“Where were you in ’62?”

George Lucas, director, American Graffiti

We were at Paschal, of course, but it seems as if we -- this class of ’62, all of us tossed together by the accidents of war, fate, and geography -- were destined to be, as Jan Keen has proposed, a legendary class from the very start. Maybe she’s right. Think of it.

We were war babies, toddlers when World War II ended. Then, from first grade on, American history tumbled and bubbled and gave us and our families, in no particular order of magnitude (and this is only a partial list), the Red Scare, coonskin caps, Godzilla and Gunsmoke, the VW Beetle, two-tone shoes, McCarthyism, Your Hit Parade, Marilyn Monroe, the Cold War, Disneyland, Elvis, Sputnik, the Salk vaccine, girls’ skirts with poodles on them, the hula hoop, Marlon Brando, Huntley and Brinkley, phone booth stuffing, Barbie, 3-D movies, McDonald’s, Playboy, the Polaroid Land Camera . . . and a host of companies whose stocks our parents could buy, companies with unusual names like Xerox.

Then we came to Paschal. However, before we got there, hundreds of parents had already asked hundreds of little elementary and, later, junior high school kids, “Do you want to go to college?” We answered, “Sure,” and then our parents had said, “Then you’re going to Paschal.”And we did.

What a school. We learned that it was the university high school. White socks and Levi’s. Button-downs for the boys and dresses for the girls. We learned about the Honor System, the Two Percenters, and Stardust. Carlson’s and the Merry Go Round. Worth Hills golf course. We could work after school at Leonard’s or Monnig’s or Cox’s or Stripling’s or Meacham’s or The Fair. We had The POSSE and the Little Congress, the Vagabonds, and The Pantherette.

And the education! It was first-rate and college-quality in many cases. Can those who had them ever forget Elveta (Doc) Benson, Louise Bomar, Margaret Caskey, Bea Dunning, Gwendolyn Howell, Aubyn Kendall, Julia Lesser, Lois Ruth Mitchell, Edith Morgan, Anice Rhodes, Goldie Ripper, Miriam Todd, Josie Bell Vanderpool, N.J. Whitehurst, or Thelma Yost? And the coaches: Bill Allen, Charlie Turner, Bob Lee, Joe McHaney. They taught us the essentials -- from noun-verb agreement to contractual agreement, from baking pie to calculating pi. We could study Spanish, French, German, and Latin. We could take physics and higher-order math. We could tackle art and economics and homemaking. We could even study the Bible! We had an orchestra and a marching band, Future Nurses and Future Teachers. We had a French Club, a Library Club, and a Chess Club. We even had a Flying Club!

And we can’t forget the Fighting Panthers. Bill Allen’s football team went 12-1, with an offense that averaged nearly four touchdowns a game and a defense whose goal line was crossed only eight times in ten regular season games. Eleven Panthers were named to the all-district team and two -- today we know them as Dr. Phil Bechtel and Dr. Ronnie Cooper -- were named All-State. The basketball team wasn’t too shabby, either. Picked in the pre-season to finish third, they went 27-7.

Finally, there was O.D. Wyatt. The man who did a thousand good things we will never know about. Like lending one of his newly hired English teachers -- one who many of us had our junior and senior years -- a hundred dollars so she could move to Fort Worth and get herself situated. Like telling my locker mate Gene Long, after he had made -- and fired! -- a cannon that broke nearly every window in shop class, “Gene, don’t do that again.” Perhaps O.D., as we called him behind his back, was impressed that one of his teachers could even teach a young man how to make a cannon.

We were at Paschal, in ’62, preparing to be launched into life. We might really be a legendary class alone in terms of the history we’ve lived through: the Bay of Pigs, the Kennedy assassination, Vietnam, Women’s Lib, civil rights, Woodstock, Watergate, man on the moon, draft-card and flag burnings, Laugh-In, the birth control pill, the Beatles, AIDS, two wars in the Middle East, and at least that many stock market crashes. And the history continues: as of this writing, the 13^th U.S. president of our lifetimes will be either a black man or a septuagenarian former POW.

So, welcome everyone. Welcome to the newly designed website for Paschal High School’s Class of 1962. Many of us have known each other since the fall of 1950 – from ragdolls to brassieres, from flattops to basic training burrs. From popguns to M-16’s, from Studebakers to limousines, from Maypole dances at Alice Carlson to hip replacements at Harris Hospital. We’ve grown from little kids to grandparents, from social butterflies to Social Security.

Let’s share our heritage and our common bond, our loves and our “likes.” Let’s celebrate the sight of familiar faces and let’s take a moment to pause for those who have gone before us. Let’s use this wonderful website to keep in touch – I really want to know where Sherry Clark or Sammy Gummelt are showing their art. I really want to know who’s retired, who just got back from Paris (France or Texas), who’s returned from a mission trip to Africa or South America. I really want to know what we’re doing. I really want to see pictures of grandchildren and -- like Murlene Lofton and her husband standing on the Great Wall of China – I want to see photos of where you’ve been lately. This website, this marvelous place just for the Class of ’62, has already allowed me to renew a friendship and make a new one: I hadn’t seen Wayne Bigham since our Pantherette days and I had never met Charles Awalt. What fine men they have grown up to be! I am privileged to know them both.

So come on in. Don’t be shy. Bring a cup of coffee or a glass of wine. This is our place to reflect, to recall the music, to remember the good and the great times. This is a place where I can write, “Susan, I think of you often and I hope you’re well and happy” and that Susan from our class will know exactly which Susan she is.

If you’re reading this, life has kicked you in the rear and knocked you around a bit, but maybe it’s also given you children and health and good memories and people to love, and people who love you back. Maybe now we understand why our parents were so crazy all those years. Some of our friends didn’t get as far as we’ve gotten -- my buddies Steve Mehl and Jerry Langston come immediately to mind (see our Memoriam page) – but I can’t help but think that they would have enjoyed this site, too.

A list of “famous people” from Paschal could include Alan Bean, Ben Hogan, Dan Jenkins, Charles Tandy, or T Bone Burnett. We could add Richard Rainwater and Andy Sullivan and Sim Lake, and that would be enough, but that kind of list misses the mark.

What makes us exceptional -- “legendary,” as Jan suggests -- are the uncounted numbers of productive citizens the Class of ‘62 contributed to society – doctors and lawyers and teachers and preachers, soldiers and dentists and writers and nurses. People who quietly went about their work every day, whether it were baking bread or selling office supplies or designing buildings.

Our friendships have endured. A group meets for dinner once a month in Fort Worth (you’re invited to join: there’s an e-mail contact on this site). Others of us routinely socialize, shop, travel, or eat together. Nearly two dozen of us married each other. Several hundred of us want to renew old friendships badly enough that we make the effort to attend class reunions every decade or so.

A day before I wrote this piece, I received an e-mail from Wayne Bigham. He had just taken a fishing trip with “John Stuart, Ron Cooper, Ron's son-in-law, and Randy Crane.  Same old high school group.” On the way back, Wayne said, “I hit an 80-pound drive shaft that an 18-wheeler had lost, and totally screwed up my car.  Had it towed to Hillsboro and had Claxton Lovin come get me. Thanks for old Paschal friends!”

I was glad to see Wayne again and to meet Charles. I hope to meet more of you, and to see what you’re doing. Do that little bit of computer stuff you have to do and come enjoy our site.

And what makes a “legendary “class? Maybe the answers lie less in the famous people we could add to the list of Paschal greats – although we’re proud of them, too – and more in what we have accomplished in small, personal ways on some kind of less-grand scale, maybe acts known only to spouses or to children or to coworkers or to God. Maybe what makes a class legendary lies less in fame and fortune and more in what each member of our class has accomplished, by ourselves, in the doing of a thousand and one small, seemingly mundane, ordinary things.

Like being people who mow their grass, look after their aging parents, teach on Indian reservations, pay their taxes, and pick up their neighbor’s mail. Who babysit their grandchildren at a moment’s notice, who fund foundations that will look after the world long after we’re gone, and who can be counted on for a casserole at the church’s next covered dish supper. Who deliver Meals on Wheels, provide storefront legal services for the impoverished, spend weekends at Habitat for Humanity, take communion to nursing homes. Who vote, who create museums, who give of their time to doctor the homeless, who served their country in green or blue or white, who teach Sunday School and then sweep up and carry out the trash and lock the door behind them.

We grew up to become the kind of people our parents and O.D. Wyatt would be proud of.

The kind of people Charlie Turner would ask to sit next to him during a dodgeball game. The kind of people Miriam Todd blocking a scene or Margaret Caskey teaching a copy editor to count headlines or Julia Lesser writing out a trig equation or Gwendolyn Howell challenging our knowledge of the Louisiana Purchase knew we were capable of becoming.

They knew what we could do, and, by golly, they helped give us the confidence to do it. Maybe we are a legendary class, a whole bunch of decent people admired by those who know them for their intelligence and their integrity, for their dependability, and their good sense.

In the end, what could be better than to grow up to be the kind of person admired and respected by our parents, our spouses, our neighbors, and our friends?

In the end, what could be better than to grow up to be the kind of person admired and respected by O.D. Wyatt, and all of those teachers and coaches who devoted their lives to us?

Mr. Wyatt and the faculty would ask not to be thanked, saying that it wasn’t necessary, declaring that teaching us had been their privilege. But we are not the kind of people to let it go at that: let us say “thanks” for what we learned at Paschal with every act of mercy and kindness. Let us say “You really helped me, coach” with every act of consideration and love. Let us say “I think of you often, Mrs. Todd” with every act of compassion and caring.

Let us thank them every day, and let us continue to thank them for the rest of our lives, through every act of integrity and every kind gesture, with every good work, and with every decent thing we do because ours was the good fortune to be part of a special school in a special time and at a special place.

You were right, Jan. We did it, and we are still doing it. We are a legendary class.

Allen (Mike) McCorstin

June 2008