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Out Of The Blue: 50 Years After The UT Tower Shooting

Image of the noted UT tower where Charles Whitman rained down bullets on his fellow students fifty years ago.
Miguel Gutierrez Jr. /KUT News
The noted UT tower where Charles Whitman rained down bullets on his fellow students fifty years ago.

The Texas Standard oral history, “Out of the Blue: 50 Years After the UT Tower Shooting,” features selections from more than 100 exclusive, first-person accounts of the UT Tower shooting to paint a broad picture of the events that took place 50 years ago. Many of these eyewitness stories have not been shared publicly until now. 

 
The oral history features some of the people most involved in the day’s events – including those who were injured and the Austin Police officers who helped put the shooting to an end – but also many others who were affected by the shooting in unexpected ways. 
 
The title, “Out of the Blue,” refers to the blue sky on Aug. 1, 1996 from whence the shots came down on campus, and to the fact that no one had expected or heard of a school shooting such as this before. It came from out of the blue. 

Jim is a journalism/mass communications graduate from the University of Oklahoma. While still a student, he became the host of what is now The Weekend Blues. He currently serves as KGOU’s Program Director where he supervises all aspects of KGOU’s on-air programming output.
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