I saw the inset picture, taken through the rainspout. Hey! "MY" pecan tree is still there! The large one, straight down the middle at 20th and University, a block past the Memorial Fountain at.
From an old thread, here, wherein I posted:
"Yeah, Whitman had gone to the university student health center several times, complaining of headaches. Later discussions after the event led to specualtion of a tumor, mentioned in Kinky Friedman's "The Ballad of Charles Whitman".
His first shootings were to the south mall of the main building, with the M-1 Carbine. After people took cover, he shifted to the 6mm Rem.
He had bought a break-open single-shot 12 gauge from (IIRC) Sears a couple of days before the shooting. He borrowed a neighbor's hacksaw to make it into a pistol.
The night before the shooting he killed his wife with his hunting knife. The next morning, he went to his mother's and killed her with the knife.
He had a footlocker on a dolly, with all his gear. He was dressed in khakis, appearing to be a university workman. Elevator to the top, and into the access office. He used the shotgun pistol on the secretary there. A family of four came in as he was hiding the body behind a couch; he shot and killed two of them with the "pistol" and wounded one other.
It is surmised that the interruption delayed his schedule; that he had intended to begin shooting at the beginning of class-period change when the mall would be full. As it was, he had only about five minutes of "free time".
I don't remember a second pistol besides the .357, nor had I heard about the .35 Rem. No matter; not saying it ain't so...He did have five gallons of water plus suchlike as sardines, tuna fish, crackers and, disremember, some bread.
While a civilian employee of the University Co-Op bookstore, a WW II vet of city fighting in Europe was the "guide", it was two young Austin policemen who saw and killed Whitman. Revolver and shotgun.
At Rotary meeting the week after the shooting, Col. Homer Garrison, then head of Texas' Department of Public Safety, told my father that had it not been for civilian deer-rifle ground fire, Whitman could have been up there until his water gave out. The ground fire forced him away from control of the access door through which the police got onto the observation deck."