***Mary Vecchio kneeling by the dead student. ***
According to an article years ago, she later became a prostitute.
According to this article, the 14 year old runaway is a respiratory therapist now (2010 USA Today article).
“The girl in the famous Kent State photo was not a Kent State student but a 14-year-old runaway from Opa-locka, Fla., who hated the war.
After the shooting, Vecchio fled campus. Her father recognized her in the newspaper and contacted the police. The FBI found her in Indianapolis and sent her home.
She was infamous. Florida Gov. Claude Kirk, a Republican, criticized her for being at the rally, and asked, “Is she part of the plot?” The family got letters saying she was a communist and responsible for the deaths. Years later, her mother would ask, “Can you imagine a 14-year-old girl having to deal with that?”
Vecchio’s subsequent problems — she ran away again, was arrested for marijuana possession and loitering, wound up in a juvenile home —– were well chronicled. When Kent State’s May 4 Memorial was dedicated in 1990, she told the Orlando Sentinel that the shootings “really destroyed my life, and I don’t want to talk about it.” As for the memorial, she said, “Big deal. It has nothing to do with my life.”
Eventually, she made her peace with May 4. She came to feel that the incident had helped shorten the war and given Americans “a little more freedom.”
Today Vecchio is 54, divorced, and living with her mother and dog on a farm in Northern Florida she calls “my refuge.” She works at a hospital as a respiratory therapist.”
I can’t find anywhere that she became a prostitute but by all accounts, she did have a troubled and mostly unhappy life. However, I did not realize she was a 14-year-old runaway until years after the 1970 incident. I always assumed she was one of the college students.