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.
“As big as a walnut, IIRC”
The brain, right?
Post 29 discusses his alcoholism.
Did not commit suicide.
yep
Actually, Houston McCoy, the hero who hated being called a hero. His shotgun blast brought Whitman down. McCoy died in 2012.
Martinez was there and had a .38 and took McCoy’s shotgun after Whitman was shot and then shot him again.
Read more at the link in Post 29: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=102738984
I honestly never heard of McCoy until years later. Martinez was universally heralded as killing Whitman for years for which he became a Texas Ranger. McCoy was there with the school book manager who led them in through the ground tunnel. I found this depiction in Wikiepedia on the life of Ray Martinez.
“Martinez shot all six rounds in his revolver. Whitman returned fire, and McCoy shot nine pellets toward Whitman, hitting him across both eyes and through the top of his nose, then hit the left side of Whitman’s head. As McCoy looked above for more snipers, Martinez grabbed McCoy’s shotgun and fired point blank into Whitman’s left arm, where pellets entered Whitman’s chest.”
I don’t guess it really matters. I’m glad they killed that sick bastard.
An excellent resource regarding this horrific crime is “A Sniper in the Tower” by Gary Laverque. Charles Whitman had two brothers. One died in a bar fight in the early 70’s and the other brother came out of the closet, declared himself a homosexual and died of AIDS in the late 80’s.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2l3zla
The Deadly Tower ..... movie
lot of left wing anti-gun stuff but 1/10 historically correct..... it was in Austin
Not true. IUma yes, Ura no
True.
Just that popular media were depicting the Hispanic guy as the guy—we see all too often the white guy as absent or cowardly . . Much like the Jessica Lynch incident where she was depicted as fighting while it was her platoon mate that fought like a tiger. Other stories are out there but they don’t match the narrative that must be pushed.
In this case all involved did their part.
Cheers
Sound like upstanding citizens.
I’ll get the book.
I actually heard Jessica Lynch deny that she fired a round and that she surrendered quickly. ( she missed a turn) She said it was all administration hype.( DOES OUR GOVERNMENT EVER TELL THE TRUTH?)
Martinez was Hispanic who had served as an Army medic pre 1960 ( he married a blonde German girl). He may have been hyped for that but I really respected him for that day because of his bravery and for the fact he had finished his duties and was going home when he heard the shooting.The Texas Rangers are very elite down there, as you know. They number no more than 150 in the entire state. I have actually been friends with one and they are very respected and dedicated.They do not mess around.
Great discussion. I learned from it. I lived on infield road at the time with 3 guys. We had beers that night at the Tavern on Lamar and I don’t remember anyone smiling. Sad day.
The guys that day all did their job that day, sad that PC drives depictions of the event.
Texas Rangers: I was a Texas police officer back in the late 70’s and we had a female office that was just plain worthless and in a couple of years, moved out of state. . .and eventually back, never doing a career in Texas.
She bounded in and out of Texas and then was recruited in 1994 for the Rangers (female, black, perfect PC match). TO be a Ranger you must have earned a hard-core reputation. . .she had no such reputation, no dedicated and loyal law enforcement career in Texas.
Things is, this female black local police officer was brought on for PC reasons imposed by demoncRAT Ann Richards, not for her savy, bravery, sharp mind, physical abilities. . .and this lowering of Ranger standards was not welcomed by the old guys that earned their place in the Troop. Many resigned over it.
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/27/us/women-rangers-struggle-in-a-macho-bastion.html?pagewanted=all
“But the pace of the diversification left much resentment among old-time rangers, who said deserving white men had been passed over for people with less impressive credentials.” Indeed.
“Things are going to have to change a hell of a lot more in this world before a female can ride into some little Texas town and tell the sheriff, ‘I’m the resident ranger on this case,’ “ the 6-foot-5 Mr. Jackson said in a telephone interview from his home in the high-desert town of Alpine. “I don’t care if she’s 9 foot tall and meaner than a barrelful of snakes. He’s not going to talk to her.””
FACT.
“Ms. Nix, who is black, said in an interview that she would have no comment on an incident last year in which two male rangers were suspended and later placed on agency probation after one of their neighbors picked up a cordless-telephone conversation in which, the neighbor said, the two men referred to her using racist and sexist slurs. Ms. Nix filed no complaint in the incident.
When she was asked if she had confronted either of her colleagues, she said, “We have discussed it, but I won’t go into details.”
According to the guys I know that were there, she “talked” and threatened their careers and they were not allowed to defend themselves. Heck of a “conversation.
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