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| Title | Roth, John |
| Description | John Roth talks about his experiences in Barberton, Ohio during year 1968. He remembers Arlo Guthrie's song "Alice's Restaurant" filing as a Conscientious Objector, the Wooster Avenue riots, and the Kent State University riots. |
| Date | 9 August 2008 |
| Creator | Roth, John; |
| Interviewer | Goldner, Cheri L. |
| Subject | Barberton
B. F. Goodrich Company
Musicians
Music
Vietnam War
Catholicism
Anti-War Movement
Wooster Avenue
Kent State University
ROTC
Riot of 1968
Riots
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| Names | Guthrie, Arlo; Canfora, Alan; |
| Transcript |
John Roth:
"In 1968 I was seventeen years old, living in Barberton, and I'm going into my senior year of high school that fall. I was third of eight children, growing up in Barberton, and it was not known to be a very controversial town. It was a blue-collar, very blue-collar working town, a lot of factories. A lot of people would go through school, get a job in the same factory their dad did, and stay there their whole life. That was going to change very rapidly because factories started shutting down and the jobs started filtering away from town. My dad worked at B.F. Goodrich, just down the street here, and he worked there and several other factories from the time he was in high school, all the way through his adult life. One of my biggest fears was to get out of school and have to work in a factory. I saw how difficult it was, the dirty work, it wasn't something that appealed to me. So it was a motivation for me to get good grades and get into college and fortunately I did."
"Some of the things that were happening back in '68, one of my best friends that I ever had before or since was I think two years behind me in school, but he was a genius and he was also a little bit on the Marxist side so his philosophy and mine did not jive a whole lot, but it made for interesting discussions for late, late hours in the evening. Sometimes we would close down the Big Boy, you know, just drinking coffee all night. But very spirited discusses all the time. He introduced me to this guy named Arlo Guthrie and this eighteen and a half minute number that he played verbatim on his guitar was 'Alice's Restaurant.' And so whenever there was a group together, there was always someone there with a guitar, and if he was there he always had his guitar, so it always ended up 'Alice's Restaurant' would end up being played before the night was out. But we always had fun with it. But it was not only a funny tune but it was poignant and it made people think about exactly what was going on with the war in Vietnam, with the government, with the things that were being done to us, and what we needed to do to stop the government from doing to us. And that created an activism within me and my own personal philosophy developing and I ended up filing as a Conscience Objector. Now in Barberton, Akron area, it was a little tough then to make that claim, and even the Catholic Church did not stand behind it very well even though the documents from Vatican II had several very good things in it about war and killing that supported my thesis. There were still many, many people that felt it was your obligation as a citizen and as a catholic to support your country in no matter what it was and whatever they tell you to do. I did not go along with that. I complied, with my friend's help and several others, a very good argument and I was awarded the 1-0 status, which is you would not serve in any capacity in the military, and that was in a courtesy hearing before the draft board. So that was a turning point in my life also. And it's just so funny that a night like tonight, hearing Arlo Guthrie again, this brings it all home, and I am not the least bit ashamed of any decision I ever made. And I'm also very proud of some of the people who influenced those decisions and Arlo Guthrie not the least of them."
"Like I said my dad worked at B.F. Goodrich and he worked night shift and during the Wooster Avenue riots he had to drive through that area to get to work. And it was a scary time. And he didn't own any weapons so the best he could do was a baseball bat and a monkey wrench, and probably if somebody had gotten to him first they probably would have turned it on him. But fortunately he never got in the middle of altercation that would have harmed him. My older brother was on campus at Kent on the night that the ROTC building burned. And after seeing the chaos there he and his friends got away from there and 'just don't ever go back,' you know, because it's just waiting for something to happen and sure enough it did. And then, of course, one of the most noted injured people from the Kent State riots was Canfora and he lived several blocks away from us and he's made it his lifelong career to disseminate information about that. So there are a lot of people from Barberton that were active in things but it didn't really happen in Barberton it was just not the kind of environment that it would even be tolerated because it was a very working-class town. My brother once again was working at one of the factories and he was trying to save money for tuition to go back to school and while he was working he was the only college age person in the factory and these guys were just lining up waiting to get a piece of him because, you know, it didn't matter what your philosophy was or anything like that it's just 'OK you're young, you're just like all the rest of them' and so they're going to take it out on you. So we did see a lot of intolerance, a tremendous amount, but it's a lot more diverse today. It's a much different environment than it was back then, but I think you can say that about the whole area here now. I think we are going in the right path, let's put it that way."
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| Contributors | Akron-Summit County Public Library
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| Type | Audio
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| Length | 6:13 |
| Source | Roth, John.mp3 |
| Language | English |
| Relation | Akron Remembers 1968 Collection
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| About this collection | This project is a collaboration of the Akron-Summit County Public Library and Dr. Gregory Wilson of the University of Akron's Department of History, with the cooperation of the City of Akron and Lock 3 Live!
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| Commission Report | http://www.akronlibrary.org/internetresources/sc/OnlineBooks/Commitee-Report-Civildisorders.pdf |
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