George A. Covington

AUG. 1, 1966: In the early afternoon, I was hiding behind a parked car and hoping no one would shoot in my direction. I took a deep breath and made a mad dash for the back of the journalism building, which was across about 50 paces of open space. As I walked down the hall to my office I noticed that Norris Davis, chairman of the School of Journalism, and several students were holding open the front door and looking up at the Tower. I yelled, “You idiots are going to get yourselves shot if you don’t get away from that door,” which they quickly did.

The first news stories over the radio stated that there was a guy on the Tower with a shotgun. My first thought was that at 28 stories high, he wasn’t going to do a lot of damage. Later reports came in and everyone was shocked to learn how the body count was mounting and that he was using rifles.

Late in the afternoon, while

police still had the crime scene secured, I was with the last press group to go up to the top of the Tower with fellow student Lee Webb and several others I don’t remember. The first thing I remember was entering the room that led to the final steps before entering the top of the Tower where I was confronted with a 3-foot-wide hole in the plastered wall and the overwhelming smell of blood. I later discovered that the shallow plaster hole was caused by a shotgun when (Whitman) stood at the top of the stairs and blasted his first victims, which turned out to be people from my hometown of Texarkana.

I must have looked out over all four sides of the tower, but I only remember looking over the parapet toward the North. Although I have always worn glasses, they have never been able to correct my extremely poor vision. What really hit me was the fact that with only a fraction of normal vision I could see the blur that represented the car that I’d hidden behind before my dash to the back of the Journalism building. Even with my blurry vision I could see the door where Norris Davis and the students had been standing when I passed them in the hall. I could also see the window into my office. Looking down at that scene, I realized that Charles Whitman had perfect eyesight and that I had been extremely lucky.