ANGELS AMONGST US AT UT in 1966

A few nights ago, our UT Highland Lakes Texas Exes chapter hosted a showing of Tower at the Uptown Art Theater in Marble Falls. Tower is an award-winning documentary about the August 1, 1966, mass shooting on the UT campus.

I was a sophomore in high school in the tiny town of Phillips in the Panhandle of Texas in August of 1966. As a child, I had already experienced the assassinations of President Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy. When I was in grade school, we had drills in case of a nuclear attack by Cuba, backed by Russia. As children watching the nightly news on TV, we witnessed violence in the streets, from those supporting civil rights to those opposing the Vietnam War. We heard weekly body counts of soldiers dying in Vietnam on the nightly news. Even though we were children in a small town, we weren't immune to violence. After all, the UT mass shooting and the Kennedy assassination happened in my own state! I felt confused, disgusted, shame, and fearful all at once. Little did I know then that our country and state would horrifyingly experience many more mass shootings after the initial one on the UT campus.

The documentary, Tower, was a captivating depiction of almost every minute, from the siege of the UT tower to the fatal shooting of the mass murderer Charles Whitman, by an Austin police officer. 
 
When she became the first person shot, Claire Wilson, an 18-year-old student, was 8 months pregnant and walking with her boyfriend across campus. Her boyfriend died instantly trying to rescue her. She described knowing when her baby died because he had been very active before she was shot in the stomach, but suddenly, the baby no longer moved. She also knew her boyfriend had died because he lay motionless during the hour and a half they were on concrete under the blistering hot August sun. Most of the people were so stunned and fearful that they felt helpless. One young woman ran to her side, lay by her, and talked to her for the duration of their time on the concrete. Claire survived after two male students carried her to safety while dodging bullets.

I believe in angels, although I don't think about it much. As I watched the young woman comforting Claire and the two young men rescuing her, I felt a strong sense of angels being present during that time. Maybe the rescuers were angels or working through them, but there was definitely something more substantial at work than mere mortals.  

Claire did lose the baby. She would live a nomadic life and find comfort in religion and teaching, specifically with the Seventh-Day Adventists. Claire now enjoys retirement in Texarkana. Even though she married twice, she could not conceive, although she desperately wished for a biological child. Eventually, Claire adopted a baby from Ethiopia. She describes motherhood as a surreal and joyful experience. He is the baby Claire lost in her imagination. If you believe in reincarnation, perhaps she's right.  




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