Sandra Lee Scheuer
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Sandra Lee "Sandy" Scheuer (Template:IPAc-en; August 11, 1949 – May 4, 1970) was an American student at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, when she was killed by Ohio National Guardsmen in the Kent State shootings.
BackgroundEdit
Scheuer was born in Youngstown, Ohio, the daughter of Sarah (Lacko) and Martin Scheuer.<ref name="autonumber">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> She had an older sister, Audrey. She was Jewish.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> She was an honors student in speech therapy, and was a graduate of Boardman High School.
May 4, 1970Edit
Scheuer did not take part in the Vietnam War protests that preceded the shootings. She was shot once in the neck with an M-1 rifle from a distance of 130 yards (119 m) while walking between classes. The bullet severed her jugular vein and she died within five or six minutes from loss of blood. According to the account of her boyfriend Bruce Burkland, Scheuer "was walking with one of her speech and hearing therapy students across the green. Caught in the gunfire, neither Sandra nor the young man had anything to do with the assembly of students on the green."<ref name="autonumber"/> Three other unarmed students were also killed in the shootings: Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, and William Knox Schroeder.
The shootings led to protests and a national student strike, causing hundreds of campuses to close because of both violent and non-violent demonstrations. The Kent State campus remained closed for six weeks. Five days after the shootings, 100,000 people demonstrated in Washington, D.C., against the war.
Scheuer had been a member of the Alpha Xi Delta sorority,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and current members of this sorority speak in her memory each year on the Kent State University campus at the May 4 Task Force's commemoration of the 1970 tragedy.
In 2018 an exhibit in memory of Scheuer called "Sandy's Scrapbook", based on an actual scrapbook she kept while attending Kent State, opened at the University's May 4 Visitor Center.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
In popular cultureEdit
Just after Scheuer's death, the songwriter Harvey Andrews composed a song titled "Hey Sandy",<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> whose lyrics are addressed to her:
In the song "Ohio", which was written immediately after the shootings, folk rocker Neil Young made a reference to Scheuer in the chorus:
Scheuer is also remembered in poet Gary Geddes' poem "Sandra Lee Scheuer", found in his 1980 collection The Acid Test.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> An image of a memorial to Scheuer was included in the CD case to The Argument (2001) by Fugazi.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
ReferencesEdit
Further readingEdit
- Jedick, Peter (2006). "Rawls' Death Brings Back Sad Memory." Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio), February 13, 2006, D3.
External linksEdit
- Contemporary news article pertaining to the Kent State shootings
- Template:Find a Grave
- Sandy's Scrapbook at kent.edu
- Archived FBI files relating to the Kent State shootings
- May4Archive.org – maintained by author J. Gregory Payne, Ph.D
- Kent State Truth Tribunal: A webpage founded by Laurel Krause and Emily Kunstler devoted to the May 4, 1970 shootings
- Four Dead in Ohio: A BBC audio documentary pertaining to the Kent State shootings