Copyright 2011-2022 Susan Burneson. All rights reserved. Kindly talk with us before reproducing any website content.
Jan Root and Richard Chaffee grew up in the Brentwood neighborhood of Austin. They were kids on August 1, 1966, and remember well when a man went up into the University of Texas Tower and began shooting shortly before noon that day. Jan and Richard share a few of their memories in the video clip, below.
They mention several names that may be unfamiliar. The Uncle Jay Show was a longtime, popular children’s TV program on KTBC in Austin. Its star, Jay Hodgson, lived with his family at 6913 Reese Lane in the Crestview neighborhood of Austin during the years the show aired, from 1953 to 1977, and for some time after. Jay died in 2007.
KTBC reporter Neal Spelce was among the first reporters on the scene of the Tower shootings. He arrived there in Red Rover, the red station wagon that was KTBC’s news vehicle. Spelce’s summary of the tragedy appeared on national news that evening. (More about KTBC, below.)
Heroes, and a memorial
During the 1966 shootings, Rita Murphey (later known as Rita Starpattern), a 20-year-old UT student, ran out to where Claire Wilson, who was eight months pregnant and the first person shot, lay seriously injured on the south mall near the Tower. With ongoing gunfire all around, Rita lay down near Claire and talked to her for nearly an hour to help keep her conscious.
As gunfire continued, UT students John Fox (also known as Artly Snuff) and James Love ran to the mall and rescued Claire, and Rita returned to a safe location.
On Monday, August 1, 2016, Austinites dedicated a new memorial on the UT campus to all who died, fifty years after the shootings, according to an article in The Daily Texan Online, “New memorial honors victims of UT Tower shooting.” The same day, the Texas law allowing guns to be carried into many buildings on campus went into effect.
Breaking the silence
For decades, the shootings were seldom talked about publicly by people who survived them and who knew about them, including the media and the university. That began to change in 1997 with Gary Lavergne‘s book Sniper in the Tower: The Charles Whitman Murders, published by the University of North Texas Press. In 2006, Pamela Colloff compiled oral histories of some of the people involved in a Texas Monthly article entitled “96 Minutes.”
In 2016—the 50th anniversary of the shootings—The Guardian published an article by Jim Gabour, whose family was greatly impacted by the shootings. A few months earlier, Texas Monthly published “The Reckoning,” an article by Pamela Colloff about Claire Wilson James, who was critically wounded in the shooting, and Jo Scott-Coe posted a compelling story, “Listening to Kathy,” about the life of Whitman’s wife, Kathy Leissner. Also in 2016, UT graduate students researched the incident and created a website, “Behind the Tower,” to share their findings. Austin’s NPR station, KUT, also has a number of in-depth online articles, interviews, and links, including “Out of the Blue.”
Local connections
One of the first people to be killed that day was Billy Paul Speed, a 22-year-old policeman. At the time, he lived with his wife and young daughter in the 1400 block of Payne Avenue in the Brentwood neighborhood of Austin, not far from where we live now.
In 1977, I interviewed artists Rita Starpattern, Deanna Stevenson, and Carol Taylor for an article I was writing about their impressive multimedia arts festival, Women and Their Work, held that fall in Austin. Soon after, they founded a nonprofit organization with the same name that continues to support artists today. In 2016, as I watched the film Tower (more about that below), I learned about Rita’s heroism during the tower shooting.
Rita, Deanna, Carol, and I met for our interview in the home Rob and I rented in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Austin. Our landlord was James Damon. I also learned in 2016 that the day of the Tower incident, Jim, then a graduate student, was among those who brought their own guns to campus and tried to stop the shooting. He was especially concerned about his pregnant wife, who was uninjured but trapped on the fourth floor of the Tower.
Tower (2016)
In October 2016, Tower, Austin filmmaker Keith Maitland’s innovative production—using archival film, new interviews and animation to tell the story of that day—had its theatrical release. Sold-out screenings included one earlier that year at the Bob Bullock History Museum in Austin on July 31, 2016. The event also featured a moving and enlightening Q&A with the filmmakers and with people present at the shootings, including Claire Wilson James, John Fox (Artly Snuff), Neal Spelce, and others.
Tower premiered at the 2016 SXSW Film Festival and was the grand jury winner and audience award winner in the documentary feature competition. It received the Louis Black Lone Star Award, given each year to a Texas-produced film, in addition to awards at the Dallas, Hill Country, Montclair, Riverrun, and Victoria film festivals.
Tower was nominated in July 2018 for News & Documentary Emmy Award nominations for outstanding historical documentary and outstanding music and sound. Tower appeared on the PBS series Independent Lens in February 2017. Tower also was nominated for a 2018 Peabody Award in the documentary category.
In 2009, Keith Maitland directed the film The Eyes of Me, a year in the life of four students at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, located on West 45th St. in Austin, on the southern edge of the Brentwood neighborhood. The film appeared on the PBS series Independent Lens, received the Barbara Jordan Media Award from the State of Texas, and was nominated for an Emmy.
Man on the Tower (film), 2020
Filmmaker Karl Shefelman describes his short film Man on the Tower as “based on my memory of that day as a young boy, seeing the Tower from our backyard and listening to Neal Spelce on the radio and worried about my dad who was on [the University of Texas] campus teaching architecture.” The film won a Silver Remy Award for Best Short Film at Worldfest Houston 2021 and was screened at other festivals in 2020 and 2021.
More about KTBC, Austin’s first TV station
KTBC was established in 1952 by then-Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird. LBJ was U. S. President at the time of the 1966 shootings. KTBC received a Peabody award for coverage of the event.
Like Jay Hodgson and Neal Spelce, Austin broadcaster and humorist Richard “Cactus” Pryor was a longtime KTBC employee. Among many other projects, Pryor had a recurring role on The Uncle Jay Show as Theothelifis P. Duck. In 1960, he co-produced and narrated an intriguing Civil Defense film, Target Austin, that features many Austin personalities and locales.
Gordon Wilkison was one of the first reporters on the scene at the 1966 Tower shooting. Wilkison was another longtime KTBC employee and co-producer, with Cactus Pryor, of the film Target Austin. A longtime Austin filmmaker, Wilkison donated hundreds of his films to the Texas Archive of the Moving Image not long before he died in February 2013 at the age of 82.
Here’s a link to clips of The Uncle Jay Show, the complete Target Austin, and other little-known Texas film footage: Texas Archive of the Moving Image (TAMI).
We interviewed Jan Root and Richard Chaffee on October 24, 2009. A DVD copy of their interview is at the Austin History Center.