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LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Time now for StoryCorps. This weekend marks 55 years since National Guardsmen opened fire on students protesting the Vietnam War at Kent State University in Ohio. Four students were killed. Among the wounded were best friends Thomas Grace and Alan Canfora. Canfora died in 2020, but Grace recently came to StoryCorps to remember him. He spoke with Canfora's sister, Chic, a Kent State sophomore at the time.
CHIC CANFORA: My most vivid memory was waking up in my dormitory and looking up my fourth floor window. I used to watch football games out the window, and that field was filled with military jeeps, small tanks and tents. It resembled a war zone, and that was where we would be gathering in just a couple of hours for a peaceful anti-war protest. I knew that the soldiers were not there to protect me.
THOMAS GRACE: What I remember the most are the two cracks of the M1 rifles. I turned, and I started to run as fast as I could.
CANFORA: Someone grabbed my arm and pulled me behind a car. The glass was shattering out of the windows and bullets were coming through the steel bodies of the cars. The most vivid recollection through that long, horrifying 13 seconds behind that car was knowing that all those people, including you and my brother, Alan, were out there in the wide open.
GRACE: I don't think I got more than three or four steps, and before I knew it, I was on the ground. And the bullet had entered my left heel, and it took off the right side of my left foot. I was trying to sit up. And then I heard someone yelling to me, stay down, stay down. And I looked over, and it was Alan.
CANFORA: Alan was shot in the wrist, and the bullet went in one side and out the other. He told me why he thinks he survived that day. Did I ever tell you that?
GRACE: No, you didn't.
CANFORA: He told me that when we were children, he always imagined there was someone in the basement who was shooting at him. And so he would run back and forth in a zigzag all the way up the steps, missing the bullets each time. He remembered that game he played as a child when he heard the gunfire, and he zigzagged to the right, to the left.
GRACE: It saved his life.
CANFORA: Yeah.
GRACE: You and I haven't done this for 30 years. I've told you many times before how much I truly value your friendship. That's only deepened since we lost Alan.
CANFORA: When he died so suddenly, you were the first I called before I called anyone in my family.
GRACE: Chic, your brother was a tough guy. And I was always grateful that he was my best friend.
CANFORA: You were best friends, and we were sister and brother conjoined by tragedy in a way that is as strong a bond as twins might have been. And I can't imagine a greater privilege than to take Alan's place as your best friend.
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FADEL: Chic Canfora and Thomas Grace at StoryCorps. Their conversation is archived at the Library of Congress.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHRIS ZABRISKIE'S "NIRVANAVEVO") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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