr. Cleary, on his back, after having been shot in the chest, when Ohio National Guard troops began firing at Kent State students. It was May 4th of 1970. Students were protesting the American incursion into Cambodia, an expansion of the Vietnam War; they were also protesting the presence of the National Guard on the Kent State campus.
Mr. Cleary was not taking part in the protest. As seen in the photo on Life's cover, he is being given aid by other students.
There had been protests at the university, during the daytime, on May 1st. Near midnight, and after midnight, vandalism and confrontations with police took place in the city of Kent. Wikipedia indicates those involved "appeared to be a mix of bikers, students, and transient people." Five police officers, according to the website, were injured by thrown beer bottles. Later, on May 2nd, local police were told by an informant that the campus R.O.T.C. building would be destroyed. At the request of the city's Mayor, Ohio's Governor sent the National Guard to the university. By the time the Guard arrived, the night of May 2nd, the R.O.T.C. building was burning.
Two days later, on May 4th, four students were shot and killed by Guardsmen at Kent State. One of the students, Sandra Lee Scheuer, was shot while walking to class. Another of those killed was Bill Schroeder. A close friend was quoted in Life: "He wasn't a participant [in the protest] and he wasn't just a bystander. He was open-minded. He went there to observe." Of Jeffrey Miller, who was also killed, his father said: "Jeff stood up for what he believed and he didn't believe in violence." The father of student Allison Krause, also killed, said: "She spoke her mind, because we taught her to...She felt the war in Cambodia was wrong. Is this dissent a crime? Is this a reason for killing her?"
Nine other students were injured that day. One of them, Dean Kahler, was shot in the back, and paralyzed from the waist down.
A 2024 story about Mr. Kahler is featured on the Kent State University website. The story includes the following, about Mr. Kahler, and May 4th:
He’d never been to [a protest] and wanted
to see what it was all about. So, he and some fellow students residing
in Wright Hall decided to go. Soon after they arrived, National
Guardsmen and campus security told the students they were illegally
gathered and they needed to disperse.
“It didn’t make a
lot of sense,” Dean explained. “We all thought we had the right to
assemble on our own campus and to redress our grievances with our
government. If I could lend my voice to the disagreement with the policy
of invading Cambodia, I would do that.”
With John Cleary's death, on October 25th, five of those injured--including Dean Kahler--survive him.
The New York Times obituary about Mr. Cleary included his recollections about the shootings, from an oral history undertaken in 2010 by Kent State. Times reporter Michael S. Rosenwald wrote:
On
May 4, a Monday, a large protest was scheduled for noon on the
university commons. After attending his morning classes, Mr. Cleary
borrowed a camera from a classmate and headed over.
“I went to kind of just see what was going on and observe the protesters,” he said.
After
students ignored an order to disperse, the guardsmen launched canisters
of tear gas. Mr. Cleary snapped some photos, then decided to head to a
nearby building for his next class.
The guardsmen moved in.
“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,
getting ready to take another shot and suddenly, they just turned and
fired,” he said. “It was like this volley of gunshots.”
A bullet struck him in the chest.
“I
guess the best way I can describe it is like getting hit in the chest
with a sledgehammer,” Mr. Cleary said. “It just really knocked me down.”
The story also said:
As
he lay on the ground bleeding, several students rendered first aid.
Howard Ruffner, a Kent State student working that day as a freelance
photographer for Life, snapped an image of the moment.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/us/john-cleary-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.0U8.Zdju.ValWE6Yfv02-&smid=url-share
In addition to the cover photograph used by Life, other pictures by Mr. Ruffner from that day appeared inside the magazine.
Another Kent State student, John Filo, took what was no doubt the best-known of the photographs taken that day: a picture of 14 year-old Mary Ann Vecchio, who was at the site of the Kent State protest; she had run away from her home in Florida and was hitchhiking across the country. She had been talking with student Jeffrey Miller. Moments later, Mr. Miller was shot, and killed instantly, and Ms. Vecchio's anguished reaction, as she crouched next to Mr. Miller's body, was captured by Mr. Filo. The image was seen throughout the world; Mr. Filo was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for the photograph.
Here are two Wikipedia links, about Mary Ann Vecchio, and John Filo.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Ann_Vecchio
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Filo
Here, too, is the 1970 song "Ohio," written by Neil Young and performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. The song was released the month after the Kent State shootings.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9INnMMwvnk&list=RDJ9INnMMwvnk&start_radio=1
(Photo above, © Howard Ruffner, Time Life, and Getty Images.)
