Authors: Gary M. Lavergne

Tags: #History, #United States, #General, #State & Local, #Southwest (AZ; NM; OK; TX), #True Crime, #Murder, #test

A Sniper in the Tower (54 page)

21 APD Files:
CAPOR
s by D. Kidd, 2 August 1966 and
SOR
by Sgt. Pilgrim, 5 August 1966;
Dallas Morning News
, 4 September 1966;
Time
, 12 August 1966;
Austin American-Statesman
, 2 and 4 August 1966, and 30 July 1967.

Page 181

12
The General

The heatthey remembered the heat. Virtually all of the wounded knew that the best way to avoid another shot from Charles Whitman was to lie still and play dead, but for many the heat became unbearable. Onlookers pitied the wounded as much for the pain caused by hot pavement as for the wounds. Claire Wilson had no choice but to lie still for more than an hour as the sun beat down on her until she could be rescued. Instinctively she picked up one leg and moved it from side to side. Witnesses mentally pleaded for her to put that leg down and

Page 182

keep still. ''We could see people moving a bit, but they never could get up and walk away" It would have been easier if they had known that Whitman never shot anyone twice.
¹

From the top of the Tower, Charles Whitman not only held off an army but he also pinned it down and stayed on the attack. After the tragedy, many police officers' written reports stated that they were unable to move from their positions. Whitman's rapid fire suggested a shift to a greater use of the 30-caliber carbine, an automatic rifle. Earlier he tended to use the scoped 6mm. Remington, a far more accurate weapon over long distances, but one that required the manual use of a bolt action. Whitman pinned down Patrolman Jim Cooney as the officer made attempts to assist Roy Dell Schmidt, the electrician Whitman killed near University and 21st Streets. "I couldn't get to the man," said Cooney.
²

Ambulances were everywhere. For much of the time the drivers and attendants exposed themselves to Whitman's field of vision. One of the first ambulances to arrive on the scene, owned by Hyltin-Manor Funeral Home, was operated by a young man named Turner Bratton and a thirty-year-old funeral director named Morris Hohmann. Hohmann was scheduled to start his vacation only two days later. The two men drove to the entrance of Garrison Hall, where the mortally wounded Dr. Robert Boyer had been taken. Boyer's necktie had been loosened in an attempt to make him more comfortable, but the wound was too massive. He was dead on arrivalthe first of the victims to reach Austin's largest medical care facilityBrackenridge Hospital. The time was 12:12
P.M.
3

"The General," Brackenridge's Emergency Room Supervisor, ran a topnotch emergency room. On 1 August 1966 Leeda Lee Bryce, who received her military title from the doctors, had been home sick, but she had overcome her malady to arrive only minutes after Morris Hohmann delivered Dr. Robert Boyer to the emergency room. Boyer's arrival time was the only one recorded for the rest of the afternoon. By 12:15
P.M.
the hospital's administrator, Ben Tobias, had activated the disaster plan. The General arrived at 12:20
P.M.
4

A routine emergency room shift at Brackenridge consisted of two registered nurses and a few students. In a matter of minutes, ten registered nurses and about twenty student nurses crowded the entrance to the hospital. Everyone knew something was wrong, even

Page 183

before detailed reports had reached them to make the extent of the emergency clear. Mrs. Marion Chapman, the Director of Social Services, knew something was up when she noticed the ambulance sirens blaring right up to the emergency room door; they were usually cut off once the vehicle was safely out of traffic. On 1 August 1966 the attendants hurriedly unloaded their patients, returned to their vehicles, and sped off again.
⁵

Joe Roddy, a well-known Austin newsman from KTBC, had left the campus to provide live coverage at the hospital. "It seemed like the ambulances were coming in every few seconds. I . . . remember all the stretchers they had. There were two or three dozen, just piled up, waiting,"
⁶Roddy remembered ten years later. Several witnesses remember him helping to unload ambulances.
⁷Leeda Bryce remembered: "It was constant . . . ambulances driving up. Then all of a sudden we had half of Austin outside the emergency room. It got to the point where ambulances were parked in the middle of the street."
⁸

Other patients were cleared from the hospital's clinic, which soon became a morgue. A twenty-one-bed wing that had been closed the preceding May because of a personnel shortage was quickly reopened. For the next few hours Brackenridge would have no such shortage. Within minutes, dozens of doctors from all parts of Austin arrived to tend to the wounded. The director of the Brackenridge School of Nursing arrived with a group of students who served as "runners." If anyone needed anything they called for a runner. As Bryce remembered: "There were [doctors] in the emergency room, some in the operating room, some sitting there waiting to operate, and they all came wanting to help."
⁹

The situation at Brackenridge could have easily deteriorated into a state of panic, but in the eye of the storm was the "General." Everyone listened to Mrs. Bryce, whose war-time nursing experience served her well. Her split-second decisions assigned doctors and nurses to patients according to injury and space. In the face of an incredible tragedy, Brackenridge's disaster plan worked well, and undoubtedly, saved lives.

Other divisions at Brackenridge went on alert. Soon, scores of police, reporters, relatives and friends of the wounded, and others such as blood donors, descended upon the hospital. Patrolman Elton Edwards was assigned to control traffic as ambulances delivered the

Page 184

dead and wounded. Even then ambulances and emergency vehicles were forced to park in the middle of streets. Once waiting rooms were filled, families were sent to the cafeteria where the Director of Dietary Services, Joyce Parma Lalonde, led her staff in the preparation of sandwiches and coffee for the duration of the crisis.
¹⁰Mrs. Lalonde's husband, Dr. Albert Lalonde, a respected Austin neurosurgeon and the hospital's Chief of Staff, had already reported to the emergency room. One of his first patients was Claudia Rutt. She still complained of troubled breathing. Dr. Lalonde, seeing little blood on her clothes, correctly deduced internal bleeding. Dr. Jim Calhoon, the only thoracic surgeon in Austin (the other, Dr. Maurice Hood, had just left town for a vacation) took over and tried to save her by draining the excess fluid from her chest cavity, but Rutt died shortly afterwards.
¹¹

Brackenridge had never seen anything like it. Phone lines were so jammed that periodically the operators pulled out all lines to clear the board and prevent an overload. Of the thirty-nine victims brought to the emergency room, twelve were dead or would die there. But the institution rose to the occasion, saving those who could be saved.
¹²

A flood of ambulances came. "It was just a shock. It just started coming and it just didn't stop. Every time you looked up there was somebody coming in," remembered the General. Everyone worked as fast as possible. Ambulances owned by different companies ended up mixing and mismatching supplies, but no one cared. Brackenridge doctors noticed that most of the victims had chest wounds; whoever had done the shooting had aimed! Many of the arrivals were dead; many were in serious or critical condition. Some were treated and released, and still others left before they could be treated. Still the ambulances kept coming. It was so uncalled for, thought Mrs. Bryce; it was so useless. She continued to direct the wounded to doctors, nurses, and places.
¹³Dr. Bud Dryden remembered:


I don't think the emergency room had any panic in it that day. What helped more than anything else in my opinion was Mrs. Bryce directing the doctors and directing the injured and the situation in general. ¹⁴

Page 185

But after a while, even the General began to show signs of despair. As more and more dead and wounded crowded the emergency room, Bryce became angered at the pain and suffering all around her and at the senseless cruelty apparently caused by one evil individual. In frustration she asked, "Why the hell don't they kill him?"
¹⁵Lifesavers and healers are nonetheless human. Eventually, someone in ER would shout: "Well, they've shot the guy up there killing the people." Loud cheers followed the announcement, to the dismay of Dr. Calhoon: "Like a football game. God. That thing sort of upset me because I felt so sad that we would cheer that a guy got shot. And I still feel bad that they had to kill him."
¹⁶

In this, as in most tragedies, regular people were transformed into superhuman, authentic heroes. And so it was with Leeda Lee Bryce. She said that if the wounded had a chance to live "we could have saved them. I believe in my doctors and nurses, and I know we had the equipment. No, if they died, it was God's will."
¹⁷

Legends were produced as well. One oft-repeated story told of a tired young nurse who at the end of the day looked down upon her blood-soaked white shoes. In tears, she could not bring herself to clean them, but instead threw them away.

The tragedy attracted more than just policemen and vigilantes with deer rifles. As the shooting continued, the media, armed with cameras and note pads, spread out over the campus. One of the first to arrive was a thirty-six-year-old Associated Press reporter named Robert Heard, a former marine officer and Korean War veteran. Another reporter named Jack Keever had received a call from his wife Cindy, a UT employee. In order to keep Keever on the phone with Cindy, AP's Capitol Bureau Chief Garth Jones immediately assigned Robert Heard to the story. Jack had a few parting words for Heard: "Be careful, don't get shot."
¹⁸

Hurrying towards the capitol's north door, Heard remembered that he had taken his Volkswagen in for repairs, so he quickly hitched a ride with a
Dallas Times-Herald
reporter named Ernie Stromberger. A security agent in a guard house on the northeast side initially stopped them, then allowed the reporters to cover the shootings.

Other books

Delinquent Daddy by Linda Kage

Family Values by AnDerecco

Rage by Jonathan Kellerman

India Becoming: A Portrait of Life in Modern India by Kapur, Akash

Noche by Carmine Carbone

Aimée and the Bear: A BBW Bear-Shifter Romance (Fairy Tales with a Shift) by Cara Wylde

The Power of Three by Kate Pearce

Saved By The Belles by Albright, Beth

Make Way for Dyamonde Daniel by Nikki Grimes

Go Tell the Spartans by Jerry Pournelle, S.M. Stirling