When the tower stopped time

Sixty years ago, the summer calm of an ordinary morning at the University of Texas at Austin was shattered by the crack of gunfire from the clock tower, sending students and visitors scrambling for cover as one of the nation’s first modern mass shootings unfolded.

Among those caught in the chaos was 18-year-old Cheryl Botts Dickerson, a young woman from Rockdale.

She had no way of knowing that on an…