Posted on 07/23/2016 6:07:46 PM PDT by Elderberry
The Texas Standard spoke to nearly 100 survivors of the UT Tower shooting. Next week, you can hear their stories.
Dallas. Baton Rouge. Nice. Orlando. It seems like we can’t go more than a few days without a violent event somewhere in the world. While it’s true these attacks are happening for very different and very complicated reasons – they keep happening. It’s almost hard to remember a time when they didn’t.
But when a shooter took aim at the University of Texas of Austin campus from the top of the UT tower on August 1, 1966, no one had any reference point for such an attack. The Texas Standard spoke to people who were there that day as part of a documentary that will air Monday.
Summer school was in session. While the campus wasn’t as full as it would be in the fall or spring, it was still teeming with life.
Judy Brooks had come to participate in a summer orientation right before her freshman year.
Gary Gibbs worked part time at what was then Capital National Bank. “You had to carry a full load so your draft board wouldn’t come after you for the Army while you were in school,” Gibbs says. “I was able to provide enough hours a year by working part time, but I would also go to both sessions of summer school.”
Linda Adkins was working for the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health at the time, which was located on the 24th floor of the tower.
Cheryl Dickerson was walking around campus. “I struck up a conversation with the ticket agent and he asked me if I had ever seen the campus and I said ‘No,’ I had not,” she says. “He asked me if he could give me a tour of the campus the next morning and I said ‘Sure.’ And the tower was the first stop on the tour.”
Just a little before noon, a man began shooting from the tower at the campus below. Many people heard the sounds, but not many realized they were gunshots.
“All of a sudden I heard this noise that sounded like – back then we had Coke bottles – so it sounded like cases of Coke bottles being placed on top of each other,” Jeanette Lawrence says.
“I kept hearing what sounded like lumber dropping,” Bob Matjeka says. “It was like a clapping sound.”
“Just by chance, that was the day that Scholz’s Beer Garten was going to have some sort of celebration,” Sid Lawrence says. “I don’t remember what they were celebrating, but we commented – a couple of the students – to each other,’Oh, Scholz’s is starting a little early.’”
But a few people recognized the sounds of the shots, including then associate professor Michael Hall. He called 911 to report the gunfire.
“Hello, this is Michael Hall at the History Department from the university campus,” he said in the 9-1-1 recording. “There has just been a gunshot on the main plaza outside the main building and at least one person wounded.”
Hall says it was his war experience that helped put the sounds in context.
“I had been in World War II, and although that ended in 1945, I was still quite conscious of airplanes flying close by overhead, of the possibility of explosions,” he says.
Besides war experiences, few had any context for a mass shooting like this.
“That was a foreign concept back then. People didn’t shoot each other like now,” Dale Dorsey says.
“And it was just so abnormal,” Jan Klinck says.
“There’s no reference point. There’s no, ‘Oh this is like such and such,’” Sue Wiseman says. “There’s just nothing there.”
It came from out of the blue.
“Out of the Blue: 50 Years After the UT Tower Shooting” is Texas Standard’s oral history on the anniversary of the first public mass shooting of its kind. We’ll bring you these stories and many more in a special edition of our show Monday.
My co-worker was a student at UT at the time, he was supposed to take a class at UT during the shooting but his German class ended up meeting at the German restaurant and bar so that was fortunate.
I still think about it at every mass killing. The taking of innocent life is so senseless and satanically evil, I still cannot get my brain around it. My Daughter in law bought me an original copy of the life magazine dedicated to the shooting. I could not read it. I tried 3 times.
“I had to go and check...[Brian Williams] was six.”
I ws going to say... lol
By the way , I know where the German language classes were , between Little field fountain and the tower. It was a free fire zone for whitman. Maybe 150 yards) I guess they went to Scoltz’s that early for lunch and beer. He opened fire about 11:50 ( I think) . It was horribly hot and humid. I remember 17 dead and 37 wounded but it was so long ago. One pregnant student shot in the stomach. Killed both mother and child. He killed his wife and mother in law before he hauled all his crap in a trunk to up the tower. He had flunked an architecture exam and it set him off. They said he had a brain tumor but I never believed that.
Yeah, I think my co-worker mentioned Scoltz’s. He was a real lucky Guy. I feel for you, those mass shooting events are just senseless and innocent people had to die and they had nothing to do with the life of the shooter. So why all the rage and take it out at them?
Apparently this was later revised. A commission of top-flight experts re-examined the tumor and concluded it cold have contributed to Whitman's actions, but the science of the time could not say for sure. It would be interesting if this could be looked at again in the light of new knowledge of the brain that has been gained in the last 50 years.
Wikipedia points out that Whitman gave warning of what might happen:
"Whitman met with Maurice Dean Heatly, the staff psychiatrist at the University of Texas Health Center, on March 29, 1966. Whitman referred to his visit with Heatly in his final suicide note. He said, "I talked with a Doctor once for about two hours and tried to convey to him my fears that I felt come [sic] overwhelming violent impulses. After one visit, I never saw the Doctor again, and since then have been fighting my mental turmoil alone, and seemingly to no avail."...
Dr. Heatly's notes on the visit reflected Whitman's own comments about feeling hostility:
"This massive, muscular youth seemed to be oozing with hostility [...] that something seemed to be happening to him and that he didn't seem to be himself.
Dr. Heatly also referred to a statement by Whitman:
"He readily admits having overwhelming periods of hostility with a very minimum of provocation. Repeated inquiries attempting to analyze his exact experiences were not too successful with the exception of his vivid reference to 'thinking about going up on the tower with a deer rifle and start shooting people'."
THE ‘UT’ was founded in Tennessee 42 years before they figured out they were supposed to be pronouncing the ‘X’ in Texas.
Your memory is correct, he did...
the infowarrior
They had "0" for operator. They answered fairly fast.
911 was possible as a working number at that time. But all it would do was call the police much like 411 called Information. It gave no information as to where someone was at it just connected to the police station and the person at the station had to ask who, what, where, when, how, etc. The call would have been recorded as all calls to police was recorded in larger cities at that time.
The system which came later that did that automatically from the development of the ESS {Electronic Switching System} which replaced the mechanical relay operated Central Office at the TELCO.
E-911 is that system. E if I remember correctly meant Enhanced 911. It is a data system which at least in the early days of E-911 when you called the identifying information came from a database in Florida and was sent back to the local 911 operator.
ESS Central Offices were not coming into service until the 1970's. My local Central Office a small one was among the first where ESS was installed. My dad was a 45 year TELCO tech and worked on E-911 and other data circuits in his last few years before retirement. Before that he worked in a mechanical switching long distance equipment office known then as 4A. When 4A's were converted to ESS he went outside.
Post 70 911 may have existed in Dallas but not in the sense we know it today. A three digit number was certainly possible because 411 was Information. Dallas could have had 911 as a short cut to the police to save time going through a TELCO operator. TELCO’s back then also had customized two digit prefix numbers to call into another nearby phone exchange without it being a toll call.
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bl911.htm Feb 1968 was the first 911 system and it would have been simply an answer center. E-911 came later.
OT but had to say that's the best place to learn German, IMO.
As to Whitman, I was 11 y/o that summer but remember the coverage, especially the pictures of those crouching behind autos to brace their rifles and fire up at the tower. To a small-town Kansas kid that hadn't traveled much, Texas seemed like a very foreign place in that moment.
According to Major John L. Plaster, USAR (RET), in his textbook “The Ultimate Sniper”, Whitman engaged targets beyond 1000 yards using his Remington 700 in 6mm Remington.
Plaster provides a map showing Whitman’s position and plots his targets (wounded and killed). One fatal victim, marked with a bit “X”, measures at what appears to be 1400 yards.
Not “four hundred yards”, rather “fourteen hundred yards”.
Same as what I was thinking. Quick internet search found that the first 911 call was by Alabama Senator Rankin Fite on Feb 16, 1968.
There was a rumor about a tumor
Nestled at the base of his brain.
He was sittin’ up there with a .36 magnum,
Laughin’ wildly as he bagged ‘em.
Who are we to say the boy’s insane?
— The Ballad of Charles Whitman, by Kinky Friedman and his Texas Jewboys
I might have misquoted a word or two, but it’s probably on Youtube somewhere, if anyone wants to check.
“very complicated reasons”
Not complicated at all.
Evil heart.
Anti-White racism.
Black race-baiting hustlers.
Born journalist. . .he was there, right when it counted.
;-)
“McCoy’s blast from a 12-gauge shotgun hit Whitman in the face, and, according to the autopsy, the fatal wounds were to Whitman’s head and heart. . .Martinez also grabbed McCoy’s shotgun and shot Whitman one more time as he lay on the ground.”
Imagine that happening today. . .the screams of outrage by the bed-wetting democRATS and Bernie snowflakes. . .in other words, the MSM.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.