Stories from people who became witnesses to history

HORROR OF KENT STATE _Dean R. Kahler, 72, retired civil servant and schoolteacher, on surviving the shootings that changed America_ I started at Kent State University in the spring of 1970,

at 20 years old. I had never been to an anti-war demonstration, because if you worked on a farm or in a steel mill, as I had, there was no time for such things. I was the son of a World War

II veteran, and I was involved in my church. On the night of April 30, I was in a pub in the town of Kent, listening to President Nixon’s speech. When the president announced that U.S.

troops would be invading Cambodia, the pub erupted in boos. It seemed like this was going to be an expansion of the war instead of a reduction. Students were angry, me included. I went home

for the weekend, and while I was gone, protesters burned an ROTC building. When I returned to campus Sunday evening, the place was like an armed camp. National Guard troops were everywhere.

It was shocking, because this was rural Ohio — not exactly a hotbed of liberal thinking. The next day, May 4, I figured I would go to the protest that was to start at noon. There were two or

three thousand people gathered, shouting anti-war chants. The National Guard troops were there, putting on their gas masks and helmets. At one point, some troops came out in a Jeep with a

campus police officer holding a bullhorn. If we didn’t disperse, he said, the National Guard would disperse us. That didn’t go over well. So, the National Guard troops got into formation and

began firing tear gas. There was chaos. I ended up in a gravel parking lot wiping tear gas out of my eyes and nose. I remained about 100 yards from the troops. I watched as they formed two

lines, with their rifles and bayonets forward. They began to march toward a crowd of students, who cleared a path for them. The troops reached the top of a hill. I was at the bottom. They

turned in unison and aimed their weapons down the hill. I thought, _My God! They’re going to shoot!_ I jumped down and covered my head, and all of a sudden, I heard bullets hitting the

ground around me, making this _zoooop_ sound. Then I felt something like a beesting in my back, and I felt my legs tighten up, then relax. When the shooting stopped, there was this awful

silence. Then people started seeing the bodies, and the chaos resumed. Four young people were killed by National Guard troops, and many more lay heavily injured. I ended up at Robinson

Memorial Hospital, still conscious. They put me in an induced coma after surgery. When I awoke days later and learned of my fate, I was angry. But when the doctors told me what they had told

my parents, I felt truly thankful to be alive. They told my parents to pray for me to survive one hour. And if I did, then to pray that I would survive two hours. And if I made it 12 hours,

I would probably survive. I have lived 52 years as a paraplegic. I have had a rewarding career, and I am a wheelchair runner currently training for my third marathon. I still feel today the

way I did when I awoke in the hospital: thankful to be alive. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., on the eve of his death. Bettmann Archive/Getty Images ‘I’VE SEEN THE PROMISED LAND’

_Clara Jean Ester, 74, a community organizer, on the last moments of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life_ The church was packed. There were people standing in the aisles of the Mason Temple.

Martin Luther King Jr. was in Memphis, but there was a tornado watch, and he had been advised to stay at the Lorraine Motel. Ralph Abernathy would do the talking this night. There were so

many people! Somebody called Dr. King and said, “The people didn’t come to hear Ralph. They came to hear you. You need to get dressed and come down here.” I was a junior at LeMoyne College

in Memphis and very engaged in the movement. There was a sanitation strike going on, and Dr. King had come to lead a nonviolent protest in support of the workers. When he came to the Mason

Temple that night to speak — April 3, 1968 — I was there. No one could know that this was the last speech he would ever make. He started to talk about his life story. In retrospect, it was

like he was giving his own eulogy. He said he knew there had been threats on his life, but that didn’t matter. “Because I’ve been to the mountaintop,” he said, “and I’ve seen the promised

land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.” The feeling in the church when he said these words was

indescribable. The next day, Dr. King had catfish for lunch at the Lorraine Motel, and fellow organizer James Orange said that this catfish was so good, he wanted to treat everyone. I was at

the Clayborn Temple, and I got in my car to drive to the Lorraine Motel, with my car full of people. When we got there, we headed for the lobby entrance. Dr. King came out of his room (just

above us on a balcony), and I could see him talking to some people and smiling. Someone told him to go back and get a coat because it was going to get a little cooler at night. He turned,

but Ralph Abernathy stopped him and said he would get the coat. Suddenly, I heard what sounded like a truck backfiring and people saying, “Get down! Get down!” I took off up the stairs. Dr.

King was flat on his back. I tried to grab his wrist to take his pulse. I was on the side where the wound was. He was losing a lot of blood. I could see his chest rising, so I thought, 

_That’s a good sign. He’s still alive._ His eyes were open and looking upward. All I could think about was his speech from the night before, when he said, “I may not get there with you.”

Soon police officers arrived and the ambulance got there with the stretcher. The police wouldn’t let us leave, and as we were waiting there, it came on the news that Dr. King was dead. I

didn’t talk about it for a long time. I never went back to the Lorraine Motel until it became a museum. I picked up my life and kept on going. Every year, I celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.

on his birthday, because he was a gift from God. Every April 4, I mourn, because that gift was taken away. Fans react to Bobby Thomson’s historic blast. Bettmann Archive/Getty Images ‘THE

GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT!’ _George Hirsch, 87, founding publisher of _New York_ magazine and chairman of New York Road Runners, on baseball’s greatest home run_ On October 3, 1951, my friends

and I were sitting in our homeroom class at New Rochelle High School, north of New York City — bored and frustrated 17-year-olds. That afternoon, at the Polo Grounds in Manhattan, the

Brooklyn Dodgers were taking on the New York Giants in a game that would decide the National League pennant. You could not overstate how important baseball was at that time in American

culture. Or how important it was to us. My buddies and I had a brainstorm. What are we doing here in class? Let’s hit the road! We snuck out of school and headed for the Polo Grounds. New

York was the center of the baseball universe. All season long, the Dodgers had held a commanding lead in the standings over the Giants. But the Giants salvaged their season with a 16-game

winning streak. Incredibly, the regular season ended in a dead tie. I was a Dodgers fan, and these players were my heroes — Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Gil Hodges, Carl Furillo. We stood

in line two hours for our tickets and paid $2 apiece. The game was so close, all 34,000-plus fans held their breath through every pitch. But in the eighth inning, Sal Maglie, the Giants’

pitcher, weakened, allowing the Dodgers to take a 4-1 lead. I’ll admit, I celebrated too early. In the bottom of the ninth, the Giants scored a run and had two men on base when Bobby Thomson

came to bat. On deck stood Willie Mays, the 20-year-old rookie for whom I would later name my son. The Dodgers summoned Ralph Branca from the bullpen to replace the starter, Don “Newk”

Newcombe. Branca’s first pitch was a fastball down the middle. Thomson didn’t move. The time was 3:58 p.m. In his novel _Underworld,_ Don DeLillo describes Branca’s next pitch: “Not a good

pitch to hit, up and in, but Thomson swings and tomahawks the ball and everybody, everybody watches.” “All I can remember was the pure shock of it,” recalls my friend Steve Goddard, sitting

next to me at that moment. “And then I was crying.” My friend Buster Grossman, also sitting next to me, along with our buddy Greg Dillon, recalls hearing the now-famous refrain from a nearby

radio, from the announcer Russ Hodges: “The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!” We watched in awe as Thomson circled the bases, jumping up and

down. I left the Polo Grounds that day feeling like I’d been struck by lightning, and Bobby Thomson’s home run has since become known as the shot heard round the world. Today, over 70 years

later, I’m still friends with the three guys I went to see that game with. My late wife, Shay, gave me a photo autographed by Thomson and the pitcher Branca, which hangs in my office. I

remember that night, when I got home, after the game. “Someday,” my father told me, “you’ll get over it.” Maybe someday I will. Firefighters clean the Alaskan coast following the Exxon

Valdez oil spill. Jean-Louis Atlan/Sygma via Getty Images ‘THIS IS THE BIG ONE’ _Gary Shigenaka, 68, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) emeritus scientist, on the _Exxon

Valdez_ spill_ On March 24, 1989, I was working in the offices of NOAA in Seattle when I heard a commotion down the hall. People from our Hazardous Material Response Branch were scrambling,

and I heard the head of that team say the words, “This is the big one.” That’s when I learned that the supertanker _Exxon Valdez_ had run aground off the coast of Alaska. The hazmat team was

dispatched as the first responders, and my scientific research group quickly followed. The federal government is not known for getting things done quickly, but in an amazingly short time,

NOAA took an old mothballed hydrographic-survey ship called the _Fairweather,_ which was outfitted to gather information for nautical charts, and turned it into a scientific-research vessel.

In May, I flew from Seattle to meet the ship in Cordova, Alaska, and our mission began. The first time I grasped the magnitude of this catastrophe was when I saw the _Exxon Valdez,_ which

had been moved from Bligh Reef, where it ran aground, to an anchorage off Naked Island. This ship was longer than three football fields. Eleven million gallons of crude oil had been dumped

into this pristine body of water. When you looked at Prince William Sound’s shoreline, you thought, _How can this environment ever recover?_ My team began its work, moving through the sound

on a launch, taking samples of water and fish. Early in our work in 1989, the crew aboard the _Exxon Valdez_ noticed that schools of fish were swimming into a cargo space that had once held

oil but had been ripped open. I was part of a team that boarded the ship to catch these fish and study them. One of the most important things we discovered was that our cleanup methods were

not what we had hoped. We needed scientific research, and I took over a program to study how the shorelines recovered not just from oil exposure but from how we remedied it. So, in effect,

the _Exxon Valdez_ determined the direction of my career for the next 20 years, studying how to respond better to spills in natural habitats. That research — not just by me, but by many

others as well — changed the way first responders do their work. I have a collection of memorabilia from the _Exxon Valdez,_ including glasses used during the christening, with “Exxon

Valdez, September 20, 1986” etched into the glass, and a jar of crude oil gathered off an Alaskan beach. When I look back, it amazes me how much the Alaskan ecosystem recovered. If you went

now and kayaked off the shores of Prince William Sound, you’d never know this catastrophe happened here. The resiliency of the natural world continues to inspire me. The Beatles arrive in

San Francisco in August 1964. Rolls Press/Popperfoto via Getty Images THE FAB FOUR ARRIVE IN SAN FRANCISCO _Jesse Bravo, 83, freelance photographer, on the day the Beatles first landed on

the West Coast_ I was a photojournalist, and a friend of mine was a writer at the _San Mateo Times_. The Beatles were coming into town for their first West Coast appearance. “We’d like to

cover the kids, the audience,” my friend told me. “It might be hard to do, but I’d love to have all four of the Beatles in one picture.” I said, “I’ll see what I can do.” So, I got to San

Francisco Airport early. Already, there were packs of girls and some boys crowded onto the tarmac there, waiting for the plane to land. This was a different era, when people could walk onto

the tarmac at the airport. The Beatles landed, and they walked out of the airplane in single file, on a set of stairs rolled up to the plane. I noticed right away that they all looked tired.

I thought, _How am I going to get a photo of all these guys together?_ So, I had an idea.