This hero business does not come naturally to them, because Houston McCoy and Ramiro Martinez know one thing often left out of heroic tales: They were scared. He is a bit irked by foreigners moving in-too many Yankees, he argues, “calling the last meal of the day ‘dinner.’ Now, that guy who made the painting sure as hell didn’t call it The Last Dinner.”īoth men have their children raised, and both revisit that day in 1966 as if it were a box they open when requested and then peer into. He hasn’t had it quite as good, and the bottle has taught him several of life’s mean lessons, but he’s not bitter. ![]() A hundred and fifty miles north, McCoy sits in a chair in a rural house where the forests of east Texas begin to give way to the grasslands. He spent a couple of years on a state narcotics force and did a stretch with the legendary Texas Rangers, and now he is retiring from the bench. His suit jacket on the coatrack has a Lions Club pin on the lapel. He’s about sixty, balding, wearing a white shirt and a tie. Thirty-two years later, Martinez sits behind his desk at his justice-of-the-peace office in New Braunfels, Texas. Both would be awarded the Medal of Valor by the city of Austin.Ī view of the tower where Charles Whitman carried out his sniper spree through a bullet hole in glass. When it was over, two men-Houston McCoy and Ramiro Martinez, both of west Texas, guys in their twenties-would be official heroes. that afternoon, and we would start lurching as a people toward gated communities, car alarms, private security forces, and fear. The Austin cops had little or no communication once they left their cars (the department had about twelve walkie-talkies with limited range) and, like the rest of the country, had no notion of the nature or function of SWAT teams. During those ninety-six minutes, no one knew who or how many were shooting from the tower. That was the beginning of a barrage that would leave fourteen dead around the tower, thirty-one wounded. Thomas Eckman, also eighteen and the father of her child, knelt over her, wondering what was wrong, when another round killed him. It was 11:48 A.M., August 1, 1966, as the crosshairs of a 4-power scope caressed her form, the finger pulled the trigger, and a bullet from the 6mm Remington streamed down from the top of the tower 231 feet above, tore through her hip, stomach, colon, uterus, and then fractured the skull of the boy she carried in her belly. ![]() Claire Wilson was eighteen years old and eight months pregnant as she walked across the South Mall at the base of the tower at the University of Texas in Austin. You can find every Esquire story ever published at Esquire Classic. This article originally appeared in the February 1999 issue of Esquire.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |