Mary Ann Vecchio
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Mary Ann Vecchio (now Gillum) (born ~1956) was the subject of a Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph by photojournalism-student John Filo in the aftermath of the Kent State shootings on May 4, 1970.
Also captured by Howard Ruffner, the photographs showed the 14-year-old Vecchio kneeling over the body of Jeffrey Miller who had been shot by the Ohio National Guard moments earlier. Vecchio had joined the protest while visiting the campus, where she had befriended Sandra Scheuer and Alan Canfora.
A runaway from Opa-locka, Florida where she attended Westview Junior High School, Vecchio bartered her story to a local reporter in exchange for a bus ticket to California—though she was found by police before she boarded the bus, and sent back to her family—who reportedly later sued t-shirt companies for 40% of the profits of sales featuring Filo's photograph. Following Filo's publication of the photograph through the Tarentum Valley Daily News, Florida governor Claude Kirk labelled Vecchio a dissident communist.
After Vecchio married Joe Gillum in 1979, the couple moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, where Vecchio became a clerk at a local coffee shop.
In 1995 she met with John Filo for the first time since the photograph, when they were both scheduled to appear at an Emerson College conference commemorating the 25th anniversary of the shootings.[1] She also appeared at Kent State University the same year, for the 25th annual commemoration, and again for the 36th commemoration in 2006.[2]
Vecchio has been portrayed in several stage performances about the Kent State massacre. The character Vekeero in Halim El-Dabh's 1971 Opera Flies is based on Vecchio. Her role was played by Kelley Lepsik in the 2000 Kent State: A Requiem performance.
The Published Photograph had a pole removed from the original Photo. But the original was stored in the Archives of LIFE magazine. http://journalism_jobs.tripod.com/a.filo.html
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