2022 Uvalde and 1966 UT Tower Shootings

The harsh criticism leveled at the response by law enforcement to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde May 24, 2022 brings to mind the response by officers to the first mass school shooting in the nation at The University of Texas Tower in Austin August 1, 1966.

The comparisons, and contrasts, are striking.

Uvalde Officers in Robb Elementary School (photo: Texas Tribune)

Though separated by almost exactly 56 years, the extent of both events was horrendous. Both were carried out by lone gunmen, who were killed by lawmen. In Uvalde, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos killed 19 students and two teachers, wounding 17 others.

In Austin, 25-year-old Charles Whitman shot and killed 15 people, wounding 31 others, after stabbing to death his wife and mother the night before.

Both events lasted more than an hour. Many law enforcement officers were involved at both locations. While there were other similarities, let’s focus on one stark difference – the response by law officers.

In Uvalde, many armed-and-armored local and state officers with high-powered weapons, waited and waited inside the school -- apparently deciding what to do, maybe awaiting orders to storm the classroom where the killing was occurring. One investigative report said as many as 376 law enforcement personnel were on the scene, though not all went inside the school. Frantic 911 calls were begging for help. Yet, the killing continued inside a small classroom. And many officers waited just steps away from the carnage.

Contrast that with what happened on the UT campus.

A few unarmored Austin police officers carrying only handguns, a rifle and a shotgun entered the Texas Tower – on their own, individually, without being ordered to do so.

They were even joined by a civilian who asked to be deputized and was handed a rifle after going to the top of the Tower.

Bear in mind, these men didn’t know how many shooters were involved but they had seen dead bodies and wounded students all around the campus, they were hearing continuous gunfire, ambulance sirens were wailing as they hauled victims to Brackenridge Hospital. And yet, these few men kept going, climbing over dead bodies near the top of the Tower, to confront the gunman. However, in Uvalde, lawmen waited an inordinate amount of time in the school hallway.

Think about what was going on in Austin in 1966. It’s difficult to describe the extreme courage it took for these few men to climb out onto the open UT Tower deck where they knew the killer lurked above. But they kept going. Until they were face-to-face with the gunman, just steps away. Two officers fired simultaneously as the killer turned to aim his weapon at them. They killed Charles Whitman.

Fifty-six years ago. (Long before SWAT teams. Long before too many mass shootings that have resulted with regular police training exercises to deal with similar events.) These were just individuals, acting on their own without orders and without a plan, doing what they felt they needed to do.

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The Memorial

August 3, 2021, is two-days-and-five years after UT – finally – dedicated a campus memorial to those killed on campus. This is what I write about the Memorial in my memoir, With The Bark Off, A Journalist’s Memories of LBJ and a Life in the News Media, due to be published by the UT Briscoe Center for American History in September.

Photo Daily Texan Joshua Guerra

"At the dedication ceremony, fifty years after the bullets had rained down on campus, UT President (Greg) Fenves said, ‘We will never eliminate the memory of the horror that consumed this campus on August 1,1966, nor should we try. But by focusing on the good and the stories of the heroes and the lives of the survivors that are with us this afternoon, we can finally begin to remember and endure our burden of the past.’

"I was enormously happy that my alma mater had finally memorialized the names of the victims. The same ceremony also acknowledged and honored the students and others who’d risked their lives to rescue the wounded, as well as the brave police officers who’d put an end to the violence. Recognition and gratitude were long overdue. It was a great healing day in Austin, Texas

"I walked over and read the names on the granite monument, and I felt a rush of memories and emotions from that day when I’d sweated through my shirt and suit jacket while reporting live on the air from Red Rover. As the memorial ceremony unfolded, I was content to stand quietly in the back of the audience and savor the moment. And to remember my courageous colleagues in the news profession – many of them no longer with us – who had thrown themselves into harm’s way by rushing onto campus that day to cover the story while bullets were flying all around them: Joe Lee, Phil Miller, Gary Pickle, Joe Roddy, David Swope, John Thawley, Charles Ward, Gordon Wilkison.

“I will remember their names and their remarkable fearlessness for as long as I draw breath. Their actions were an inspiration to me and can serve as an inspiration to every journalist who scribbles notes in the line of fire or focuses a camera lens on the face of danger. Every day in this country and around the world, dedicated reporters from a new generation, cut from the same cloth as my old friends and colleagues at KTBC, hunker down in danger zones and halls of power to cover stories we need to hear about. They are all my heroes. They put their lives on the line to ensure that as a nation, we shall know the truth, and the truth shall make us free.”

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The Anniversary of the Tower Shooting

From the Texas Standard

Life was dramatically changed in the USA following an event in Austin, Texas, fifty-five years ago on August 1, 1966. That was when the nation’s first mass school shooting took place from atop the University of Texas Tower. Here’s how I described it while reporting from the UT campus, within range of the sniper’s gunshots:

“Another shot! The sniper fired three quick, successive shots. Apparently in the length of time it takes to cock the weapon and then …. Another shot! He just fired another shot and this time …. Another shot! That’s the fifth shot now in about 20 or 30 seconds.”

Don Carleton, Executive Director of University of Texas’ Briscoe Center for American History, writes this in his preface to my memoir, to be published in September 2021, With the Bark Off, A Journalist’s Memories of LBJ and a Life in the News Media:

“Neal Spelce’s riveting on-the-scene reporting of a sniper murdering fifteen people and badly injuring thirty-one others was quickly hooked into the national radio and television networks and broadcast across the nation in real time. Neal covered an incident that was, up to that time, the deadliest mass shooting by a lone gunman in American history.”

This, sadly, was a harbinger of things to come across the nation and in other parts of the world. Since then, our lives have changed significantly. Security checkpoints have been set up in public places, video cameras are everywhere, SWAT teams were created to combat similar acts, EMS units were beefed up, and in many cases, created from scratch. One survivor of the UT Tower tragedy told me: “we lost our innocence that dreadful day.”

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