The Crazy Years

[kubandalum]

While I was a student, the Student Union burned, a Savings & Loan near downtown Lawrence was bombed, and Summerfield Hall was bombed.

If I remember correctly, the police thought the fire was started by someone who threw a firebomb out of the elevator on the top floor, late in the evening when no one else was around. At least it started near the elevator. Students helped however they could that night, like bringing coffee to firefighters. A couple of days later, they asked for volunteers to help in the cleanup, and I helped roll up smoke-and-water damaged carpets inside. I was amazed at how much damage that soot-filled water does.

That was a week or so before the Kent State shootings. It was thought at the time that it was good the campus had a week to calm down before Kent State. Because of Kent State, the administration asked for volunteers to stay in campus buildings overnight to watch out for suspicious activity and report it. Nothing happened. I spent one night in Spooner Hall.

I was working as an usher in the balcony of the Murphy Hall Auditorium when the Summerfield Hall bomb went off. The play was in the last act, and the bomb sounded like a huge door had been slammed somewhere in Murphy Hall. The bomb was in Summerfield’s east stairwell across a wall from campus computers. One person in the building suffered broken eardrums. The computers were not damaged.

I think it was assumed that the S&L bombing was a political act.

[Deleted User 183]

I tend to forget how old you are and then you share your experiences and I am reminded.
That was supposed to make you smile.
I'm sorry you had to experience the chaos that you endured while as a college student. I can't even imagine. Must have been frightening and unnerving. Crazy years indeed.
Please continue to share your interesting and enlightening stories.

[kubandalum]

I tend to forget how old you are and then you share your experiences and I am reminded.
That was supposed to make you smile.
I'm sorry you had to experience the chaos that you endured while as a college student. I can't even imagine. Must have been frightening and unnerving. Crazy years indeed.
Please continue to share your interesting and enlightening stories.

That week after Kent State was a little tense, but there was never chaos on campus. During those days when classes were optional there was a “demonstration,” but it only amounted to a whole lot of people sunning themselves around Potter’s Lake. Otherwise life went on as normal, just like in these crazy years now, and most of the craziness was in the news, just like now. There was never rioting in the streets of Lawrence.

I did know a couple of people who got arrested for selling pot while the state attorney general was on a crusade. A former dorm roommate was murdered a year after he was my roommate, where he had moved out to an apartment. It was thought to be the result of a dispute over a girl. Very sad. Those of us in the dorm who knew him were all stunned. He’d been very popular. Beside the phrase “happy-go-lucky” in the dictionary one may find his picture. R.l.P. Bruce Addison Douglas, “Texas B.A.D.”

[DrPepper]

My campus was built recently after the Kent State Riots. Therefore, there are no large gathering places, no central courtyard, stairs that go nowhere, and very complicated buildings to navigate. The administration has been working for years to reverse that and the feeling of no-community that comes from it.