The Parents of Sandy Scheuer Receive a Series of Letters, Including One from President Richard Nixon, After Their Daughter Is Shot Dead at Kent State

At 12:24 P.M. on May 4, 1970, over two dozen Ohio National Guardsmen aimed their M-1 rifles at a crowd of Kent State University students and began firing. In thirteen seconds of shooting, the guardsmen killed four students—Sandra Scheuer, Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, and Bill Schroeder—and wounded nine more. Although most of the students were protesting President Richard Nixon’s announcement that U.S. troops would invade and attack Communist staging grounds and sanctuaries in Cambodia, many, including Bill Schroeder, were only watching the demonstration out of curiosity. Sandy Scheuer, an attractive, studious, and outgoing twenty-year-old, was heading to her 1:00 P.M. class when she was shot through the throat, causing her to go into convulsions before she died. A poll conducted after the shootings found that a majority of Americans—almost 60 percent—blamed the students, while only about 10 percent condemned the guardsmen. (Their defenders claimed the students had been taunting them and hurling rocks in their direction.) Incredibly, the parents of the slain students received letters accusing them of being responsible for their loss. Sandy Scheuer’s parents had been celebrating their twenty-seventh wedding anniversary when they learned their daughter had been killed. Afta they publicly expressed grief over Sandy’s death, the following handwritten letter arrived in their mail.

Dear Mrs. Scheuer—

Our hearts are sad also in the death of your daughter. Why—why don’t you mothers take more interest in the activities of your children? Why do you allow them to participate in these terrible demonstrations? You know, and we all know—there is no such thing as an innocent by-stander. If she was in the crowd, she was a part of it. If she was against this militant radical Communist inspired upset—she would have stayed away from it.

You & you alone are to blame—you say “they just let it go on & on, rioting here—rioting there, it’s just not right, it’s unexplainable.” No, it is not unexplainable—you parents are the ones, especially the Jewish parents—for so many many of these leaders of student uprising are Jewish children. Did you think this kind of thing can go on forever? Do you not care about our Country, don’t you care about what happens to it, can’t you concern yourself at all, how do you justify all the burning and looting, breaking windows, tearing up classrooms?—

It is a good country & if it is not, it is the laxity of parents like yourself, that sit back & close your eyes to all the destruction. There were rocks & bullets, & construction pipe, re-inforcing sharp-rods and they were used on the national guard—yes—they were justified in shooting, it is long, long overdue. If we are to have any protection from these radical mobs, our National Guard is our only source of safety. Did you think this was a Sat. nite picnic, your daughter was going to? Don’t you watch t.v., you and thousands of other parents? I would feel safer in Vietnam than on many of our college campuses today. Again, I ask you, why are so many of your Jewish sons & daughters allowed to participate and take such active parts in this attempt to overthrow, so violently, and no where, do I ever see or read objection from these parents. These children should be in school & busy learning—

You say—“No one listens to them”—this is the statement of the year & you a parent. Let them learn first, let them learn the right thing to say—then, when the right time comes, and their turn comes, and they have something to say—do so the American way. This thing has gone as far as it can go. People will not let it go on any longer for most of us do not believe in mob rule—“stoning”—is long past. T. Edgar Hoover has told us who is overthrowing or attempting to disrupt & overthrow the gov’t of our country—through our youth & their lax, uninformed, or possibly too-well informed parents.

I’ve no doubt every parent of every child, & there are thousands upon thousands, in these mobs at various colleges, would say the same as you, that their son or daughter had no part in it all. This, we know, is untrue. “They should be free to express their thoughts & their feelings”—yes, at school, not in mob violence—not at the expense of our freedom—or anyone elses freedom. It must be stopped, it will be stopped. You, the parents, become more concerned, become aware that freedom, here, is for all—not just a mob of loud, radical, demanding students. Don’t blame our Country. Don’t blame our President—put blame where it should be—on all parents’ shoulders. We are weary to death of rock throwing mobs, & we are weary of crowds of dissenters. Whether you think so or not, the National Guard would not shoot if they had not been driven & forced to. Don’t blame your governor, blame yourselves.

In this “write-up” in the paper I note about 25 why’s—why this & why-not that—The answer to all these why’s & why-nots is—it is a free country—the free-est one in the world and it must not be ruined—you ans’d your own questions when you said—“When I compare my youth to theirs, I came from Germany, and there we did not have a chance to develop like the children here.” Yes, this country is great, our laws are just & fair and must be obeyed. It grieves me to hear you say—you don’t think much of this Country now, or you won’t vote for our president again. It is our President Nixon that will end our war—It was started with the democrats. You, no doubt, will be one of the first to say, send men & arms to Israel—but that is the same thing—again—Vietnam.

Believe me, when the war is over—the student revolt will latch on to another cause to riot & be led (by communists) down to ruin. Then there will be more National Guard & more guns—for it will have to be so, we cannot allow our Country to be taken over by uneducated, undisciplined, uncouth, un-American, unpatriotic youngsters—whose parents couldn’t care less. All 4 parents have said—“My child was an innocent by-stander”—Maybe so, but they were in the thick of it or they were taking part.

May God comfort you, in your grief. May you now be God’s instrument in helping stamp out this rioting. The place for students is in school, learning, and learn it well, student & parent.

Remember this—the National Guard are also young people, young & patriotic and also loved by parents, such as you.

Anticipating the aforementioned, another mother, who was genuinely sympathetic, wrote to the Scheuers:

One thing has been on my mind in particular. One understands that people who experience tragedy are often the recipients of hate-filled letters, or worse, from ghouls, often in large numbers. No doubt you have received some of this kind of stuff. Please don’t let it touch you. Statistically there have to be some sick people like that. You cannot let what they say represent any kind of reality to you, except that they are vicious and sick. Reality for you is the millions of young, middle-aged, and old who wept and still weep for you.

Students throughout the country were particularly upset by the Kent State killings. “It is so hard to know what to say at a time like this,” a sophomore at Middlebury College wrote to the Scheuers,

Words are not the best means of expression, yet hopefully a real feeling will be conveyed to you through my words.

Everyone here is still shocked at the news and the pictures in the newspapers. School has been called off for 5 days so that we’ll not only have time to think about what has happened but most important do something about it. Last night the college held a memorial service for your daughter and the other three Kent St. students. It was a beautiful service and I have never heard such fullness of singing before in our chapel, as it was completely filled. I realized that the students that we were mourning could have been Middlebury students and that their parents could have been our parents….

I wanted you to know personally that this community is behind you in trying to understand and accept the present tragedy and with you in spirit to give you strength to continue to go on.

Ironically, a letter of support even came from President Nixon, who had publicly assumed a less sympathetic posture: “When dissent turns to violence,” he remarked coolly after the shootings, “it invites tragedy.” Nixon’s brief, handwritten note was dated May 6.

THE WHITEHOUSE WASHINGTON

Dear Mr and Mrs Scheuer

I realize that there is little that I, or anyone, could say at this point that would lessen your personal sense of grief. But I want you to know that I share, as does the entire nation, your sorrow at the tragic death of your daughter Sandy.

As parents of two daughters, Mrs Nixon and I feel especially keen the loss of one so young, so happy, so much a source of joy to her friends, and so full of promise of life ahead. You, and she, will be in our thoughts and our prayers—

Richard Nixon

After an extensive investigation, the U.S. Justice Department concluded that the shootings were “… unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable.” No one, however, was ever convicted or punished. Less than two weeks after the Kent State shootings, police killed two African-American student protesters—James Earl Green and Phillip Lafayette Gibbs—and wounded twelve at Jackson State College in Mississippi.