With the recent shootings at Virginia Tech, I’ve remembered how it was at the University of Texas that summer in 1966 when Charles Whitman shot strangers from the top of the Tower there in Austin. I think it might have been the first school shooting like that. As a result, I’ve felt quite close to the students embroiled in all this lately, but I didn’t watch most of the news stories on their horror. I just said prayers for those involved. I didn’t want to rethink it, but all this has stirred it up again. I think if I write something about it, it may help to put it to rest in my mind.
I was at Austin that summer in graduate school. It had been an unbelievably hot, humid, quiet summer. I’d gone to the weddings of two of my undergraduate roommates in other parts of Texas, but mostly, I’d stayed in Austin where I’d been going to classes, reading book after book, and writing endless papers. The research room I was using in the library was located on the ground floor of the Tower, and that’s where I spent most of that hot summer. Now that I look back on it, my dedication to my studies paid off. I was lucky. I was probably one of the harder persons to shoot that summer day. I wasn’t out on the grounds or the streets. I was in the building with the shooter but at the bottom of the building; he was at the top. I was working hard to finish a paper I was writing, deep in the newspapers of the Depression Era while he was making history above me. I didn’t even know anything was happening for a while. I heard a popping sound coming from outside like a kid’s toy, and I remember looking up at the window when I heard it more than once, for that’s where the sound intruded into our quiet atmosphere of dust and books and old newspapers.
I’d been working all morning, and I was tired. So I was looking to take a break, but I had to finish taking notes on that newspaper first. I didn’t move. I just kept working. It wasn’t until a student rushed in from next door that I had any inkling that anything was wrong. He yelled that someone was shooting people from the Tower. Frankly, I didn’t believe him. It was about time for me to quit work and walk back to the graduate dorm, though, so I packed up my belongings and headed out. However, when I got to the door, my way was barred by policemen–a LOT of policemen! Suddenly, I realized that what the student had said was true. There was a terrible event going on outside the door. The policemen weren’t allowing anyone to leave, for the shooter was taking shots at anyone who came in his range, and he could see almost the whole campus from the top of the Tower. There was no way out of the building that was safe, so we were all herded back into the research room where we had to wait it out behind locked doors.
It was a long time that we sat there, watching silly people, endangering their lives over the objections of the police, by dashing madly across to the Tower to relay the latest news. A few inside had radios, and we listened to broadcasts as it happened. We didn’t see much, although our news bearers told us it was on television as it was happening. There were few windows that afforded us a look at the outside, but through the window on the door, we saw the police organize and arm themselves in the hall, and then, with guns ready, they quickly went upstairs to check out the building and attempt to locate and stop the shooter. From time to time, there would be a lull in the shooting, and someone would invariably report that he was on his way down. We were secure behind armed policemen, so I didn’t really worry for my safety, but there were an awful lot of people around outside in the hall and on the campus, and I knew people had been killed and wounded.
In a little while, the police hurried several people by, carrying them on their crossed arms; one was on a stretcher. It was over. Finally, the police told us we could go, and we straggled out into the light of day, blinking at the bright light, and wondering where to pick up our routines. It was obvious that the whole event had been broadcast nationwide, so I thought I ought to call my parents and tell them I was okay. They knew I researched in the Tower all the time. Getting to a phone, though, was a problem. Back then, nobody had phones in their pockets or purses. We had to find a pay phone, and phones were scarce in Austin that day. Back at the dorm, the line to the long distance phones stretched down the block. Even when I got to the phone, I had to wait. The lines coming into Austin were so busy, it took forever to get an operator to get a call through. I finally got Mother on the phone and just told her I was okay, and that I’d been in the Tower at the time. I’d call her later and write. Someone grabbed the phone out of my hands. I was tired. I went back to my room and collapsed for a while.
So that was it. For days we walked around the campus, not wanting our backs turned toward the Tower. It was eerie to hear the bells ringing in the Tower. I’d always enjoyed them before, but after that day, they weren’t any fun to hear. I remember having to go across the front of the Tower to get somewhere and unexpectedly stumbling on some flowers someone had left. “So someone was shot here,” I thought. At some point, I must have bought the paper I show you above, for it was sent to me with some of Mother’s things after her death a while back.
“Where were you?” was the first thing anyone said to friends. One of mine had been out in front of the Tower and had heard shots pinging on the sidewalk after her as she ran and hid behind some bushes. I was so glad I’d been diligent in my studies and working inside that day! Later, I heard that the shooter had unloaded the box of guns at the door through which I’d come that morning. I remembered seeing a man unloading big wooden boxes of something there as I came in. It was unusual to see anyone unloading there; during the whole summer of going there to study I hadn’t run into that before, and I’ve wondered ever since if that was Whitman.
I wanted to leave Austin and just go home, but I’d spent the whole summer going to classes, and I did want to finish my papers and get my credits. So I stuck it out there and finally got to go home a week or so after the event. For a while afterwards, I didn’t feel as safe as I’d felt before. My world had changed. True, I hadn’t been shot at, but people I knew had. Classmates had. Professors had. It was out of our realm. Back then, college was a safe place to be. You just didn’t see people shooting classmates and strangers. It’s a sad thing that people are still taking out their anger on others in such a violent way. It’s time that people learned that we’re all here on this planet together; we’re all brothers and sisters, and we need to learn to treat each other better. Life is precious. Everybody’s life is precious. I hope this is the end of this kind of suffering.