Wherever you may be, may there be good air conditioning...and a happy August to you, too.

I read the August issue of Texas Monthly last night, which alerted me to a sad yet important anniversary that is lodged in my head and probably will be for a while...

Forty years ago today, an architectural engineering student named Charles Whitman, age 25, took the elevator (and a shitload of rifles) up to the observation deck of the tower on the University of Texas campus in Austin and proceeded to shoot people for the next 96 minutes. He killed 15 and wounded 31, and in doing so, he introduced mass murder to America. In 1966, the term "going postal" had no meaning, and people lived their lives without fear of being murdered at random by a stranger for no discernible reason. Isn't that strange? I can't imagine what a world like that would be like. Sad.

I think maybe it was society's innocence that caused the entire event to be hushed up and visible scars from that day covered up and repaired and an eerie blanket of silence to descend over the topic of the shootings and/or anything relating to them. That only excuses the immediate aftermath---I can see shock and denial, but I DO NOT think it's permissible for the silence and refusal to speak about it to have gone on like, permanently. But that's what happened: nobody would discuss it. Given what we know now about PTSD, it's impossible that all those kids (for that's what the majority of those affected that day were---just college kids) felt just fine, thank you, and had no need to discuss their fears or their reactions to seeing their fellow students blown to bits right before their eyes in a setting that until that day was the most benign place one could think of, save one's own dorm room...uh-huh. No nightmares. No survivor's guilt. Yeah, right. JFK had been assassinated only 3 short years before; Vietnam was just gearing up. So yes, we were headed for the nearly constant, ruthless beatings we would suffer as the result of civil breakdown, but hadn't really experienced anything besides a cold, hard slap in the face at that point.

Man oh man, we were VIRGINS. When you stop and consider everything that's happened in the world since Charlie Whitman went postal and shot 46 people on the South Mall at UT in Austin in 1966...oh yeah, we were virgins. JFK's murder was the equivalent of being mugged if you permit me to use person-on-person crime as an analogy. Vietnam would therefore be a long, extended rape...by a GORILLA. Iraq's already there, in my humble opinion. But I digress...

The Austin police officer who bravely went up that elevator and out onto that deck and shot Whitman became a Texas Ranger and is now retired. I'm glad life treated him well. He did many people a great service that day...who knows how many more Whitman would have killed if Officer Ramiro "Ray" Martinez hadn't decided to confront the sniper mano a mano? And Officer Martinez was hanging out, just kicking it on his day off when he heard what was happening on his radio. He made the decision to head for the tower, and thank God he did.

It bothers me that there isn't any memorial to the dead. I cannot stop thinking about those kids who had no choice but to stuff their feelings about the whole thing down deep inside and carry on as though nothing whatsoever had happened. It's that stiff upper lip we proper Southern Baptists maintain no matter what. SO typical of Texans. And I'm more than bothered---I'm completely pissed OFF that one of the students who was in ICU for 6 or so weeks never got so much as a "we're really sorry this happened to you" from the Dean or anybody else in an official capacity at the college. This woman, Claire James, who is now a junior high teacher in another state, was 8 months pregnant and walking to lunch with her boyfriend when she was hit in the stomach. She had no idea what had happened to her, until she saw her boyfriend's head blown off. She lost the baby, naturally. And nobody said I'M SO SORRY? What a bunch of shit.

I'm grateful to Texas Monthly for doing this 40th Anniversary oral history, and I'll never forget the things I learned by reading it. My daughter attends this university. She walks past that tower every single day, and I'm sure she knows as little about that day as I did. Now that I know details, names, numbers, the chronology...you name it, I probably know it...well, it's hard to get it OUT of my head. It's playing in my background as I go about my daily life, and it'll be a while before it fades away. I think it's a good thing---it's a memorial the 15 dead never got, so let it be me and however many other readers experienced the same emotions I did upon learning the extraordinary sequence of events that allowed a 25-year-old graduate student do what he did.