My old boss, Phil, was a Kent State graduate like me. 20 years before me, he majored in journalism; I majored in English. One day we got to talking about the shootings. On May 4, 1970, students assembled to protest Nixon sending troops into Cambodia. The National Guard was called in, and before long, the peace demonstration turned violent, ending with 4 dead students.

I was well-versed in the events of the day. The way this event is told and retold, every year, "lest we forget," to all Kent students, I think you should get an automatic minor in May 4th, 1970. I asked what he was doing when the shots were fired? "Oh, I was throwing rocks at the guardsmen."

He recounted how after the shots, the group he was with all sat down in the grass while the Guardsmen circled around them. What was he thinking when all this was going on? "We were all thinking 'Oh shit!' "

Phil told me about this conversation that he had later in the day. One of his friends came by his dorm room, and Phil told him he wasn't sure about his further involvement in the "peace movement."

"I'll never forget this kid. He was a hardcore radical. He always wore a black beret, with bright red curly hair sticking out all over. He looked at me and said, 'Phil, people are GOING to die in this revolution!' And he was serious."

Phil quietly finished his journalism degree the next year and went to work for the company his father retired from. I could sense the disillusion – the "revolution" was a let down.

After sixteen years of building tires, Phil was laid off when the company his father retired from closed its Akron operations and moved south. Some of his friends moved with the company with the company, only to be let go couple years later, "saddled with a mortgage they can't pay, in a strange town, after dragging their wife & kids down south." He's not bitter, but I sense the same disillusion when he tells me that story.

I worked with Phil at a company that eventually did the same thing to him. Empty promises kept Phil loyal for years, even when the owner spent the money she owed him on a new horse. Even when she worked hard to drive away customers, waste money and run the company into the ground. In the end, she let Phil go and eventually succeeded in putting the company out of business.