May 4th Voices: Kent State, 1970; A Play

Scene Eight: Getting in the Way of Bullets

49 s c e n e e i g ht: g e t t i n g i n t he way o f b ulle t s 2 Male Students 1 Female Student 1 Faculty Member 1 Mom 3 Fbi Agents 2 Police Officers 1 Prosecutor 1 Sheriff 1 Attorney General 1 bbC Producer 2 Residents 1 Guardsman male student 1 Therewasaknockonthedoor.Twoguysinsuitswhosaidtheywere Fbi agents wanted to interview Matthew Erwin. And my mom said, mom “i think you’re looking for the wrong guy. i think you want Mike Erwin.” male student 1 And one of the agents said, fbi agent 1 “Ma’am, we want Matthew Erwin.” mom “Are you sure you want Matthew, because Mike is my eldest son and i think that’s who you want to talk to.” 50 male student 1 And the guy got real snippy with her and said, fbi agent 1 “Lady, we want to talk to Matthew Erwin.” male student 1 Well, Matt was my youngest brother. He was six years old, and he’d been particularly bratty that day. So my mom grabbed him and pushed him out the door with the Fbi agents and slammed the door. A couple seconds later, we heard a knock. fbi agent 1 “Ma’am, this isn’t who we want to talk to.” mom “You asked to speak with Matthew Erwin, you’ll speak with Matthew Erwin!” male student 1 You like to think this is America, and people don’t disappear. but i didn’t know what would have happened if i had said i wouldn’t go with them. So i went, and they showed me picture after picture after picture. And after the first ten minutes, i realized they had no intention of figuring out what had happened. female student 1 i think their way of investigating was a kind of “Who were you with?” syndrome. They’d interview somebody in Cleveland and say, fbi agent 2 “Except for anyone you know in Cleveland, who were you with?” female student 1 “Well, i was with Art from Philadelphia.” 51 male student 1 They just wanted to identify people, and they wanted to pin things on people. female student 1 And so they were at his doorstep. And the last statement the Fbi agent would make was, fbi agent 2 “Except for anyone you know in Cleveland, who were you with?” male student 2 “i was with my roommate Steve from Connecticut.” male student 1 And it became real apparent that no one in a position of authority gave a hoot about what had really happened and the underlying causes. They just wanted to find people to blame it on. female student 1 And the next day, they were at his door! So that’s how they pyramided the investigation. male student 1 i couldn’t drive through my hometown without the local police stopping me: Police officer 1 “Uh, your tail light is out—oh, it looks fine now—well, it was out when i stopped you.” male student 1 One night, i was driving with my best friend, who worked for the police department and did towing for them. Well, the policeman looked down and saw that he was in the car and said, 52 Police officer 2 “You know you really need to pick your friends better.” faculty member We had people knocking on our door, wanting to rent our garage, supposedly because they’d been thrown out of their apartments. They looked more hippie than any hippie you ever saw. They had these awful sort of “ban the bomb”–type nuclear disarmament symbols, with really ugly shirts and things. i felt sure they were definitely Fbi, and i wouldn’t let them in. One of the guys tried to get in the door, like, fbi hiPPie “Hey man,” faculty member acting really friendly with me, like he was just one of my group of people. it was really bizarre. Everyone was so caught up with the mania. i mean, he could have planted a bug—who knows what he could have done. We felt we were being watched and dissected, and everyone was trying to find out about some conspiracy. male student 1 Of course, because i had been so cooperative with the investigation, when subpoenas went out for the Grand Jury, i got one. My father went over to the Portage County Courthouse...