Editing Charles Whitman (section)

===High school===
[[File:Charles Whitman (ca 1955).jpg|160px|thumb|upright|Whitman around 1959 (age 18)]]
In September 1955, Whitman entered St. Ann's High School in [[West Palm Beach]], where he was regarded as a moderately popular student.<ref>
{{cite news|title=Whitman Always Quick On The Dare When In Florida High School|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=PPUjAAAAIBAJ&pg=3725,322205&/|newspaper=Ocala Star-Banner|date=August 3, 1966|page=2|access-date=2019-03-01|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160516171127/https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=PPUjAAAAIBAJ&sjid=YgUEAAAAIBAJ&pg=3725%2C322205&%2F|archive-date=2016-05-16|url-status=live}}</ref> By the next month, he had saved enough money from his newspaper route to purchase a [[Harley-Davidson]] motorcycle, which he used on his route.<ref name="Lester 2004 22">{{harv|Lester|2004|p=22}}</ref>

Without telling his father beforehand, Whitman enlisted in the [[United States Marine Corps]] one month after his June 1959 graduation from high school, where he had graduated seventh in a class of 72 students.<ref name="Mass Murderers' p. 40"/> Whitman told a family friend that the catalyst for his enlistment was an incident a month earlier, in which his father had beaten him and thrown him into the family swimming pool because Whitman had come home drunk.<ref name=trutv2 /> Whitman left home on July 6, having been assigned an eighteen-month tour of duty with the Marines at [[Guantánamo Bay]], Cuba. As Whitman traveled toward [[Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island|Parris Island]], his father, who still had not known of Whitman's enlistment,<ref name="Mass Murderers' p. 40"/> learned of his action and telephoned a branch of the federal government trying to have his son's enlistment canceled.<ref name="leduc"/>