Remembering the UT Tower Shooting, 46 Years Later
On the morning of Aug. 1, 1966, gunshots could be heard throughout central Austin as Charles Whitman, a 25-year-old former UT student, opened fire from the 28th floor observation deck of the UT Tower. Before he was shot and killed by police 90 minutes later, he had gunned down 45 people, killing 14.
The first victim arrived at University Medical Center Brackenridge at 12:12 p.m., and victims continued to arrive at a rate of one every two minutes during the first hour. As the tragedy unfolded, Austin’s first responders recognized the city’s strengths in emergency care—as well as its potential for growth.
At a remembrance ceremony this morning, UMC Brackenridge honored the victims, as well as the medical and law-enforcement personnel who worked tirelessly through the tragedy. Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo, Texas Sen. Kirk Watson, and Helen Brewer, chair of the Seton Healthcare Family Board of Trustees, unveiled a recently rediscovered artifact: a plaque presented by the Austin Police Department to Brackenridge in 1966 commending the hospital staff. The plaque will be permanently displayed at the hospital.
Neal Spelce, a local reporter who covered the UT Tower shooting live, described the scene 46 years ago as unlike anything seen before or since. The air was filled with sirens and searing summer heat, as calculated gunshots rained down from the Tower.
The shooter “knew what he was doing,” Spelce said at the ceremony. “You could hear cries, people yelling ‘I’m hit’ or people yelling, ‘Help him! He’s hurt!’”
Spelce said the shooting has remained in the public consciousness because of film footage and an ever-present visual reminder: the UT Tower, which still bears bullet scars.
“Every time something tragic like this happens, we need to approach it as we would other historical events,” says Gary Lavergne, author of the 1997 book A Sniper in the Tower, “to see whether or not there’s something we can learn from this in our quest to try and prevent things like this from happening,”
More recent mass shootings like those in Aurora, Columbine, and Virginia Tech, Lavergne says, illustrate that why people commit these crimes is still a mystery.
“Unfortunately, what we do know is that there is a profile and a pattern related to the people who do these terrible things,” Lavergne says. “The problem is we only know about it in hindsight.”
The Tower shooting did have a silver lining: the tragedy jumpstarted UMC Brackenridge’s quest to create a trauma center. In 1996, the hospital earned the Level Two trauma center designation, and, in 2009, it was upgraded to Level One. At today’s ceremony, hospital officials announced its redesignation of Level One (redesignations occur every three years).
Sen. Kirk Watson speaks at this morning’s remembrance ceremony at UMC Brackenridge.
Photo by Marc Swendner, Seton Healthcare Family
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6 Comments
I was enrolled at Texas as a junior in Liberal Arts, majoring in history, that summer. My housemates were also in summer school at Texas. One was on campus and hid behind a wall until it was all over. I was in my house on Lake Austin. The phone rang and I answered and someone told me that a guy was at the top of the Tower, shooting and killing people. I laughed; didn’t believe it. He finally convinced me it was true, and I started worrying about my housemates who were on campus. I remember it being a lovely morning and afternoon until this news came. From then on it would become one of the most bizzare, tragic, sad and strangest days of my life. It still is. I still remember it as if it was yesterday.
The shooting at the Texas A & M school today brought me to researching more information about this tragic day. I am so sorry that you had to endure this, and that the memory remains fresh upon your mind. I hope none of your friends were hurt that day.
In August of 1966, with no classes between my freshman and sophomore years at UT, I picked up extra hours working at the Development Office, then down the hall from the Regents’ Room in the Main Building. My morning shift ended at noon and I usually walked out onto the main plaza, sometimes waving at my dad on his way from the Business/Economics Building to the Union for lunch. But August 1, fortunately, he was delayed by a telephone call and I had a rare afternoon shift and stayed home all morning.
Around 12:30, driving south towards campus with friends, we stopped in disbelief at the sight of a man behind a telephone pole on Speedway, firing a deer rifle towards the Tower several blocks away. A DPS officer saw him, too; he screeched to a halt, yanked the rifle from his hands, then raced on towards campus. Only then did we see puffs of smoke from the observation deck.
With fears for my dad, friends and colleagues, I was later able to make my way through the crowds to the Main Building. The building was surrounded by security, and in the confusion a well-placed rumor took hold that the shooter would be taken out the south side of the building. I made my way towards the north side and the two back stairways near the office, only to find a grim-faced Dean Jack Holland and security personnel carrying out the body of one of the first victims, the elderly Tower elevator operator, whom I had known since childhood. She was one of three people I knew killed that day.
Things changed quickly after that. Security was heightened and the police force, transformed; the Tower observation deck was closed; and the University did away with its antiquated switchboard system, which was overwhelmed in the emergency. And I changed that day, too. Before August 1, tragedy was something on the evening news involving people miles away. But tragedy, it seems, can visit anywhere, anytime.
Charles Clark
B.A. ‘69
I an so sorry that you had to lose three people you knew that day. I can’t imagine the fear, dread, panic, etc. that you must have felt. It is amazing that your normal routine was averted that day. Today, we are sadly not shocked when we hear of random mass shootings. But, for it to never have happened before then…I can’t imagine the shock, confusion, unrest, etc. that one experienced coming onto such a scene in a day long before cell phones and text messagings…especially random people shooting up at the tower.
August 1, 1966 was my first day on campus as a freshman (orientation). I was walking by the BEB and heard the shots. I ducked inside the building to see everything unfold on closed-circuit TV. I would learn later that day that my high school classmate from Woodrow was seriously wounded and out there on the Mall for hours. The years have passed and she and I went different ways but we still exchange emails reflecting back on that fateful day.
Gary Griffith
BA 1970
The shootings occurred just prior to my arriving in Austin for my freshman year. I had classmates who were on campus that day, hiding behind buildings. One cadet from the Air Force Academy was shot as well. He survived but wasn’t able to graduate. It cast a pall over my time there — the Tower remained closed, but the memories remained fresh for everyone there. It has taken years before I could look at the Tower and not “see” the shooter.