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They called it solar totem.

But to many, they wouldn't know what it was.

Students that passed by it in Kent State University in April of 1970 say,

might never have known that it was there at all.

South of Taylor Hall, 15 feet of metal, rectangles,

placed on top of one another, rising to the sky,

with holes between them, gaps between them,

deliberately so that the sun could shine through it.

It was designed to celebrate the actual substance it was made of, steel.

Steel that was shaped in plants around Ohio that gave jobs to the area, to the fathers of students in the university.

But three years after its installation in 1967,

it would represent a very different memory when a hole appeared in its steel parts. A bullet hole. Good evening from ABC News headquarters in New York. I'm Howard K. Smith. Frank Reynolds is on

assignment in Indochina. These are tonight's headlines. Four students killed at Kent State

University in Ohio during a confrontation with the National Guard at a war protest rally.

Solar Totem was right in the line of fire between the National Guard, against State,

...