From the parking lot I used, it was a relatively short
walk up the service road, past Gregory Gym to my auditorium class room in
Burnet Hall, just on the other side of the South Mall at the base of the Texas
Tower.
It was hot that day, over 95 degrees, humid, and there
was no wind so I was perspiring heavily as I came up the hill to the South
Mall. The heat reminded me of the race
riots that had sprung up across the north throughout the summer: Blacks and
whites clashed in Detroit, Omaha, Chicago and Cleveland, which the experts
blamed on the unusual and excessive heat.
I wondered if there wasn't something more basic involved.
Despite being preoccupied with these thoughts, I did take
notice that there didn't seem to be the normal flow of students near the heart
of campus. In fact, there was no one
with me on the sidewalk as I passed between classroom buildings on my left and
the high wall that blocked my view of the Texas Tower on the right until I was
almost to the steps leading up to the South Mall. The mall was a large expanse of terrazzo and
lawn areas, separated by waist high hedges, in front of the 28-story tower, the
most prominent structure on campus with its four huge clocks, their green glass
faces and shinning gold hands facing north, south, east and west: a symbol of
Texas pride.
As I neared the top of the hill, the wall to my right was
getting lower and lower and I began to hear what sounded like firecrackers
going off up on the mall. ‘Just some
students letting off a little summer final exam steam’, I thought. Pop, pop….pop. Then, I thought I heard a woman crying and
then more voices, people shouting. My
mind was confused by what was quickly becoming a cacophony of sounds of people
in distress.
About ten feet from the end of the wall I caught my first
glimpse of the top of the Tower. Then I
saw a strange thing. A puff of white
smoke suddenly appeared from over the railing of the observation deck and a
couple of seconds later, the “pop” of a firecracker reached my ears. Another puff, another pop….and then a woman’s
scream. Then I noticed that the clock
face was curiously cracked and broken with huge shards of glass missing. The
hands on the clock read 1:20 PM.
As I rounded the end of the wall and stood at the foot of
the steps the scene in front of me was horrifying. There were bodies lying here and there across
the mall, most of them face down on the searing pavement, in pools of their own
blood. The realization that these people
had been shot came crashing down on me. Some of the people were moving slightly
but it was obvious that some were already dead.
Hundreds of students and faculty were crouched down, hiding behind trees
and hedges and walls and around the corners of buildings. Both women and men were screaming and
sobbing. It was surreal. It was terrifying. Despite the heat of the day, my sweat turned
cold.
Suddenly I noticed one of my fraternity brothers, Jim,
about one hundred feet from me, nearly in the middle of the mall. He was moving slightly and at first I thought
that he might be wounded. Then I thought
he might be just lying on his stomach trying to not draw attention. Finally it became apparent he was lying on
top of a woman, who was almost entirely covered up by his bulky 6’2”
frame. She was crying and blood had
puddled around her, staining the terrazzo.
“JIM!” I yelled.
He swung his head around at my call and screamed at me,
“TAKE COVER!”
As I dove behind the wall at the foot of the steps I
heard several more pops, gunshots, still thinking they sounded like
firecrackers in the distance. Although I didn't know it at the time, those final “pops” were the sounds of Officer
Ramiro Martinez’s shotgun and service revolver as he took down Charles J.
Whitman, the “Texas Tower Sniper”. For
96 minutes, Whitman used his 6mm Remington rifle with scope, a 25mm Remington
rifle and a 30 caliber M-1 Carbine to shoot and kill sixteen people, including
an unborn child, while wounding 30 others.
Whitman shot with uncanny and deadly accuracy. He knocked a paperboy off his bicycle while
he was riding on the sidewalk in front of the University Co-op on Guadalupe
Street, wounding him critically: “The Drag”, as it is called, is on the far
western edge of the UT campus, making that a four hundred yard shot at a moving
target. He killed a police officer who
was hiding behind some columns in an attempt to get to the base of the Tower: the
bullet found its target through a six inch opening some three hundred and fifty
yards away. Some city workers, hiding
behind parked cars with reporters and other observers, were over five hundred
yards to the South of the campus. They
thought they were out of range until a city electrician stood up and Whitman
put a fatal bullet in his abdomen. The
last gunshot from Officer Martinez was fired at point blank range at 1:24
PM. Whitman was dead.
It took nearly fifteen minutes for the news to be
conveyed from the observation deck and fed over the police scanners to the news
media. The radio broadcast that Whitman
had been shot and the siege over was on the airwaves as soon as the local
stations could pick it up. This news was
then passed quickly though the crowds that were huddled all across campus. Men and some women started running out onto
the mall and I joined them looking after our fellow students who were scattered
all around. The scene was as grisly as a
wartime battlefield. I reached Jim at
about the time the sound of ambulance and police sirens were heard coming from
all directions.
“Jim, it’s over”, I shouted as I ran up to where he was
still laying on top of the girl. I still
thought he might have been hit himself.
He slowly got up, his shirt soaked though with sweat and splotches of
the girls blood. He was shaking. I suspected he was in shock. “Are you
alright”, I asked.
“Yes, I’m fine” he said, although he didn't look fine to
me. I turned my attention to the
girl. She was still face down with her
textbooks and papers some fifteen feet away and strewn all about. I could see the exit wound just above her
right shoulder blade area and there was substantial bleeding. “She must have been one of the first ones
hit”, Jim said, standing over us. “She
was already down on the ground when I came up from the BEB library and was
hiding behind those trees over there”, he continued, pointing to the huge oaks
on the left side of the mall. I asked him how long he had been out here and he
said it must have been over an hour. “She was trying to crawl toward the hedge
for cover and she was crying out for help”, he said, “when all of a sudden a
bullet ricocheted off the pavement about six inches from her head. That maniac was trying to shoot her again!”
he said between clinched teeth. “She
screamed and I had to do something so I ran out here and covered her up”, he
said, and then he broke down, sobbing out his weariness, his fear, his
sorrow.
At this point medical personnel from both on and off
campus were flooding onto the mall, attending the wounded and putting them and
the bodies of those who were already gone on gurneys and carrying them to
shelter or ambulances. I told a medic
what had happened to the girl, whose name I never knew. “And take care of my brother.”
The rest of the day was hazy for me. I wandered aimlessly around campus for a
couple of hours and then I couldn't take anymore. Classes had been cancelled so I went back to
the apartment. My roommates were both
gone. I remember standing in the shower
for a long time that night, the streaming water masking the tears streaming
down my face.
We have seen many heroes and heroines emerge in recent
years in response to tragic events that challenge our character, our courage
and our resolve. But when I think back
to August 1, 1966, I will never forget Jim’s selfless heroism.
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