Why memory of Kent State tragedy hits home for Steve Stone

White Sox TV broadcaster Steve Stone remembers the days when Kent State was an obscure college.

"We used to have the largest unknown school in the country," he said. "People used to ask me, 'Where do you go to college?' I'd say, 'Kent State.' They'd say, 'Oh, Kansas State, that's a good school.'"

A long flyball from his Cleveland home, Stone made a name for himself playing baseball at Kent State before moving to the professional ranks.

And even though he wasn't physically on campus 50 years ago when four students were shot and killed and another nine were wounded by the National Guard during a protest of the Vietnam War, Stone remembers the dark day well.

Pitching for Class AA Amarillo after being drafted by the San Francisco Giants, Stone still shared an apartment at Kent State and two of his roommates went to check out a rally on May 4.

"I had an early personal connection to exactly what went on because two of my fraternity brothers were leading the demonstrations," Stone said from his home in Arizona. "They were in the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society). One of my fraternity brothers was in jail for breaking curfew. They declared martial law, a 10 p.m. curfew, he broke curfew and was in jail in a small city called Tallmadge, which was close to Kent.

"His girlfriend decided to stop over at the apartment, my apartment, although I was not there. My roommates still lived in the apartment and they decided to go to the demonstrations to see what was going on. The three of them went and the way the National Guard was situated, they were situated on a hill.

"The ROTC parade grounds were down this hill, into a flat area. The two guys were looking up the hill. Sandy Scheuer, the girl who was a sweetheart of my fraternity (Alpha Epsilon Pi), who was dating my fraternity brother, she was looking down the hill. The guys saw the guns being pointed and she didn't. She was shot through the back of the head and was one of the four students killed."

Stone doesn't think about the tragedy much anymore, and it rarely comes up in conversation like it did in decades past.

Then again, it's a day he'll never forget.

"It was just a very strange scenario because we didn't have a real radical campus," Stone said. "We weren't even close to being as radical as (Cal) Berkeley or Wisconsin or even Ohio State for that matter. And yet, we had the National Guard there and it just got out of hand."

Stone was at Kent when the 1969-70 school year started, finishing up his degree.

After taking classes during the first quarter, he spent the second quarter student teaching at Brush High School, his alma mater.

"I have a degree in History and Government and a Phys Ed minor," Stone said. "I never used it, but I was so qualified to teach."

During the third quarter, he was back playing pro baseball and not at school when the shootings occurred.

"We used to have the largest unknown school in the country before the riots," Stone said. "Then, a lot of people heard about Kent State."