“My boyfriend Sid, who is now my husband of over 47 years, and I were students attending summer school that summer.
I was studying in my dorm room on the top floor of Blanton Dorm when I heard a noise that sounded like stacking cases of glass Coke bottles on top of each other. Very shortly after that a student ran through the hall shouting that someone was shooting people from the top of the Tower.
There were only four or five of us students there at that time so we gathered in the hallway wondering what really was going on. Finally, we decided to go the end room – we went into the room in a crouched position.
We each would quickly look out the window and, in fact, saw someone who was shot below us in the street and the ambulance as they tried to avoid being shot and getting the person who was shot.
We also occasionally saw someone shooting from the Tower. Finally, we were made to go back into the hall and were pretty scared. We stayed there until someone finally came up and told us it was over.
If I remember right, the dorm staff would not let us leave the dorm for quite some time. Somehow I met up with Sid and we walked around where people had been shot or shot at.
I still can visualize the blood on the south mall and the bullet holes in many of the store windows on the drag.
It all seemed surreal as I did not personally know anyone who had been shot or killed. The only time my Mom and step-Dad came to see me at UT was that evening, as I think it really shook them up.”