If I Don’t Make It, I Love You

WHILE PHOTOGRAPHING THE [Tower shooting] I was so intent on finding and recording it that I wasn’t really feeling anything, survivor Kent Kirkley told me through text message. But he admits that after he put down the camera for the day, the enormity of what had happened settled in: after Whitman was killed and the “all clear” was sounded and people emptied out of the buildings and ambulances [which at the time were hearses from the funeral homes] pulled up to remove the dead, the enormity of what happened began to dawn on me.

The University of Texas at Austin was considered one of America’s most horrific public shootings. This was 1966 before there were any police SWAT teams or EMS units. Nobody had mobile phones, there was no Internet, no way to contact anyone about the situation in front of us. If anything was going to be done, it was us that had to do it, wrote John Fox (a.k.a. Artly Snuff) who was seventeen when he took his first college semester at the University of Texas at Austin. But he and his fellow classmates were afraid of going out to help, thereby exposing themselves to gunfire. And this is something that John recalled to me in our first phone call.

In our conversation, John remembered the bodies piling up, including one of a pregnant woman, Claire Wilson. I could see her twitching, and I knew if I didn’t move she might get shot again. But I knew. John paused. I knew if I went out there to help, I could be shot too. But John took one of the biggest risks of his life and ran out from his sheltered space to take Claire out of the line of fire. Claire did survive, but her unborn child did not, and neither did her boyfriend.

As of today, January 18, 2019, it’s been fifty-two years and five months since Charles Whitman killed fifteen people from atop the Clock Tower at the University of Texas. But the impact of that day still remains. I still feel guilty, John told me. I feel like I could’ve done more. I could’ve helped more people. I feel I was a coward. That day is always with me in my mind. Every day. But I know now that I did the best I could, but there is always a worm of doubt.

Though the biggest takeaway from John and Kent is the power of voice. John continues to write in his essay that today, when there is a mass shooting, there are a flood of therapists available to talk with the victims. Nothing like that existed in 1966. Nobody knew how to mentally process such horror. I didn’t talk about it much for decades. I now know I should have.

By watching survivors today speaking about their guilt, known as survivor’s guilt, has helped survivors like Kent and John to fight their own trauma. John adds in his essay that learning about the term has helped me fight the loneliness that accompanied my trauma. But he asks an important question, despite the legacy such trauma leaves in its aftermath, When will it stop? This question is being answered every day through marches and survivor support groups, and through personal stories and eyewitness accounts, through sharing the stories of what it’s like to live as a survivor of gun violence. Texas proves that time doesn’t heal all wounds, and how important it is to share our stories of grief in order to begin the long, painful, and often hopeful journey of healing.

LOREN KLEINMAN, EDITOR

JANUARY 2019

The following students, staff, first responders,
and Tower visitors were shot and killed at
the University of Texas at Austin:

Thomas Aquinas Ashton, 22, Peace Corps volunteer

Robert Hamilton Boyer, 33, mathematician

Thomas Frederick Eckman, 18, student

Martin (Mark) Gabour, 16, high school student

Karen Griffith, 17, high school student

David Hubert Gunby, 23, student*

Thomas Ray Karr, 24, student

Marguerite Lamport, 45, aunt of Martin Gabour

Claudia Rutt, 18, student

Roy Dell Schmidt, 29, electrician

Paul Bolton Sonntag, 18, student

Billy Paul Speed, 24, police officer

Edna Elizabeth Townsley, 51, observation deck receptionist

Harry Walchuk, 38, PhD student

Baby Wilson, unborn child of Claire Wilson

THAT DAY ON AUGUST 1, 1966

By Kent Kirkley

Kent Kirkley was on campus at the time of the Tower shooting at the University of Texas at Austin. At nineteen years old, Kent ran toward the campus and Tower, his 400mm telephoto lens capturing Charles Whitman’s destruction both during and in the aftermath of the shooting.

I was born and raised in Austin, Texas. I was artistic, which I attribute to my great grandmother.

In the sixth grade, I won a contest to draw the Austin Symphony program cover. The prize was oil-painting classes at the University of Texas (UT) on Saturdays. I was also beginning to play with photography. I got interested in astronomy and built three telescopes and adapted my father’s camera to take photographs through them. I set up a makeshift darkroom in one half of my closet. In junior high, I became more interested in science, entering and winning awards at science fairs. I took a photograph of the asteroid Vesta and submitted it to Sky and Telescope magazine, which accepted and printed it. I was fourteen. And in junior high I was on the paper and the annual photographer. I got to use an early electronic flash unit. It was so different from flashbulbs that I’d flash it while walking down the halls and earned the nickname of “Flash.”

Kent Kirkley, age thirteen, with his father Ralph Kirkley in 1960. © Kent Kirkley 2019

There was never any doubt I’d go to UT, and I started the fall of 1965 with the intention of becoming an astronomer. I also began working in the photography department of the University Co-Op, which was the primary store for books and school supplies. After my freshman year, I continued to work at the Co-Op the following summer.

That Monday, August 1, 1966 was much like any other Texas summer morning, hot. I drove my 1956 Thunderbird down 19th Street (Now Martin Luther King Blvd) turned up San Antonio Street, and parked not far from the Co-Op.

A photograph of Kent Kirkley taken a few days before the UT shooting.
© Kent Kirkley 2019

The camera department was located on the second level to the left of the stairs. About ten minutes before noon a guy came up the stairs and toward the counter. He says, “someone’s been shot outside.” Incredulously, I responded, “and what have you been smoking?” He repeated himself, and I walked halfway down the stairs to a landing. Through the windows, I could see people crouched behind cars parked on Guadalupe and someone lying on the grass of the West Mall. I quickly retrieved my new Nikon F camera and “borrowed” a 400mm lens from the display case. I grabbed several rolls of High Speed Ektachrome film and made my way down the employee stairs.

This was the first image Kent Kirkley took at 12:15 p.m., not showing the observation deck.
© Kent Kirkley 2019

Thinking that going out the front doors would be a bad idea, I went out the loading dock door into the alley behind the store. I had no idea where the shooting was coming from. I walked across the Hemphill Bookstore parking lot behind the Co-Op toward San Antonio Street. At first, I couldn’t see the UT Tower as the Co-Op blocked its view, but I could hear gunshots.

Eventually, I got to a point where the Tower began to emerge above the building and I saw a puff of smoke near the observation deck. I realized the shooter was shooting from the observation deck and that if I could see him, he could see me, and I retreated back into the “shadow” of the building. I took a chance and backed up again, exposing the first of several frames timed with the puffs of smoke. Still in the shadow of the buildings, I made my way north down the alley toward 23rd Street. At the corner, I peeked around the corner toward Guadalupe Street. also referred to as “the drag” to see an ambulance speeding down the street.

Kent took this photo at 12:45 p.m. Charles Whitman’s (UT Shooter) gun barrel can be seen on the ledge. © Kent Kirkley 2019

Looking west on 23rd Street, I noticed a parked car with two young men crouching behind it. Two co-eds were walking past the car unaware of the men who suddenly jumped out and pulled them behind the vehicle. At almost the same time I saw a bullet strike the pavement near the car, kicking up asphalt. I realized, this was serious.

How to get closer and on campus?

I reversed direction and walked south down the alley passing the Co-Op’s dock door. In about a hundred yards was a slim passageway between two buildings. I took it, then proceeded to the sidewalk on the drag. Glancing toward the Tower I couldn’t see it as the architecture building blocked its view. I sprinted across the street onto the campus as fast as I could. I walked toward the Inner Campus Drive taking a few photographs of the Tower as it presented itself above the buildings. I was still hearing sporadic gunshots, but couldn’t tell where they were coming from. A couple of ambulances entered Inner Campus Drive and I photographed their approach. Looking east toward the South Mall, I could see small groups of people hugging the wall beneath where the Jefferson Davis statue was located (it was removed in 2017).

Kirkley took this photo at 1:05 p.m. Smoke or dust from Charles Whitman or local riflemen firing back. © Kent Kirkley 2019

As I approached that area I could see a body covered in a bloody white sheet. I took a few frames of it. At this point I felt I could go no farther without exposing myself to the sniper as the South Mall and its steps were wide open. More gunfire and I risked a glance up at the Tower, its clock showing close to 1:20. More gunfire, but it was slackening. Soon, I saw a few people tentatively emerging from the building across the mall and the one behind me. Someone yelled out that the sniper had been killed. It was about 1:35 p.m. More doors opened and people streamed out onto the sidewalks and up the stairs to the paved South Mall.

The covered body of Austin police officer Billy Speed who was killed at the stairway of the South Mall. © Kent Kirkley 2019

I followed and took a few frames of the Tower after ascending the stairs.

By this time there were probably a thousand people on the mall milling around with somber if not horrified faces. I took a few photographs of them. Ambulances pulled up and opened their rear doors. Austin police were there still holding their shotguns. I photographed them, too. After a while, I could see the crowd parted by several men carrying a gurney. On it was a body covered by a bloodied white sheet. Several were carried out to the ambulances. I photographed them.

Kent Kirkley photographed this image about 2 p.m. after Charles Whitman had been killed and bodies were being removed from the UT Tower. © Kent Kirkley 2019

Now between 2:30 and 3:00 p.m. I felt I needed to return to the Co-Op and work. I shot some more images of the Tower clock with its bullet-pockmarked face. Crossing Guadalupe I saw a group of people standing in front of Sheftall’s Jewelry store on the other side of the Co-Op. I could see bullet holes in their window and blood on the sidewalk in front of the door. I quickly went up to the camera department and exchanged the telephoto for my 50mm normal lens and returned to Sheftall’s and photographed the window and bloodstained sidewalk. I clocked back in and was informed that my father had called asking where I was. They told him I was out photographing. I called my parents back and assured them I was all right.

The front window of Sheftall’s Jewelry Store, next door to the Co-Op. These bullet holes were used by photographer Shel Hershorn for his Life Magazine cover of the tragedy. © Kent Kirkley 2019

The front door of Sheftall’s Jewelry store next door to the Co-Op. © Kent Kirkley 2019

About 4:00 p.m. I got a call from Life Magazine. They’d heard I had photographed the incident and wanted the images. I explained that I had shot color transparency film and wanted to have it processed and see what I had before sending it. He said they couldn’t wait because of the production schedule and needed the film sent that night. Again, I explained but we couldn’t agree.

Close to 5:00 p.m. I got another call, this time from Paris Match magazine and they requested the same thing but had more time. I wrote down the necessary contact information and what they were going to pay. Very little work was accomplished the rest of the afternoon. There was a constant buzz from customers and employees. The rolls of Kodak High Speed Ektachrome were shipped to Kodak in Dallas that evening.

Before work the next morning, I went back to the campus and photographed whatever was happening and evidence of what had happened. This included reporters, the curious, and bullet marks. The processed film was returned and I was pleased with the images. That afternoon, I shipped the little yellow boxes to Paris Match. I didn’t hear much from the magazine except that they had received the film. Several weeks later I received a check in the mail and the slides were returned a few weeks after that, each one labeled in French, “Kirkley crime d’ Austin.”

The afternoon of the shooting and the next morning campus was swarming with news reporters from all over the country. © Kent Kirkley 2019

Some of Kent Kirkley’s UT Sniper slides on a light box. © Kent Kirkley 2019

During the shooting, I was focused on photographing whoever was shooting. I didn’t know anything about who or why or the killed or injured.

Removing the dead. © Kent Kirkley 2019

I had seen images by Robert Capa, David Douglas Duncan, Joe Rosenthal, W. Eugene Smith, and other war photographers, and perhaps they influenced me. I know that might label me as insensitive but that wasn’t the case. I realized the gravity of that day when I saw the two co-eds get pulled behind the parked car and Whitman’s bullet strike the pavement, and when I saw the covered body of the dead police officer. When the bodies were being removed from the Tower, that was an OMG moment. That evening after listening to the news the magnitude of what happened descended on me. I was astonished at how accurate Whitman had been and how far away he had hit people. Hearing the list of the wounded and killed was tough. Although I didn’t personally know any of them, I did know of a few.

Fiftieth Anniversary “Reading of the Names.” © Kent Kirkley 2019

I never experienced anything like PTSD or had bad dreams.

I think this was because it was such an isolated incident. To my knowledge it had never happened before and probably wouldn’t happen again.

How wrong I was.

The “new” memorial to the victims of the UT Sniper shooting. Photograph provided by the author. © Kent Kirkley 2019

View of the University of Texas at Austin campus grounds from the top of the Tower, AR.2000.002(002), Austin History Center, Austin Public Library.

Bullet impressions in the Tower, PICA 37424,
Austin History Center, Austin Public Library.

AND SO IT BEGAN

By Monte Akers and Nathan Akers

Monte Akers was sixteen and living in the Texas Panhandle at the time of the UT Tower shooting. He is the coauthor of Tower Sniper: The Terror of America’s First Active Shooter on Campus.

There are many firsts in a person’s life, and in that of a nation. Some are milestones to be celebrated, and others are hung with black crepe. For the United States of America, the school shooting that occurred on August 1, 1966, in Austin, Texas, was definitely the latter.

Because it was the first of its kind, because of various unique features, and because a few decades would pass before mass school shootings became painfully commonplace, the University of Texas Tower shooting by Charles Whitman imprinted on the American psyche as a singular, highly unusual, even interesting event. Today mass school shootings have become so frequent and common that people have trouble remembering their chronology, their details, and the names of those involved. Not so in regard to the “Tower sniper.”

It is not accurate, however, to describe the Austin event as the first American “school shooting.” As early as 1840 there was a shooting on a campus—The University of Virginia—in which a student shot and killed a professor. Dozens more killings occurred at American schools over the next 125 years, but each was more in the nature of a murder than a mass shooting. In 1898 in Charleston, West Virginia, six people were killed when the equivalent of a riot broke out during a student performance at a local school. Four of the victims were killed by gunfire and another was wounded, but the deaths were not the result of a lone gunman targeting anyone who ambled into his gunsights. On February 2, 1960, the principal of a school in Hartford City, Indiana, shot and killed two teachers in their classrooms, then fled to nearby woods and killed himself. However, the death toll from such school shootings never surpassed that from 1898 until August 1, 1966, when the body count reached a shocking seventeen.

And if such tragedies are to be measured only by the number of deaths at a school location, one must include what happened at Bath, Michigan, on May 18, 1927, when a farmer who was unhappy about the amount of property taxes he had to pay used a bomb to kill forty-five people at a rural school, including thirty-eight children and his own wife.

Still, it is the Tower sniper incident that gets the “credit” for the being the first of a phenomena that has become horribly ordinary during the first quarter of the twenty-first century. The names of other tragedies—Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, Columbine, Parkland—are still open wounds on the American psyche, but they were part of the pestilence rather than the initial infection.

The story of the Tower sniper is as follows: a nice-looking, seemingly happily married, former Marine who was about to graduate from the University of Texas with an engineering degree first killed his mother, then stabbed his beloved wife to death as she lay sleeping. Early the next morning he packed his military foot locker with over a hundred staples, from a pipe wrench to toilet paper to a snakebite kit, rented a dolly, and then trundled the locker, three rifles, one shotgun, three handguns, and a battery of ammunition onto the elevator to the eighteenth, or top, floor of the University of Texas Tower. After killing the receptionist on that floor and two members of a family who came up the elevator, he went to the walkway that surrounded the top of the Tower and began shooting students and others on the campus below. For a little more than an hour and a half he blazed away, felling some forty-three more people, during which time dozens of students and civilians blazed back with deer rifles and other personal firearms. A half dozen Austin police officers, a Department of Public Safety officer, and a civilian ascended the Tower, forced the door from the reception room to the walkway that Whitman had barricaded, then crept out and around until they saw the shooter, at which point two of the officers opened fire and killed him. Whitman’s body count, including an unborn child, a man who died from his wounds in 2001, his mother, and his wife, was seventeen killed and thirty-one wounded.

An autopsy was performed, and a small brain tumor was reported to have been found. Even though later analysis cast doubt on the effect and even existence of such a tumor, it provided everyone with a degree of relief, or at least an explanation for why such an abomination could occur. Everyone knew that nobody in his or her right mind, and nobody in a land as civilized and enlightened as the United States would ever dream of committing such a horrible, senseless crime.

It was, in other words, the good old days.

There were hundreds of students and people on or near the campus that particular Monday, and in the research and writing of our book about the incident we interviewed several of them. A few were victims, others were participants in one way or another, and most were observers. Their experiences were imbedded, preserved, mayflies in amber. For some it was a personal brush with history, for others it remained a fresh wound, for a few it was still a source of outrage. More than one refused to speak the name of the shooter. Two victims refused to talk to us out of concern we might glorify either the man or the act.

We also learned that the University of Texas took a completely understandable but totally misguided reaction to the shootings. The incident was so contrary to, so much the antithesis of what the school stood for that its leaders set about immediately to divorce itself from it. Classes resumed, victims were not honored, histories of the school and the Tower failed to mention the killings, an attempt to place a plaque where an Austin police officer was killed by Whitman was rebuffed, guided tours of the Tower included no mention of what happened or explanation for the numerous patched bullet holes along the walkway. This rankled many who were there. Loyal Longhorn alumni still grumbled after fifty years that their school had let them down. We know now, based on an overabundance of learning experiences that people touched by such tragedies need a place to mourn, a site to gather, leave messages, flowers, and stuffed animals, and to commune with others. It is part of the grieving process. Truth must be looked in the eye from which tears must be allowed to flow.

Decades of being the poster child for mass school shootings also generated a plethora of myths about the UT Tower shooter and his motives. Because two of his victims were pregnant he was said to have hated women, or babies, or that he believed his purpose was to spare children the agonies of life and send them straight to Heaven. Even though there is significant doubt that the tumor, if it existed, played a role in Whitman’s behavior, (the reasons he did it are more complex) its proximity in the brain to his amygdala has been characterized as proof of the far-reaching, horrifying control exercised by that part of the limbic system.

The truth is that a brain tumor almost certainly did not cause Charles Whitman to go on a shooting spree. What led Charles Whitman to commit the unthinkable is multi-faceted, multi-layered, and complicated. Much of his “rationale” could only be known to him, and some of it is unique to his own experience.

There is no one-size-fits-all profile of a mass shooter. They have varying socioeconomic backgrounds, ethnicities, and belief systems. However, there are certain themes and commonalities that seem to be prevalent in the majority of school/mass shootings, all of which were present and a part of that tragic August day in 1966, namely:

• MALE. USUALLY WHITE;

• MOTIVATED BY A PERSONAL GRIEVANCE, REVENGE, OR DESIRE FOR NOTORIETY;

• FASCINATION WITH GUNS AND/OR THE MILITARY;

• EASY ACCESS TO GUNS;

• USUALLY YOUNG, IN THEIR TWENTIES OR EVEN YOUNGER;

• INTERNALIZATION OF ISSUES AND PROBLEMS;

• A SENSE OF “OTHERNESS” OR EXCEPTIONALISM, DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR;

• CRIES FOR HELP THAT WERE MISSED;

• DEPRESSION OR SOME OTHER FORM OF MENTAL DISORDER;

• A SENSE OF LOST PURPOSE; AND

• AN ATTACK THAT WAS METICULOUSLY PLANNED; NOT RANDOM; THE SHOOTER DID NOT “SNAP.”

Many people’s fascination with such horrible events, like the university’s reaction to it, is misguided. Rather than as curiosities they should be studied for the purpose of preventing similar outrages. It is the experience of the survivors that are most instructive, and how their grief, anger, pain, and even silence have impacted their lives and provided guideposts for what society must do to construct obstacles and detours for such events in the future.

I HAD THE MISFORTUNE OF BEING PRESENT FOR AMERICA’S FIRST MASS SHOOTING

By John Fox (a.k.a. Artly Snuff)

John Fox (a.k.a. Artly Snuff) was seventeen when he took his first college semester at UT-Austin.

At seventeen, I entered UT-Austin for my first semester. I enrolled in two classes, one in the morning and another in the afternoon. I lived close to campus and often took advantage of the short distance by playing chess with a fellow AHS graduate, James Love, in his room on Rio Grande Street between classes. On the day of the shooting, while we were playing, a bulletin came over the radio saying someone was on the University of Texas (UT) Tower with an air rifle and we both jumped up, thumping over the chessboard, and rushed back to campus.

When we arrived, we heard shots and were waved off the Inner Campus Drive by a stranger who was shielded by a building several hundred feet closer to the Tower. James and I went into the Education Building and scurried up to the top floor, into the office with a view of the Tower. We saw bodies lying on the mall and knew they needed help. So, we left the building and made our way closer. We hunkered down, out of range from the Tower and protected by a large wall covered with massive hedges. As we got near, we crouched under a statue of Jefferson Davis, adjacent to the stairs that led up to the main mall.

From there, we could see the bodies laying out under the hot sun, only about a hundred feet from us. I could easily see that one of the people was a very pregnant woman, alive and twitching her legs. I worried the shooter might see her move and shoot her again. By now, I could hear shots being fired on a regular basis, and I knew that anyone who ran out there to help the fallen stood a good chance of being shot.

On the sidewalk next to me, I saw a fresh pool of blood staining the concrete. I found out later that the blood was from an Austin police officer named Billy Speed. He had been shot at the very place I crouched, killed by a bullet into his chest that went through a six-inch opening in the stone balustrade in front of him. I stared at his blood, thinking about the people bleeding on the mall just a hundred feet away. The carillon of bells on the peak of the Tower chimed every fifteen minutes, and reminded me of the people still lying under the blazing sun for another fifteen minutes more. The pressure to do something rose slowly within me.

We crouched there for a long time, unsure of what to do. I was wearing black pants and a short-sleeved dark blue shirt, a choice I would regret long before mid-afternoon. Exposed to the full glare of the sun, I was hot and sweating, but could not leave while those people were out there on the concrete of the mall with no help. I could see people gathered across the mall in a gallery at the base of the Tower and they, like us, were afraid of going out to help, exposing themselves to gunfire.

This was 1966 before there were any police SWAT teams or EMS units. Nobody had mobile phones, there was no Internet, no way to contact anyone about the situation in front of us. If anything was going to be done, it was us that had to do it.

I looked across the street to the English Building and saw a police officer at a window firing a shotgun toward the top of the three-hundred-foot-high Tower. I knew that was futile. I can only assume he was firing out of frustration. And at some point, the heat and my adrenaline combined gave me a case of mild heatstroke. I became nauseous and dizzy, with a strong headache. For relief, I crawled under the hedges next to the Jefferson Davis statue and stayed there in the shade until I felt recuperated.

When I emerged from the hedges, it was with a new purpose. I had the opportunity to get out of the sun and help myself, but the people in the middle of the mall didn’t have that option. Something needed to be done to help them. The Tower chimed again.

I focused on the pregnant woman. It was unthinkable that she remained out there with no form of relief. It became essential to get her and the others out of the sun and out of the line of fire. It was a mission more vital than my self-preservation.

So I did it. I ran from safety into danger, James at my side. I ran fast, even though time seemed to move at the speed of cold molasses. A man in a suit had been helped to his feet and was running toward safety, but when he got to the stairs, he rolled down, and was now lying awkwardly one step up from the sidewalk. I ran to him first, the closest victim to me. I was now far from any cover, feeling quite naked. I looked toward the people on the mall, now directly between the Tower and me. I focused on the pregnant woman and sprinted up the stairs toward her. At that point, my decisions were being made in nanoseconds since the shooter could start firing at any moment if he sighted us from his perch. I was now at the very spot where he had chosen to begin his killing spree.

I grabbed the pregnant woman’s legs, and James grabbed her wrists as we turned to carry her across the mall and down the stairs to safety. Back then I had big, thick-lensed eyeglasses that I thought looked cool because they resembled the pair of glasses Buddy Holly wore. As we ran down the steps, the heavy glasses slipped down and off my sweaty face. I was legally blind without them. James and I set her down, then I had to run back out from cover in a blur to find my glasses. By then, another group of students had run up, carrying her to an ambulance. I looked down at her boyfriend, who had bled out over the last hour. His face was still, white as alabaster. I helped carry him to an ambulance.

When I watch that old grainy black-and-white film, footage taken while the shooter was firing from atop the UT Tower, it reminds me of footage taken in a third-world country. It seems out of place to have occured in the heart of Texas.

We only keep photos of the happy moments of our lives: weddings, vacations, birthday parties, laughing children. No one keeps photographic images of the most terrible moments: deaths, fears, and moments of gore. Yet, with me, the day the shooter was on the UT Tower comprised all these themes, and I cannot forget them as I age. I saw death fall from a clear blue sky. The film of that horrible day keeps being shown over and over on television for anniversary specials and historical retrospectives. I try to move on, but can’t leave that day behind. It’s always there. People seem so fascinated by an event that was the most horrific day I’ve ever known.

I now know what the stain of evil can do to an individual psyche and how everything in and around the world that one considers safe and comfortable can be instantly shattered without warning. I’d never been more frightened in my life as when I consciously ran out from cover.

The university was closed the next day to clean up the blood and then the school reopened as if the shooting hadn’t happened. Today, when there is a mass shooting, there are a flood of therapists available to talk with the victims. Nothing like that existed in 1966. Nobody knew how to mentally process such horror. I didn’t talk about it much for decades. I now know I should have. Guilt has followed me incessantly. Why did I leave that woman and those others out there baking in the searing sun? If not for my cowardice, might more people have lived?

I wonder how my life and the way that I perceive things now would have been altered if I’d not kept seeing the broadcasted images of that rampage. The vivid scenes have become part of this nation’s video library, trotted out for everyone’s casual viewing. During melancholy moments, my mind inevitably goes back to that horrible day, and I review what I endured. I resurrect those dark thoughts normally buried deep within my mind and concealed from all but myself.

I know now that I did the best I could, but there is always a worm of doubt. That worm has been a part of my psyche for over fifty years now, and we are inseparable. Over time, I learned to live with my guilt, the guilt that few knew I felt. I have discovered that survivor’s guilt is a normal condition that occurs after a traumatic event. That knowledge has helped me fight the loneliness that accompanied my trauma.

Now there is no reason to name the shooter as everyone knows who it was. I see no reason to stain this page with his name. He did, however, leave a lasting legacy in the form of a template of violence. This template has taken the lives away from thousands of innocent victims and traumatized thousands of family members, friends, and witnesses to senseless bloodshed. When will it stop?

*Gunby was initially shot at age 23 and survived a surgery to repair his damaged intestine. However, during surgery, doctors discovered that Gunby had one functioning kidney. The gunshot wound damaged this one working kidney, and as a result he received dialysis, which he eventually stopped. He died in 2001 after stopping dialysis. His death is ruled a homicide.