Diana Oughton was born January 26,1942 in Chicago, Illinois. Oughton played the piano and the flute as a child, and enjoyed the operas and plays that her parents took her to see. Oughton learned to ride horses and had been a 4-H member.

In 1966, Oughton moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan to enroll in the University of Michigan's Graduate School of Education, seeking her Master of Arts degree in teaching. She began to work part-time at the Children's Community School (CCS), using the "Summerhill Method" of education. This was when she first met Bill Ayers (a CCS teacher). Later on, Oughton dropped out of school to work full-time at CCS - Diana Oughton and Bill Ayers had become attracted to each other, and soon began living together. 

By 1968 though, under Bill Ayer's guidance, the school ran into very severe problems (such as the fact that few students learned to read) and it lost all its funding...so Oughton and Ayers sought to become "active" elsewhere. And this is when she became involved with SDS... and with every bit of Bill Ayers' influence.

After the CCS was forced to shut down, Diana Oughton and Bill Ayers lives became consumed by SDS meetings - organizing and planning "actions." It was during this time (1968) that Bill Ayers and Diana Oughton met *Terry Robbins. During these meetings Oughton often complained about the role of women in SDS, which was a combination of being a sex-object, an office clerk, and a housekeeper. Later in 1968 Oughton told a friend that while she was away for five days, Ayers had slept with a few other women. She told her friend that she tried to convince herself that it didn't matter, but it did. (Less than 2 years later...on a beautiful spring day in an affluent brownstone on a lovely tree lined street in the quaint section of New York City, known as Greenwich Village, Bill Ayers' ex-girlfriend was ripped into pieces by an explosive blast. She had been 27 years old.

March 6, 1970, 11:58 a.m. - Greenwich Village

Diana Oughton had been in the basement with Terry Robbins at 18 West Eleventh Street assembling a nail bomb when it detonated.

A neighbor, Susan Wager, had heard the blast...

"It was then I took notice of two girls that staggered out of the burning townhouse and into the street. One girl was wearing blue jeans. The other was completely naked [Kathy]. The explosion had burned the clothes right off her body - they were dazed and covered with soot and ash."

Kathy Boudin and Catherine Wilkerson were the two young women who had escaped the carnage.

When they ran out into the street, someone asked if there was anyone else in the house. Thinking that Ted Gold (the other Weatherman in the townhouse) had gone to the store, Wilkerson replied that, "No, there was no one left inside."

Susan Wager, a former wife of film actor Henry Fonda, had taken the two disheveled girls over to her house, just yards away and brought them into her living room. She took them upstairs to a bathroom and gave them some clothes to wear. She then went outside to look for more victims - when she saw no one else, she returned to her house...but both girls had long gone. 

Early in the evening, 23-year-old Ted Gold (the one that Wilkerson had thought had gone to the store), was found in the basement (he had been a leader of a student strike at Columbia University). 

Then a woman's torso was discovered. The dead girl, whose body was horribly mangled by the powerful blast, was eventually identified as Diana Oughton.  Police also found several handbags with personal identifications that were stolen from college students over the previous few months. Late that same night, cops located at least 60 sticks of dynamite, a live military antitank shell, blasting caps and several large metal pipes packed solid with explosives.

Four days after the explosion, detectives found some of Houghton's remains near a workbench in the rubble-filled basement of the devastated townhouse. At the end of another week, a detective discovered the tip of the little finger from the right hand. A print taken by a police department expert was matched later that day with a set of Houghton's prints in the Washington files of the F.B.I. The prints they had on file were from Houghton's arrest in Chicago on October 9, 1969 during the "Days of Rage".

It took four days to find Houghton's remains, not only because of the amount of destruction the bomb had caused - the townhouse was destroyed - but also because of the dynamite found in the wreckage. While searching through the rubble, detectives found four lead pipes, each 12 inches in diameter and packed with dynamite. The street was cleared, the bomb-removal truck was summoned, and the search continued with considerable caution. Before the day was over, detectives found four cartons containing 57 sticks of dynamite, 30 blasting caps, and some cheap alarm clocks with holes drilled in their faces for the attaching of wires. It was understood later that the bombs were to be detonated at a non-commissioned officers' dance at Fort Dix, New Jersey. (Ted Gold, Diana Oughton and *Terry Robbins had planned to bomb the dance at Fort Dix and the library at Columbia University, which could have taken lives.

The doctor who examined Houghton's remains said that she had been standing within a foot or two of the bomb when it exploded. It may, in fact, have gone off in her hands. Ayers has raised the possibility that Oughton may have [intentionally detonated the explosion] and it has been reported that a vicious argument occurred throughout the previous day and night in which Boudin favored using antipersonnel bombs, and that Oughton had misgivings.

Seven days later, police managed to locate another dismembered body. A male. His identity had remained a mystery until a member of the Weathermen finally came forward and identified him as Terry Robbins...the one in the basement with  Diana Oughton.

Photo below taken by neighbor (Mel Gussow) across the street.

The survivors:

As it turned out, the blown up building belonged to Catherine Wilkerson's father (James P. Wilkerson). And at that time, Cathy was out on $40,000 bail. Kathy Boudin, who was staying with her at the time, was also out on $20,000 bail both, on similar charges in Chicago. Kathy Boudin, would later go to prison for the 1981 Brinks robbery, had Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn adopt her son.

Panorama View Today (click to enlarge)

(Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn dedicated their book "Prairie Fire" to Diana Oughton.)

Back to the Original Post - http://tobuds.com/blogs/blog6.php/2009/09/22/obama-ayers-and-dohrn-the-early-years-in 

Neighbor's Story -  http://www.mrbellersneighborhood.com/story.php?storyid=524#  

*In 1968 Terry Robbins met Bill Ayers and Diana Oughton and began a new faction of the Ann Arbor SDS. Two years later in a 1968 visit to Kent State (who ended up being SDS's most radical chapters), Terry Robbins was able to convince a group of activists into using a "more forceful approach" in their demonstrations. (See "The War At Kent State") Robbins was ultimately given credit for being the leader of the first student rebellions at Kent State. The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) papers contain documentation and records which chronicle events precipitating and subsequent to the shooting of four Kent State University students on May 4, 1970.

SOURCE: http://speccoll.library.kent.edu/4may70/box107/107.html  

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming, 
We're finally on our own. 
This summer I hear the drumming 
Four dead in Ohio. 

"Ohio" - Neil Young Lyrics Analysis

http://www.thrasherswheat.org/fot/ohio.htm