Biography
Vecchio was a runaway from Opa-locka, Florida where she attended Westview Junior High School. She bartered her story after the shootings to a local reporter in exchange for a bus ticket to California. 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 Pittsburgh Tribune-Review satellite paper Valley Daily News and its subsequent pickup internationally, 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 coffee shop. She later studied massage therapy and is employed as a respiratory therapist.
In 1995, Vecchio met John Filo for the first time, when both were scheduled to appear at an Emerson College conference commemorating the 25th anniversary of the shootings. She also appeared at Kent State University in May of the same year, for the 25th annual commemoration. She returned to Kent State University again for the 36th commemoration in May 2006, and for the 37th commemoration in May 2007. She spoke at the 39th commemoration in May 2009, where she again met John Filo, their first meeting on the Kent State University campus. Vecchio also appeared at the 40th commemoration speaking on the allusions to the present state of the country.
Vecchio has been portrayed in several stage performances about the Kent State shootings. 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 performance of Kent State: A Requiem. Janet Ruth Heller published a poem about Vecchio entitled "For Mary Vecchio, August, 1973" . The poem portrays Vecchio as a modern Mary praying for the fallen Kent State students.
When published, the photograph was retouched to remove the distracting fencepost over Vecchio's head in the original image. The unretouched original was stored in the archives of Life magazine.
Read more about this topic: Mary Ann Vecchio
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“As we approached the log house,... the projecting ends of the logs lapping over each other irregularly several feet at the corners gave it a very rich and picturesque look, far removed from the meanness of weather-boards. It was a very spacious, low building, about eighty feet long, with many large apartments ... a style of architecture not described by Vitruvius, I suspect, though possibly hinted at in the biography of Orpheus.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)