A few oral histories appeared over the years in Texas Monthly and local newspapers. It took 30 years for a journalist, Gary Lavergne, to write A Sniper in the Tower, a well-researched and thoughtful narrative. We have dozens of interviews with survivors: with people who remember and people who have been trying to forget. The local archives contain police reports, records of a high-profile Governor’s Commission, medical records, military records, and university records. There were thousands of eyewitnesses and dozens of survivors. This is arguably the most important event to take place in modern Austin history. The shooting was broadcast on the radio and on television and it became a major national and even international news story. Later it was discovered that Whitman had murdered his mother and his wife in the early hours of the morning before his rampage. They cornered Whitman and then shot and killed him. Austin Police officers Houston McCoy and Ramiro Martinez (and two other men) made their way to the top of the tower, without knowing who or what they would find. One of the wounded died a week later and one died decades later of injuries connected with his bullet wounds.
Whitman killed 14 people that day and wounded more than 30.
For 96 minutes he held the campus in a state of terror.
On August 1, 1966, a twenty-five year old University of Texas student named Charles Whitman went up to the observation deck of the UT tower armed with guns, ammunition, and canned food. What happens to events that historians ignore, events that are recorded primarily as scattered patches of memory? What kind of history is told by novelists and journalists?
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