Maitland Huffman

Assistant Professor, Near Student Union

00:00 / 10:20
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Maitland Huffman was an Assistant Professor in the Management Department at UT in the summer of 1966.

At the time of the UT Tower shooting, he was on campus walking to the faculty dining room in the Student Union to get lunch. He recalls hearing some shots but did not realize at first that they were shots because there was a lot of construction going on across campus. He remembers seeing three people lying on the South Mall and wondered what was going on — perhaps a drama class or a sociology experiment.

“As I turned, Whitman fired,” Huffman says. “He had me lined up with my chest but as I turned, he hit my right arm and destroyed about three inches of bone and it came on through and hit my chest.”

Huffman then remembers hearing someone yell that a person was in the Tower with a rifle — so Huffman decided to drop to the ground and play dead. He says he was lying on the ground for close to an hour until someone ran out to help him to safety.