This page was last updated on: October 27, 2013
50 years ago...
1963 Paschal-Heights game involved toilet paper from airplane, two alligators, a flaming car, and the arrest of 46 students. It made national news and President Kennedy commented on the Paschal Air Force hours before he was assassinated. (excerpted from Star-Telegram story by Paul Bourgeois)
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."

Cliff 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

All in good fun...

Q: Do you know what the average Heights senior got on their SAT test?
A: Drool.

The toothbrush was invented by a Heights grad... It's true!
Anyone else would have called it a teethbrush.

Q: How many Heights freshmen does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None, it's a sophomore course

Q: How many Heights students does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: One, but he gets AP credit.

Q: How do you get a Heights grad off your front porch?
A: Pay him for the pizza.

Q: What did the Heights grad say to the Paschal grad?
A: "Welcome to McDonald's. May I take your order please?"