Ft. Worth Star-Telegram

Saturday, June 26, 2004

THE WILD BUNCH

40 years after 'near riot' pranks, class is in session again

By Paul Bourgeois Star-Telegram Staff Writer

FORT WORTH - Hide the women, the children and the livestock. The wildest class in the history of Paschal High School is coming home this weekend for a reunion. Most of the hooligans in the Class of 1964 are now around 58 years old and housebroken, but as class member Cliff Barnhart says, "You never know what will happen with this group."

Paschal's Class of '64 is largely responsible for one of the most infamous passages in Cowtown high school history. On Nov. 14, 1963, the rivalry between Paschal and Arlington Heights High turned not-so-friendly. Dozens of students were arrested in a days-long struggle that involved a large bonfire, flaming mattresses lashed to an old car, an airplane loaded with toilet-paper bombs, and alligators kidnapped from the Fort Worth Zoo and set loose at school. "High School Youths Clash in Near Riot," read the lead headline in the Star-Telegram the next day. The melee included an estimated 500 students, 40 lawmen and four firetrucks with water cannons. Police arrested 46 students and seized shotguns, knives, baseball bats, ax handles, clubs, chains fashioned into whips, and Molotov cocktails, according to news reports.

It made headlines across the country. The toilet paper bombing run, in particular, made an impression at the White House. Speaking in Fort Worth just hours before his assassination, President Kennedy was reported as having asked someone if they were from the "school with its own air force," said Molly Morgan Wolf, chairwoman of the reunion. Barnhart, now a psychiatrist, said the longtime rivalry between Paschal and Arlington Heights often turned weird as their homecoming football game neared, but in 1963, it got really wild. Some Paschal students kidnapped an alligator from the zoo and set it loose at Heights. The story goes that students at Heights responded by snatching another gator and setting it free in the atrium at Paschal.

The bonfire, however, was where everything broke loose. The students at Heights traditionally built a bonfire on the shores of Lake Benbrook as part of their homecoming celebration, and the students at Paschal traditionally tried to burn it down early. "We were always looking for new and novel ways to sneak over and burn down the bonfire," Barnhart said. Two Paschal students who had pilots' licenses buzzed the bonfire and bombed it with purple and white toilet paper. Some say the toilet paper was burning when it was dropped, although it failed to set anything on fire. Barnhart said that left destruction of the bonfire to a 350-pound student or former student who had a grand scheme to ram it with a car covered with flaming mattresses. Barnhart said the guy -- John Hall, location unknown -- bought an old clunker at a used-car lot on Jacksboro Highway with money donated by fellow students. Some put the car's sticker price at $35. To the front of the car, students lashed several old mattresses doused with gasoline and set ablaze. "John, all 350 pounds of him, was to leap out before crashing into the bonfire," Barnhart said.

Authorities, however, got wind of the plan and were out in force. A fire unit headed off the ramming attempt, and the car with flaming mattresses was sidetracked and got stuck in mud. Reports at the time said hordes of Paschal students on foot tried repeatedly to storm the bonfire. "They looked like the bunch of Indians you see coming over the hill in practically every Western movie," Tarrant County Fire Marshal Mason Lankford had said. The students were dispersed after about two hours, and Heights touched off the bonfire on schedule.

John Tucker said that even with reports of guns and other weapons, it was never as violent as the reports suggested. "It was just crazy, fun times," said Tucker, who was arrested but released without being charged. "It is a wonder that no one was hurt, but, boy, what a great time and story," Charles Davidson wrote on the Paschal reunion Web site. "It has to be one of the great folklores of Fort Worth."

Extra police were called in the next night for the big game at Farrington Field, but there was no hint of trouble in the crowd of 11,000-plus. Paschal stomped Heights, 20-0. Molly Morgan Wolf, the reunion chairwoman, said a tame gathering is expected this weekend. She said about 275 in the class of roughly 800 are coming from as far as New York and California.

The events began at noon Friday with tours of the Paschal campus, followed by an informal gathering Friday evening at the home of Betsy Brooks Griffith. The women are meeting for lunch today at Jons Grille on University Drive. The main event is tonight at Colonial Country Club. Pandora Webb Elder said they've had a reunion every 10 years. "I believe this will be the best one," Elder said. Paul Bourgeois, (817) 390-7796 bourgeois@star-telegram.com