Gary Lavergne | |
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Born | Gary Mitchell Lavergne October 28, 1955 Church Point, Louisiana, U.S. |
Occupation | Author |
Education | University of Louisiana at Lafayette (BA) McNeese State University |
Genre | Non-fiction |
Website | |
garylavergne |
Gary Mitchell Lavergne (born October 28, 1955) [1] is an American non-fiction author. Among his subjects are killers Charles J. Whitman and Kenneth Allen McDuff.
Lavergne was born in Church Point, Louisiana. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in social studies education and a master's in education at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. In 1988, he earned an education specialist degree in educational administration and supervision from McNeese State University. He was a social studies teacher, held administrative positions for both the SAT and the ACT college entrance exam companies, and in between jobs performed stand-up comedy. He worked for the College Board traveling to universities helping administrators understand the SAT. Lavergne retired as director of admissions research for the University of Texas in 2019. Among Lavergne's books is 1997's A Sniper in the Tower about the 1966 shooting rampage of Charles Whitman, [2] which according to a 2007 Associated Press article is "considered the definitive account of the massacre" [3] and to Frank Rich in a 1997 The New York Times piece is "the authoritative account of the Whitman case". [2]
Charles Joseph Whitman was an American mass murderer and Marine veteran who became known as the "Texas Tower Sniper". On August 1, 1966, Whitman used knives to kill his mother and his wife in their respective homes, then went to the University of Texas at Austin with multiple firearms and began indiscriminately shooting at people. He fatally shot three people inside UT Austin's Main Building, then accessed the 28th-floor observation deck on the building's clock tower. There, he fired at random people for 96 minutes, killing an additional eleven people and wounding 31 others before he was shot dead by Austin Texas law enforcement. Whitman killed a total of seventeen people; the 17th victim died 35 years later from injuries sustained in the attack.
The University of North Texas (UNT) is a public research university in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. UNT's main campus is in Denton, Texas, and it also has a satellite campus in Frisco, Texas. It offers 114 bachelor's, 97 master's, and 39 doctoral degree programs. UNT is the flagship member of the University of North Texas System, which includes additional universities in Dallas and Fort Worth. Established in 1890, UNT is one of the largest universities in the United States.
Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629 (1950), was a U.S. Supreme Court case that successfully challenged the "separate but equal" doctrine of racial segregation established by the 1896 case Plessy v. Ferguson. The case was influential in the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education four years later.
The Louisiana State Capitol is the seat of government for the U.S. state of Louisiana and is located in downtown Baton Rouge. The capitol houses the chambers for the Louisiana State Legislature, made up of the House of Representatives and the Senate, as well as the office of the Governor of Louisiana. At 450 feet (137 m) tall and with 34 stories, it is the tallest skyscraper in Baton Rouge, the seventh tallest building in Louisiana, and tallest capitol in the United States. It is located on a 27-acre (110,000 m2) tract, which includes the capitol gardens. The Louisiana State Capitol is often thought of as "Huey Long's monument" due to the influence of the former Governor and U.S. Senator in getting the capitol built. The building's construction was completed in 1931. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1982.
The University of Texas at Austin was originally conceived in 1827 under an article in the Constitución de Coahuila y Texas to open a public university in the state of Texas. The Constitution of 1876 also called for the creation of a "university of the first class." Thus, they created "The University of Texas." Since the school's opening in 1883, the University of Texas has expanded greatly with the Austin institution remaining the flagship university of the University of Texas System. By the late 1990s, the university had the largest enrollment in the country and contained many of the country's top programs in the areas of law, architecture, film, engineering, and business.
Heman Marion Sweatt was an African-American civil rights activist who confronted Jim Crow laws. He is best known for the Sweatt v. Painter lawsuit, which challenged the "separate but equal" doctrine and was one of the earliest of the events that led to the desegregation of American higher education.
Ramiro "Ray" Martinez is a former Austin Police Department officer whose actions contributed to the ending of the University of Texas tower shootings when he, two other officers and a deputized civilian reached and killed sniper Charles Whitman on August 1, 1966.
Kenneth Allen McDuff was an American serial killer from Texas. In 1966, McDuff and an accomplice kidnapped and murdered three teenagers who were visiting from California. He was given three death sentences for these crimes but avoided execution after the 1972 U.S. Supreme Court ruling Furman v. Georgia. He was resentenced to life and was paroled in 1989. Between October 1989 and March 1992, McDuff raped and killed at least six women, receiving another death sentence and was later executed in 1998.
Albert Huffstickler was an American poet. He was born in Texas and lived in Austin during his later years, contributing to the poetry scene there and further afield. Huffstickler published hundreds of poems in his lifetime in both chapbooks and academic and underground journals. A 1990 Sow's Ear Poetry Review article reporting on an interview by Felicia Mitchell described Huffstickler's natural poetic voice as "an attempt to meld the human voice with the poetic spirit to present a highly charged, story-filled verse."
The bibliography of the American Civil War comprises books that deal in large part with the American Civil War. There are over 60,000 books on the war, with more appearing each month. Authors James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier stated in 2012, "No event in American history has been so thoroughly studied, not merely by historians, but by tens of thousands of other Americans who have made the war their hobby. Perhaps a hundred thousand books have been published about the Civil War."
The New Jersey State Open Championship is the New Jersey state open golf tournament, open to both amateur and professional golfers. It is organized by the New Jersey State Golf Association. It has been played annually since 1921 at a variety of courses around the state. It was considered a PGA Tour event in the 1920s and 1930s.
The University of Texas Police at Houston is a full-service Police Department that serves the communities of the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) and the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. UT Police at Houston patrols the Texas Medical Center and has property in surrounding counties.
The consensus 1978 College Basketball All-American team, as determined by aggregating the results of four major All-American teams. To earn "consensus" status, a player must win honors from a majority of the following teams: the Associated Press, the USBWA, The United Press International and the National Association of Basketball Coaches.
Jacob Kuechler was a surveyor, conscientious objector during the American Civil War, and commissioner of the Texas General Land Office. Kuechler pioneered the science of dendrochronology to date natural events.
Merrill Leroy Ellis was an American composer, performer, and experimental music researcher. He is most known for his work with electronic (analog) and intermedia compositions, new compositional techniques, development of new instruments, and exploration of new notation techniques for scoring and performance.
The Deadly Tower is a 1975 American made-for-television action drama thriller film directed by Jerry Jameson. It stars Kurt Russell and Richard Yniguez and is based on the University of Texas tower shooting.
Robert Lee Heard was an American writer, journalist and reporter for the Associated Press, who covered politics, government and sports news in Texas for the wire service. Heard was shot and wounded by Charles Whitman on August 1, 1966, while covering Whitman's attack on the University of Texas at Austin for the Associated Press. Heard received widespread praise for his series of reports on the integration of the Texas Longhorns football team. He also authored several books, focusing on sports and politics.
Shobhana Chelliah is an Indian-American linguist who specializes in Sino-Tibetan languages. As of 2023, she is a professor of linguistics at Indiana University, Bloomington. Her research focuses on the documentation of the Tibeto-Burman languages of Northeast India.
The University of Texas tower shooting was an act of mass murder which occurred on August 1, 1966, at the University of Texas at Austin. The perpetrator, 25-year-old Marine veteran Charles Whitman, indiscriminately fired at members of the public both within the Main Building tower and from the tower's observation deck. He shot and killed 15 people, including an unborn child, and injured 31 others before he was killed by two Austin Police Department officers approximately 96 minutes after first opening fire from the observation deck.
Charles Whitman (1941–1966) was an American mass killer, referenced as the Texas Tower Sniper.