Multimedia by // Laura Torchia
On October 31, 2009 Wadsworth-Rittman Hospital closed the doors of its Labor and delivery ward. Summa’s financial decision to close the ward after 39 years left 33 people unemployed. Many were nurses, and some had worked on the ward for over 20 years.

Multimedia by Laura Torchia

The labor and delivery ward at Wadsworth-Rittman hospital closed its doors on October 31, 2009. Thirty-three jobs were eliminated, many of them nurses. OB nurse Sylvia Reed had her labor induced so she could deliver her first child among her co-workers and friends. Her daughter, Aaliyah Venice Reed, was the last child delivered at Summa Wadsworth Rittman Hospital.

Jeffrey Miller and Sandra Scheuer, two students killed May 4, 1970, created this drawing prior to the shootings. Now, it's on display for a limited time in the special collections reading room of the University Library. (Photo courtesy of Kent State University Archives)

Story by Rabab Al-Sharif

When Janice Reinstein’s good friend, Jeffrey Miller, and roommate, Sandra Scheuer, scribbled a drawing with her art supplies, little did she know that she would soon be holding a priceless artifact.

Almost 40 years later, the drawing finally made its way back to Kent State.

In 2007, after years of hanging on her bedroom wall, Reinstein decided that it was time to share the drawing with the world, so she contacted Kent State archivist Steve Paschen.

Paschen said that it seemed Reinstein and Miller were pretty good friends.

“I think she knew Jeff better than she did her own roommate, Sandy,” he said. “She knew her, but I don’t know how well.”

Paschen described Reinstein as a shy person who requested that she not be contacted about the drawing when she donated it. But she did submit a written account explaining her memories of May 4 and the drawing.

“The night they did this drawing, they asked to use my crayons and paper,” she wrote. “They sat down on the floor of Sandy’s bedroom having a good old time giggling and scribbling.”

The meaning behind the drawing

The drawing, which is thought to have been done perhaps two weeks prior to the shootings, has the words “Who is to say?” colorfully written and surrounded by more colors with their initials, JM and SS, signed in the bottom right corner.

The words “Who is to say?” were supposedly used as the title to a paper written by Scheuer earlier in the quarter, Paschen said.

“The assignment must be long gone,” Paschen said. “There might be a link to something later, and maybe somebody will come up with that paper she wrote, and then we’ll get the explanation of what that phrase meant to her.”

Laura Davis, an English professor at Kent State and one of the many involved in planning the May 4 Visitors Center, sees the drawing as an unquestioning way to question authority.

“Who is to say? Who is to say what’s right?” she said. “It has to do with respecting the individual, respecting diverse forms of view because who is to say?”

Paschen said the words apparently meant something because Sandy and Jeff used them as a catchphrase.

“After they died, it seemed so poignant and prophetic,” Reinstein recalled of the words in her account. “For the next two weeks (after completing the drawing), the saying was used over and over by the two of them.”

The drawing and the story that accompanies it suggest that Sandy and Jeff were closer than many people had thought.

Carole Barbato, a professor in communication studies and planner for the May 4 Visitors Center, said there had been talk that Sandy and Jeff had met for dinner the weekend before May 4, but many people dismissed it.

“It just sounded too Hollywood,” she said. “You know that the two have dinner and later they’re both killed. Many folks dismissed it, and I know I did because it just didn’t seem to ring true.”

Barbato said she thinks that the drawing is more of an irony than anything.

“The fact that they did something together in an abstract way and labeled it,” she said. “It’s almost prophetic in the way it comes across as an artifact.”

She said she hopes the drawing will humanize Sandy and Jeff.

“So often times we forget… They’re idealized, they’re photographs, still images, but these were young people that had hopes and dreams and aspirations and talent,” she said. “I hope it will remind us of the two lives and talents lost.”

How the drawing made its way back to Kent

The only mention of the drawing before now was in James Michener’s book “Kent State: What Happened and Why.” In it, he mentions a mural done by the pair.

Tim Ellis, a secondary school teacher in Australia, has been researching May 4 ever since 1970 when he picked up a newspaper with a front-page story about the tragedy on his way to class at an Australian university.

“I had read in Michener about a drawing done by Jeff and Sandy shortly before the shooting,” he wrote in an e-mail. “I surmised that it was a possibility that Jan Reinstein, Sandy’s friend, might know what had happened to the drawing or whether Jeff or Sandy’s families might know. I still have the note to myself in my notebook to follow this up and to ask Jan if I was able to find her.”

Not long after that, Ellis checked the May 4 Visitors’ site and, at the bottom of the page, saw the quote “Who is to say?” — words he knew were from Sandy based on his research.

“The next day when I checked the site, the drawing that Sandy and Jeff did appeared above the words,” he said.

Ellis said he thinks the drawing allows us to share the lives of these students as they lived them.

“I think Jeff and Sandy continue to touch peoples’ lives in many ways today,” he said. “I feel they teach us about celebrating life, valuing life, and living life in the moment…about just being normal and authentic and making one’s mark that way.”

Ellis told a researcher in the United States, who had been in contact with Jeffrey’s mother, about the drawing when he heard about it. Jeffrey’s mother, Elaine Holstein, then contacted Ellis for more information.

“It was something she hadn’t known existed and was very excited to know of it,” he said. “Her finding the drawing and the story meant a good deal to her. She now has a copy of the drawing Jeff and Sandy created on her wall.”

The drawing also found its way to Sandy’s mother, Ellis said.

“I think the drawing has been there, waiting its time to surface, maybe at a time when it will be able to do most good,” he said. “My feeling is that it has been treasured and nurtured and now is here at the right time.”

Reinstein said she worried no one else in her family would remember or consider the significance of the drawing, so she donated it to the Kent State University Archives.

“After all these years, though, it seems a shame I am the only one to have enjoyed it,” she wrote. “I am comforted the drawing will now be safe and back home at Kent where it will be displayed for many to see and hopefully enjoy.”

Rabab Al-Sharif is a sophomore magazine journalism major and a contributing writer and blogger for TheBurr.com.