When Ohio State University president Novice G. Fawcett retired in 1972, the Ohio legislature changed the law so that a new campus building could be named after him. Before that change, a state government building couldn’t be named after a living person. Politicians were left to hope that some later generation might see fit to bestow such an honor. After the law was changed, later generations became irrelevant. A sitting politician could place the laurel wreath upon his own brow.

No Ohio politician was more honored by naming buildings after himself than James A. Rhodes, governor from 1963-1971 and 1975-1983. I haven’t been able to find a complete list of state buildings named for him. There are at least three right here in Columbus: the state office tower just across the street from the State House, a hospital building at the Ohio State University Medical Center, and a building at the state fairgrounds. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that I’ve missed some.

The capper to Rhodes’ remarkable career of self-congratulation came on May 4, 1982, when he pushed authorization to build a monument to James A. Rhodes through the legislature, as a rider on a prison construction bill.

I called my state representative to protest. He said he had voted against the monument, but the prison bill was badly needed, so he had to vote for it. My question: Why did it have to be passed on May 4th? Why not May 3rd, or May 5th?

On May 4, 1970, thirty-five years ago today, National Guardsmen sent by Governor Rhodes killed four students and wounded nine at Kent State University. Rhodes was seeking a Senate nomination, so the day before the shootings he cranked up the heat, calling anti-war organizers “the worst type of people we harbor in America.” The killings thrilled a certain strain of conservative voter, so Rhodes never publicly breathed a word of sorrow or regret over the students gunned down on their college campus.

When Rhodes died in 2001, the Associated Press said:

Those close to him said he was saddened by the tragedy but blamed the turbulence of the war era and believed his action was necessary.

There is such a thing as coincidence, but human beings control legislative calendars. If Rhodes had been “saddened by the tragedy,” he wouldn’t have pushed for his monument to himself on the anniversary of the killings.

After Rhodes’ death, the sculptor who built the monument, a cast-metal statue of Rhodes, said he had engraved the names of the four dead Kent State students inside the hollow statue. It’s not enough. Not nearly enough.

In Memoriam

Allison Krause
Jeffrey Miller
Sandra Scheuer
William Schroeder

Four Dead in Ohio.

Update: Via a recent email message, here’s a Kent State scrapbook.