August 1, 1966

Robert V. Blystone

April 19, 2007

The incident at Virginia Tech is all too real and I know how that campus feels. When Charles Whitman went on his shooting rampage at UT Austin August 1, 1966, I was in the Experimental Science Building about two blocks away. At 15 minutes into Whitman’s bout of madness, I remember the Zoology chairman churning down the hall shouting that everyone must stay away from the south windows because "There is a madman shooting at people from the top of the tower." I was in the east-end graduate student office with about six others eating our lunch a few minutes after twelve. Our first response was "Let's go see." We ran down the block-long fourth floor hall to a better vantage point of the tower. We could hear the repeats of the rifle. We saw a puff of smoke and the realization hit us: "There is a madman shooting at people from the top of the tower." We ran back to the office to get a radio and tuned in KTBC, Lyndon's radio station. The announcer, an older man that we all knew from television, was reporting that shooting was going on and people had been injured. He then recognized another announcer who was to read a list of people killed. As the names were read, the broadcast veteran muttered: "I think you read my grandson’s name.” I never saw the gentleman on TV or heard him on radio again after that fateful Monday.

Out the window we saw waves of men, some looking like detectives or FBI agents in suits with rifles running along 24th street with the cover of the chemistry building. We saw police officers running with guns drawn. We saw men galloping up the street wearing boots and carrying shotguns and deer rifles. We were puzzled how a shotgun was going to work on someone 300 feet in the air. I realized that my wife was downtown working in a law office and she did not know of my predicament. I also became fearful when on the radio I heard the sniper was targeting people more than a half-mile away. Her Perry-Brooks building was closer to campus than I wanted to think about. I tried for 20 minutes to call her but all the lines were busy. She instead finally reached the lab phone. We were both relieved that we had thick walls between us and the tower.

As we sat on office desks with several pacing to and from the lab phone trying to make connections, we kept looking at each other saying: “When are they going to stop this crazy guy?” The shooting continued for an hour and a half and then the gun reports and their horrid bouncing echoes stopped. But there was no silence for the sirens of all the emergency vehicles were wailing and wailing. Ambulance wails, firetruck wails, police car wails. For years after the dreadful incident when I heard a siren, I was immediately transported back to the fourth floor of the Experimental Science Building, for years.

When the all clear was given, I walked over to the tower just when the police broke into Whitman's ‘66 Chevy Impala at the base of the library building. I walked around to the southside of the tower just as the buildings crew had high-pressure hoses washing away the clotted blood from around the base of the flagpoles there. And the sirens continued to wail, and wail, and wail.

With the passing of another hour and a half, the silence came. Everyone became very quiet, very still, yet moving about, but very quiet. We would look into faces and then avert our eyes as we realized that others were looking into our faces trying to understand what had happened. No more sirens. My wife picked me up early from work. We went home to our duplex apartment in north Austin. We tried for three hours to call our parents to let them know we were alright. Every long distance circuit was busy, even if you could reach a long-distance operator, she could not find an open line.

I had a close friend who had left the tower elevator as Whitman got on in his coveralls and a handcart with a large box on it. I knew another graduate student who worked down the hall who saw the announcer's namesake shot and hid behind a car to avoid being next. About ten minutes into his ordeal, someone walked up to the parked car he was behind, got in, and drove off, oblivious to what was happening. With his cover gone, he jumped to hide behind the next parked car on the west side of Guadalupe street.

As it became 7 in the evening, my wife and I just had to get out. We had to shake the numbness of it all. We went to a nearby Dillard's and just walked around inside the store. The store was silent. No cash register noise, no credit card crunching machines working. No one spoke. We were all just walking around on the inside of the department store. We didn't stay long. Near midnight our apartment phone rang and it was my dad. He finally had made a long distance connection from El Paso via a New York operator to get to us in Austin. He said he knew we were OK, but he had to hear our voices, he had to hear us speak.

For days after that we did not know what to say or do. Sharing the stories could not make up for the dead and wounded. There was no sense of pride in that this 1966 shooting was the worst ever experienced. The only difference was that we were there; that I was there. On that noon I could have walked by the Turtle ponds by the old Biology building and greenhouses to go get a burger at the Commons at the wrong time. I had seen the lady who acted as a receptionist at the top of the tower in a previous visit. But I did not know anyone who had been shot. I often walked by the architecture building where Whitman studied; who knows I might have bumped into Whitman on the west mall at some time. I and thousands of others were the mental victims of his madness. We were all touched, even engraved by those events of August 1, 1966. We were so innocent.

Each year as August first approached, my mind wandered back to those events. It was not a day to celebrate and it was painful to remember. The years became decades and the sharpness of that day had dulled until this last Monday. Time’s razor was again sharpened by seeing bodies being hauled out of the Tech engineering building. A body drawing no breath is so much heavier than a live body. There were Internet pictures of ambulances lined curbside in a row waiting for their ominous cargo. Men were running about with weapons drawn. It was another dreadful Monday in a different place and in a different time yet all so similar.

The students, staff, and faculty at VT will be haunted the rest of their lives by what happened to them on their Monday. Many were buildings away; they may not have known any of those who were regrettably shot. But they were there on that campus. They are all so innocent. But for the grace of God, go I. Abnormal psychology is no longer just a course; it is real. Terrorism and tragedy are not just abstractions discussed in a Political Science class; it is right next-door. Seared psyches all.

We have had friends and family who died in car accidents. We saw the planes fly into the World Trade Center. We see Humvees blown up on the streets of Baghdad. But to defame the places we discuss ideas and ideals. Our ivory towers, our sanctuaries. How can our academically elite refuge be punctured by bullets? Such a blow to youthful idealism.

We each can sign large paper scrolls to be sent to Blacksburg, Virginia. We can call friends who might be associated with Virginia Tech. We can attend prayer services and memorials hundreds of miles away from that awful event. We can send flowers and teddy bears. But it is the people who were there who must work out in their minds and souls what happened. "You had to have been there." Combat veterans know of what I speak. What is the campus contingency plan if a herd of circus elephants came crashing through the campus? How do you plan for that? "Going postal." How do you plan for that? Can anyone really plan for totally irrational behavior? Perhaps.

Thank you for allowing me to remember a very deep hurt. A hurt that many in Blacksburg will now have. I only hope that forty years from now, someone like me will not have to remember April 16, 2007, to a new mourning audience.

Bob Blystone

Trinity University

San Antonio