Whitman's View--The Day I Almost Died

I shot this photograph on April 1st, 2007 from the west side of The University of Texas Tower's observation deck. This was the first time I had visited the deck since prior to August 1st, 1966, the day sniper Charles Whitman rained down a withering fire of bullets from this vantage point. Thanks to some connections I have made, I was allowed to go up to the deck on April 1st this year along with some former Austin police officers who were on the tower in 1966. They all participated in the elimination of Whitman.

What you see here is the middle of the 2300 block of Guadalupe Street which is known as "The Drag" to Austinites. It is the main retail/restaurant district for The University of Texas at Austin, defining the western border of the campus.

The white air conditioning unit on the roof in the middle of this photograph probably saved my life on August 1st, 1966. At around 11:55 a.m., along with two of my Longhorn Band friends, I was standing on the sidewalk just under the now-existing black sign with white letters that reads "Wish." I have drawn a crude oval showing our approximate 1966 location. As a note of historical accuracy, in 1966, the entire ground level area under the signs Wish, Austin's Pizza and Sprint was one large store/soda fountain-cafe called Renfro's Rexall Drug Store. That is where I met my pals every school day that semester for lunch at 11:25. The cashier had told us "somebody's shooting a gun out there," but we couldn't comprehend what she meant and we toddled right on out to the sidewalk in front of the store. (This was 1966, after all.)

Whitman may have considered us for targets, since he could have probably seen our heads over the ac unit. But he probably could not have seen our bodies and at that point in the rampage, he was aiming for midsections. Instead, he chose to shoot a 38 year-old military veteran named Harry Walchuk, who was standing in the door of a narrow newsstand that was located just to the south of us. (In this photograph, it is where you see a yellowish building's north edge and a black and white striped awning above it.) The newsstand closed many years ago and the building was expanded to the north to encompass its real estate.

I have revisited this sequence of events in my mind just about every day since then.