“I graduated from Austin High School in 1964. My younger brother was in the same class as Paul Bolton Sonntag and Claudia Rutt, who were killed by the sniper.
In August of 1966 I was taking a Spanish literature class that met in Batts Hall in the mornings, just south of the Tower and well within range of the sniper.
I’d left campus shortly before the shooting started. My father had gone to the barbershop on the drag that morning. Thankfully, he had also left before the shooting started.
The campus was closed on Tuesday, and UT workers cleaned up the blood with wire brushes.
At midnight Tuesday, it began to rain. Between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. Wednesday morning, the skies opened and it began to rain torrentially. Almost an inch of rain fell in that hour, just before the campus came to life as usual.
Then the rain tapered off and finally ended at noon, twelve hours after it had begun. It rained a total of 2.43 inches between midnight and noon.
The first thing my Spanish professor said in class that morning was, “Los dioses han lavado la sangre” — “the gods have washed away the blood.”
It was as though the gods, too, were washing the campus clean.”