Charles Whitman, the sniper who picked off people from his vantage point in a tower on the campus of the University of Texas-Austin, came up in conversation today. The image of him on the cover of TIME magazine surfaced from that diary we call "memory." The cover story is available on the Web. It's written in an almost breezy fashion.
What a summer for news was 1966. In July Richard Speck murdered all those student nurses in Chicago. In August Whitman pushed Speck off the front pages, but since he was killed by police, there was no trial. Vietnam. Strikes. More here.
...his victims fell as they went about their various tasks and pleasures. By lingering perhaps a moment too long in a classroom or leaving a moment too soon for lunch, they had unwittingly placed themselves within Whitman's lethal reach. Before he was himself perforated by police bullets, Charles Whitman killed 13 people and wounded 31—a staggering total of 44 casualties.I don't know if that style of writing is still typical of TIME. I read it weekly back then but haven't paid any real attention to it in years. Occasionally a cover catches my eye but mostly TIME floats below my radar.
What a summer for news was 1966. In July Richard Speck murdered all those student nurses in Chicago. In August Whitman pushed Speck off the front pages, but since he was killed by police, there was no trial. Vietnam. Strikes. More here.