John Cleary, who was shot in the chest by Ohio National Guard troops during an antiwar protest at Kent State University in 1970, a chilling moment in American history that was captured in a Life magazine cover photo, died on Oct. 25 at his home in Gibsonia, Pa., near Pittsburgh. He was 74. His death was announced by Kent State. Mr. Cleary was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2019.

Apolitical and more interested in watching “Bonanza” than the nightly news, Mr. Cleary was a 19-year-old freshman architecture major at Kent State when protests against the Vietnam War turned violent on campus…Following the shooting, Mr. Cleary spent weeks in a hospital and then moved back home. He returned to Kent State the following year to resume his studies. After graduating in 1974, he married his college sweetheart, Kathy Bashaw, and they settled near Pittsburgh. For the next decade, he barely mentioned the shooting and declined to take part in reunions or commemorations. He estimated that 90 percent of his friends and colleagues didn’t know he was the wounded student on the cover of Life.

There was another reason.

“In the aftermath of the shooting, his conservative family and neighbors in upstate New York pressured him to say nothing critical about the guardsmen who had shot him and 12 others,” Mr. VanDeMark wrote in his book. “He began not just hiding his involvement but denying it.”

That changed in 1981, when his son Andrew was born — on May 4. “I felt like God was telling me something,” he said. “You cannot bury this. You cannot pretend it did not happen to you. You cannot put it behind you. It is something that you need to confront.” Mr. Cleary began attending anniversary events at Kent State. He agreed to be interviewed by reporters. And slowly, he became a quiet yet powerful voice in warning about the dangers of poisonous political discourse and the suppression of free speech. The lesson, he said, was to de-escalate.

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