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In the 56 years since that fateful day on the campus of ������, there have been many firsthand accounts of the events of May 4, 1970. However, there are noticeably fewer voices from one segment of those involved. In 13 seconds, a hail of 67 rounds of bullets fired by members of the Ohio National Guard killed four students and wounded nine others during a protest over the nation’s advancement of the Vietnam War into Cambodia and the presence of the Guardsmen on the campus.

David Strittmatter, Ph.D., associate professor of history at Ohio Northern University, has been selected as the 2026 speaker for the fifth annual Jerry M. Lewis May 4 Lecture Series. Strittmatter’s award-winning  fills a void in the historical accounts of May 4, 1970, providing comprehensive records from the perspective of the Guardsmen.

A self-proclaimed history nerd from Iowa, Strittmatter sought out historical sites in his travels to and from the University at Buffalo while earning his doctoral degree. During one such trek, his interest was piqued by the newly opened May 4 Visitors Center at Kent State. Learning about this poignant piece of American history stayed with him. Fast-forward to 2019. Strittmatter was a new faculty member at Ohio Northern, pondering meaningful project ideas for his public history students when a colleague mentioned the upcoming 50th commemoration of the Kent State shootings.

He researched the event, reading statements from students who were protesting at the time of the shootings, recollections from faculty employed during 1970 and even accounts from city of Kent community members.

“But the voice that was curiously absent in the telling of that tragedy was that of the Ohio National Guardsmen,” Strittmatter said. He charged his students with locating and inviting the Guardsmen who were on Blanket Hill to be interviewed.

Though many of the Guardsmen still reside in Ohio, several are already deceased. “For every two addresses we found, there was an obituary, which spoke to the urgency of the project,” Strittmatter said. Of the 21 Guardsmen who were interviewed for his project, six have since died.

He admitted that it was not easy to crack the men’s apprehension, held firmly for half a century. Strittmatter and the students tried to put them at ease, conducting a few interviews in person at public places, such as libraries, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, half were done by phone or virtually.

For a lot of them, they hadn’t talked about their guard service for decades. There was a veil of silence.

After some coaxing, many agreed to talk after learning that other Guardsmen had also consented to interviews. “It took me two and a half years to get one guy to talk to us,” he said.

Strittmatter also believes that time contributed to more men being willing to tell their stories.

“When the Kent State Oral History Project began in 1990, Guardsmen wouldn’t agree to be recorded,” he said. “After 20 years, there were only three oral histories included in that project, and one was anonymous.”

The accounts recorded for Strittmatter’s project range from 30 minutes to an hour in length. The men’s stories, often emotional, reveal the varied ways the events of May 4 affected their lives.

Many hid the fact that they were deployed to Kent, Ohio, for fear of being shamed over the shootings.

“One of the men admitted that he would take off his uniform before leaving the base,” Strittmatter said. “He had been refused service at a restaurant while wearing his uniform and was spit on in an airport.”

The project includes oral histories from two of the eight men who were federally indicted. There is also an account by one Guardsmen who threw down his rifle after the shootings and applied for conscientious objector status. He later received an honorable discharge from the National Guard.

“Public opinion painted the Guardsmen with a broad stroke,” said Strittmatter, adding that most men interviewed for his project did not fire their weapons on May 4.

As the selected speaker for this year’s Jerry M. Lewis May 4 Lecture, Strittmatter, the first non-Kent State faculty member to be chosen for the honor, expressed great respect for the series’ namesake who died earlier this year.

“Jerry Lewis co-authored the application to add the Kent State site to the National Register of Historic Places,” Strittmatter said. “There is typically a 50-year waiting period before a site can even be entered, but he was instrumental in getting it declared historic after only 40 years.”

Strittmatter plans to play excerpts from some of the Guardsmen’s oral histories during the lecture.

I hope they humanize a rarely heard point of view. There still are people who think of the Guard as ‘those men who fired their weapons.’ I hope this project can add some nuance to that narrative.

As the historian who has captured the largest number of first-person accounts from the Guardmen involved in the events on May 4, Strittmatter said, “I think the Guard would say that they are a part of the tragedy, rather than perpetrators of it.”

Strittmatter also emphasized the regional connections to the shootings. “The Kent State shooting is the most defining episode of the Vietnam War era that occurred on American soil,” he said. “But for Kent and Northeast Ohio, it’s not a national event. It’s local history.”

About ������’s Jerry M. Lewis May 4 Lecture Series

Jerry M. Lewis, the series’ namesake, taught at Kent State from 1966 until 2013, becoming a professor emeritus in 1996. Serving as a faculty marshal in 1970, he witnessed the May 4, 1970, shootings firsthand and has since devoted time to researching, memorializing and lecturing on the events of May 4. In 1971, with the help of students, Lewis established the first Candlelight Walk and Vigil, an annual event that begins at 11 p.m. on May 3 and continues until 12:24 p.m. on May 4, the time of the shootings. Lewis was one of the four co-authors of the application to add the May 4 site to the National Register of Historic Places, which was approved in February 2010.

The Jerry M. Lewis May 4 Lecture Series is made possible through a generous donation from former Kent State Board of Trustees member Michael Solomon, a 1974 Kent State alumnus. This ticketed event is free and open to the public.

See the latest information about the May 4 Commemoration, including a complete list of events.