America's First Mass Shooting

     Monday will mark the 50th anniversary of the University of Texas tower shooting.  On May 1st 1966 an engineering student named Charles  Whitman pulled a dolly loaded with guns and ammunition to the University of Texas Tower.  He rode the elevator to the observation deck where he had a perfect view of the campus then began shooting people twenty seven stories below.  He killed fourteen and wounded thirty.   Before going to the tower he had killed his mother and wife.  I was thirteen at the time of the shooting, only one month to the day of my fourteenth birthday.  Most people still had black and white televisions in 1966 and my family was no different.  I can still remember watching the live KTBC Television broadcast of the event on the  black and white television set in the bedroom I shared with my younger brother.  It seemed like the event lasted forever but in reality it only lasted

one hour and fifty minutes. In less than two hours the gunman  lay died.  He had wounded thirty and killed 14.
     It's kind of ironic but on August 1, 2016, fifty years to the day after the mass killing on the campus of the University of Texas a new law goes into effect allowing people to carry concealed weapons on collage campuses in Texas.  Personally I think the new law is stupid and will only increase the likelihood of another such event  happening.  The new law's risk are not worth it's gain.
     There will be a memorial marking the 50th anniversary and I'll probably be there.  They say one can never go home again.  But on Monday  I  will stand at the base of the University of Texas Tower remembering what  life was like on that day while I watched the news on the old black and white television in the bedroom I shared with my younger brother.