Margaret Farrell - 1962

A ’64 Highlander sent in several terrific pieces which will be incorporated in this blog over the next few entries.  This one about Margaret Ferrell, a ’62 Highlander, is the first of them, mostly because I also knew Margaret and always thought very highly of her. 

Margaret was a strikingly beautiful girl with luxuriant black hair that really rivaled that of TV’s early Mouseketeer heart throb, Annette Funicello.  Margaret’s desk was next to mine in a 1960-61 class where we became class friends and I got to know well her kind heart and gentle nature.  But alas, I was just a lad of 15 and Margaret was an older woman of 16, so I never held out any hope of dating her.  I had forgotten that she was a Meadowbrook cheerleader until the following reminisces were sent in by a 1964 Highlander…..At EHHS, Margaret was a member of NHS and achieved the Leonard's Star Award all 3-years....

CJ64--In the fall of 1958 Meadowbrook Junior High was no more than 4 years old.  Until its completion, the Meadowbrook Elementary building housed grades 1 through 8 or 9 (I’ve forgotten which).  The junior high building was located across Meadowbrook Drive from the elementary and was typical 1950s architecture, long and flat and rectangular, with nondescript pink-orange brick.  It looked nothing like the classic architecture of the elementary, which is a beautiful building to this day.

The junior high housed grades 7, 8, and 9.  Grades 7 and 8 were taught the end courses of the traditional grammar school, while the 9^th grade received the high school curriculum (hence “junior” high).

My first memory of my first day as a 7^th grader was our pep rally in the auditorium.  We walked into the auditorium with the band blaring “The National Emblem March”.  (Seems like every pep rally from then on through high school featured this march at entry).  Like all good marches this one boasted several memorable melodies.  The second melody was the one where we all used to sing “Oh, the monkey wrapped his tail around the flag pole, round the flag pole, round and round…).  We were all handed a mimeographed sheet with the school fight song and alma mater on it.  Once seated, the band played our alma mater, to the tune (and many of the words) of the Ohio State alma mater:

Oh, come let’s sing to Meadowbrook’s praise,

And songs to alma mater raise.

While our hearts rebounding thrill,

With joy which death alone can still.

Summer’s heat or winter’s cold,

The seasons pass, the years will roll.

Time and change will surely show,

How firm thy friendship,

Buffaloes!

Next came the fight song, to the very familiar tune from Sousa’s “Field Artillery March”:

Through the rain, through the hail,

We will hit the beaten trail

As those buffaloes go galloping along.

Watch us march, to the top,

We will never, never stop

As those buffaloes go galloping along.

For it’s one, two, three

We’ve won the victory!

Buffaloes are always, always strong!

And where’er we go, you will always know

That those buffaloes are leading the throng,

Keep ‘em leading!

That those buffaloes are leading the throng!

Anyway, maybe they were corny, but like most kids, most of us thought they were very stirring.

Next came the first cheer, and my introduction to Margaret Ferrell.  Margaret was the first cheerleader on the left as you faced the stage.  She wore a white sweater with a green megaphone superimposed with a gold M, a knee-length white pleated skirt, bobby sox, and black suede loafers.  She had dark, short curly hair combed into a ducktail, large dark eyes, a turned up Irish nose, curvy lips, and a cute figure.  She was gorgeous, and I was hopelessly in love for the first time in my life.  I have no memory at all of any of the other cheerleaders.

  The first cheer (always the first cheer, as we later found out), was Twirl My Turban:

Well, twirl my turban, man alive!

Here comes Meadowbrook’s super tribe!

Do we love ‘em, well I guess,

Meadowbrook, Meadowbrook, yes, yes, yes!

Hey, Hadden, Hadden, he’s our man,

If he can’t do it,

Reynolds can!  Reynolds, Reynolds, he’s our man,

If he can’t do it,

Brown can!

(and so forth, through each cheerleader).  The names above referred to the football stars, of course – Dave Hadden (halfback), Don Reynolds (quarterback), and Doug Brown (end).  After the “yes, yes, yes!” Margaret turned sideways to her left, raised her right arm straight up, yanked it down to form a right angle, and yelled “Hadden, Hadden” at the bottom of the yank while turning back to face the audience, then turned it over to the next cheerleader to pay our respects to Mr. Reynolds, and on down the line.  Margaret was always first and always started off with Hadden.  I don’t know why or how she chose Hadden, as they were never a couple, but she always did.

I worshiped Margaret Ferrell throughout the entire 7^th grade.  She graduated and moved on to Eastern Hills High and was there as a senior when I was a sophomore, but the crush did not survive the transition.  That was mainly Suzanne Hoffman’s doing, who was a junior cheerleader in high school when I first met her.  She walked right up to me on the first day of high school and pinned one of those spirit ribbons on me (Beat Haltom!), and flirted with me, a mere sophomore, and I was hooked again.  Suzanne was tall, dark, and gorgeous with long pretty legs and an effervescent personality who I later got to know better when we both worked at Six Flags Over Texas (I was still hooked).

Anyway, I’ve always wondered what happened to the lovely Margaret Ferrell.  I hope wherever they both are that they have led very happy lives.

The EHHS Social Order – 9.3 – Cliques.1

Part 2 of 4

Since its inception, figuring out how our cliques came together and what bound them so tightly for so long has been one of the objectives of this blog.  Over the years, a number of films on the topic suggest that the juvenile clique phenomena isn’t an isolated occurrence.  I observed it in action once again as my own offspring went through the pubescent school gauntlet of grades 7-12. 

Approaching this topic in a reasonable manner has been a challenge since it involves a number of my old friends from those long-ago days.  They were good kids, some of them could be occasional twits, and for the most part they did well in their post EH lives.  Nevertheless, as a group, there was something about them that had long puzzled me….and, apparently my thoughts were shared by others.  Several current day fellow travelers recounted their own recollections of them and as usual, differing points of view yielded different perceptions.

Interestingly, in digging a little deeper into the psychology of teen-age cliques, I found a wealth of information suggesting that what we experienced is very common.  That makes things easier because as former Texas Governor Ann liked to say, "we couldn’t 'hep' it". 

By the time we understood whether we were a MJH in-crowder or not, it was already a fait accompli and one, that to my knowledge, changed very little throughout our trek toward EH graduation.   Dr. Marie Hartwell-Walker, wrote a scholarly piece on the “Click or Clique” phenomena that has made considering this topic much easier.  She provides reasonable cover for me to thump some of my old friends for their adolescent behavior while acknowledging that mostly everyone outgrew it...but, not without some scars.

Still, when I’ve brought the topic up with a selected few former classmates over the past several years (nearly 50-years on), none of them were without comment.  Well, none except most of the former teen clique perps, who have almost universally eschewed sharing their own comments on the subject.  H-m-m.

Broaching the topic has been a delicate matter even at this late date.  However, to their credit, those who have shared some of their recollections with me have done so with adult moderation and have made good use of the language to clearly convey their thoughts so, I’m more at ease dealing with the topic now.

O.K., at MJH, our future EH Class of 1963 lead clique were the cheerleaders, Gay Burton, Celia Beall, and Julie Hudson.  Closely affiliated with those three were Kay Humphrey, Carole Stallcup, Carolyn Marcotte, Candy Woodward, Sharon Ballem, and maybe a couple others.  To a newly arriving 13-year old boy entering the MJH school already hooked on the notion of having a cheerleader girlfriend sometime down the line, our MJH girls were real goddesses in flowing flannel dresses and flying pom-poms.  Any of the 3 of them would do, since they were all attractive, smart, and full of it.  But Julie was too short for my tall frame; Celia too quiet and a little too well, awesome; so, that left Gay who was neither too quiet nor too short, although pretty awesome in her own right.  Unfortunately, Gay seemed seriously in "like" with that skinny little kid, Roby Morris for reasons I couldn’t understand at that tender age; or, it seemed that Steve Means was always nearby.  Well, ….another unrequited love, and so it goes and so it went.

Audacious lad that I was, it never occurred to me that I might not be in the right “league” for any of those gals.  That’s probably because of my parents’ constant encouragement to aim high and providing wise advice such as, “everyone else puts their pants on one leg at a time, too,” whatever that meant.  At age 13 I had never found anything too challenging to give up on without having a go at it, or her.  By the way, at that young age, you can put your pants on both legs at once, but it can’t be done on every try….

Anyway, as one of my confidants described her, Gay was the “Queen Bee” of that lead clique and she was clearly the livewire of the gang.  There was a second clique that was somewhat more subdued but, no less attractive.  However, they lacked two things Gay’s group had; one, none were cheerleaders and two, they were very, very quiet so, it was difficult for them to gain and hold the attention of very shallow, mostly unfocused 13-14 year old boys…and, that was name of the game at that point in time. 

The second clique seemed to be mostly the girls shown in the 1959 picture below from the Stars Over Meadowbrook show that year.  They were Carol Eldridge, Vicki Held, Jane Welborn, Gail DeVore, Paula Acuff, Judy Hill, and Harriet Hamilton.  More on them in the next installment.

...next, some "clicks"

Handley Junior High - Cheerleaders 1959-61

 

A Facebook friend loaned me her copy of a 1960 Handley JH yearbook a few weeks ago.  It has provided some additional insight into our Handley classmates' schooling before joining our Meadowbrook contingent at EHHS.

    

Three of these girls, Suzanne Hoffman, Dianah Barton, and Brenda Haire, went on to become EHHS varsity cheerleaders during our years there, 1960-63.  I knew all these girls at EH but didn't know that Cheryl Spain, Peggy Anthony, Sherri Rogers, and Sharon Parks had led cheers at Handley.

Like so many of us learned at EH, the larger high school student population provided more competition for about the same number of recognition opportunities.  So, having been a Junior High star wasn't always a guarantee of continued success at EH.  And each class at EH had only 2 spots available for the girls in that class to lead cheers. 

So, when Suzanne and Dianah won the Sophomore spots at EH, we may not have fully appreciated just how special they were...they had some tough competition.

The boys are Charlie Rigby and Danny Tekstar, both from Meadowbrook JH, neither of whom had ever before been a cheerleader.  All 4 of these youngsters went on to be our Class of 1963 varsity cheerleaders during our Junior and Senior years.  Personality-wise, I recall Charlie and Suzanne as being vivacious extroverts, while Dianah and Danny were more reserved.

And next year, 1960-61,

Adios

Highlandettes

1959-60 Highlandettes (first squad)

The Highlandettes were the school's pep club supporting the sports teams, most notably the football team.  They were a fine addition to the on field and grandstand cheering sections.  When the Highlandettes and the band took the field, I don't think there was another school in Ft. Worth that could match them for color and spirit.(62)

1960-61 Highlandettes

1961-62 Highlandettes 
 

1962-63 Highlandettes

 1963-64 Highlandettes

 1964-65 Highlandettes

Adios

1959 - 1962 School Spirit Football Ribbons

1959 - Meadowbrook JH

These ribbons were sold for maybe a dime during the week before a football game and kids wore them pinned to their shirts and sweaters each day.  Then, next week, another ribbon.  Most were thrown out probably...except these.  They got stuck in a scrapbook !  Year and final score are typed at the top of each one.

1960 - EHHS

 1961 - EHHS

1962 - EHHS
( First EHHS Ft. Worth District 4A-5 Championship Season )

Adios

The Pep Rally

In 1962 Band Director, Ronnie Martin, arranged to have a recording made of a selection of musical arrangements played by the EHHS band. As a part of this project, on October 26, 1962, a recording of that week's Pep Rally was made also. The game that week was against the Carter Riverside Eagles, which fell to the mighty Highlanders, 8-0....surprised the heck out of a lot of us since we weren't supposed to win that one.  However, it gave us the notion that we really might be able to compete in the 4A-5 Ft. Worth city district.

Carter was the game Roby Morris uncorked his 94-yard punt that set a Texas high school record that probably lasts to this day.  I think for a few decades it tied the SWC college record.  It was a hell of a punt that flew about 40 or so yards in the air, then hit the hard, hard ground on its nose and took off like a shot, rolling end over end the rest of the way.  The poor soul who chased it all that way and kept it from going into the end zone is the author of these words and he was exhausted after that play.

A 33-1/3 rpm record of the musical numbers and the pep rally was sold to the students. Recordings on this page were taken from one of those records, now nearly 50-years old. It's a little jumpy, but if you were there, you will likely recall some of this. If not, know this was typical of each week's pep rally...there was a lot of cheering and spirit in support of the Highlander football team that year. 

Voices heard on the recording are Head Coach George Mitcham, Principal Roy Johnson, teacher Bill Polson, team captain Sam Scott, cheerleaders Charlie ("Hit it") Rigby and others.

Note 1:  Originals a little jumpy...but then again, many of us are a little jumpy now, too.

Note 2:  Friday.  Host player may be a 2-step process, depending on how your computer is set up.  The final window is the player and it is loading slowly at this time, so be patient.  If you are impatient, yet want to hear some of these cuts, go to the Pep Rally first.  It contains much of the music as well as the cheers and speeches.  It's a kick, if you're patient.  

The Bands of Eastern Hills High School, Fort Worth, Texas,

Conducted by Ronald E Martin

1.         Pep Rally recorded October 26, 1962. George Mitcham, Roy Johnson, Sam Scott, Bill Polson

2.         Highlander

3.         Highlander Blues- Larry Harrison, Warren Koch, George Garcia, Paul Tate

4.         Bill Bailey

5.         Fight Song –Loch Lomond – Fight Yell

6.         Alma Mater

7.         Beguine Festival - I Love You for Sentimental Reasons, I’ll Remember April

8.         Trumpet Boogie – trumpet section

9.         Overture to“Gypsy” – stage band

10.       Lowlander - Paul Tate, Glen Lacy, Mike Talmage, Vicki Reas

11.       Memories of You

12.       Copley Square- Vicki Reas, Warren Koch

Original recording by Century Custom Recording Studio,

John Stewart, Fort Worth, Texas

EHHS Cheerleaders

Speaking as a former lad with good recall of what it was like to come of age and start noticing girls, I can report that cheerleaders caught my attention first. You couldn’t miss them, of course…what with those swinging pony tails, bright colored skirts, and familiar cheerleader arm moves. Since raising my own cheerleader prospects, I had the opportunity to observe that a cheerleading gene must reside in most young girls…they start practicing the moves sometime about 5th or 6th grade...all through the house, In the garage, the yard, out shopping, in and out of restaurants, just about anywhere and everywhere.

Almost from the first day in 7th grade, the pep rallies started and continued unabated every fall until we graduated. For each successful cheerleader there must have been several dozen others that would have loved to have the spot. Since our cheerleaders were so visible and generally cute, an ambitious lad would normally focus his attention on one or more of them. Dating them was possible in Junior Hi, but without a car, what was there to do?

Our Meadowbrook cheerleaders, Gay Burton, Celia Beall, and Julie Hudson gave way to Handley's Dianah Barton & Suzanne Hoffman during our Sophomore year who held onto the spots all through EHHS while we were there. Unfortunately for those of us unattached lads, both Dianah and Suzanne were locked up with steady boyfriends all through high school so, we never got a chance to date them. What a shame.

I didn't mention the guys because I was always focused on the girls. If a boy had some athletic ability or even some pretense, he played the sports. We didn't see boy cheerleaders in Jr. Hi., so their addition at EHHS was actually viewed as a negative...they took the spots we could have used for more girls, and thus a better show at the pep rallies. Back then, cheerleading wasn't as athletic, nor as dangerous as it has become with the addition of gymnastics to the mix.

Our boy cheerleaders (Charlie Rigby, Danny Tekstar, Felton Havins, Ward Ruscoe, David Thurman, and George Branum) were generally personable and energetic, yet not among our top scholars. However, they surely had something on the ball, since they must have been the first among us to learn something about the girls, we in the stands had mostly not learned. First, 110-lbs of dead weight is heavy, no matter how attractive its packaging; and second, I don't think there was a lad in the stands or on the field who wouldn't have liked to give that chair lift deal a try.

  1963-1964 Highlander Cheerleaders  

 1964-1965 Highlander Cheerleaders  

1959-1960 Highlander Cheerleaders (EHHS' first squad)

 1960-1961 Highlander Cheerleaders (EHHS' second squad)

 1957-1958 Poly Parrot Cheerleaders (One of the last 2 squads before EHHS opened)

(Ed. note:  Before EHHS opened fall 1959, the large majority of Meadowbrook Junior High graduates went on to Poly High School.  For the first few years that EH was open, there was a strong influence in its halls from both Poly and Handley High Schools.  These influences were mostly due to familial ties through older siblings and parents, who themselves were Poly graduates.  A number of the original teaching staff had transferred to EH from both Poly and Handley...Coaches Mitcham and Graves were both Poly grads and were football stars there in the late 1940s.  Principal Roy C. Johnson had also been a Poly coach and Meadowbrook's Principal Charles M. Berry had been both a Poly teacher and coach in the mid-1930s)


I crack myself up....

Gay Burton – Julie Hudson – Celia Beall

 As for when a lad starts noticing girls, I can only speak for myself and to this day I can look back at an old class picture and pick out the girl that I liked each year…all the way back to the 1st grade! In the 6th grade it was Kay, then Donna in the 7th, but in the 8th and 9th it was Gay, Julie, and Celia, our Meadowbrook Buffalo cheerleaders. Good golly, they were cute and effervescent in those gold skirts and green blouses. For 2-years they held the attention of the entire school as they led cheers from the stage and on the sidelines.

Boys always believed that a pretty girl had an older boyfriend as well as a long line of others standing ready. Whether that was true or not wasn't clear until you saw her walking in the hallways with a smug looking boy. Not until you got a little older...and bolder, did it occur to you to ask her if she was really pleased with her beau or not.  At the very least you got a conversation going and maybe even planted a seed in that lovely, yet fickle little mind.

When yearbooks came out I always sought to get the school’s cheerleaders and selected others to sign mine. Meadowbrook issued no yearbook so, I got Gay, Julie, and Celia to sign my little 9th grade directory; they presented me with “Love ya” twice and “Sincerely” once along with a pretty standard sentiment that stars wrote for their fans.

Actually, all three of them were solid friends and school mates of the most charming sort. Gay was always upbeat with a ready wit; Julie was the little effervescent one with a great contagious smile; and Celia was thoughtful and reserved. They were smart—all of them members of NHS and I was fortunate to have counted them among my friends.

When we went to EHHS in 1960, Dianah Barton and Suzanne Hoffman, both from Handley, were our sophomore cheerleaders and kept those spots all the way through high school doing a great job. I forget whether the class voted for the cheerleaders or they were chosen some other way. If it was a vote, I would wonder how the smaller Handley contingent could have overwhelmed the larger group from Meadowbrook. Be that as it may, over 50-years ago we saw the last of Gay, Julie, and Celia leading cheers for us. Too bad...they were good.

A couple of years before they became Meadowbrook Buffalo stars, Gay and Celia were 6th grade students in Mr. Blackstone's class. Julie was in Mrs. Few's class then, but absent the day the class picture was taken. Do you wonder how I know that?

The Cheers -

Added August 2013.

As an 8th grade transfer to Meadowbrook I brought a one year Junior High experience at Richland Jr. Hi. with me.  Richland was about twice the size of Meadowbrook so, I had spent much of that year bewildered as the 2 classes my elementary school contributed to the mix were joined by about 9 or 10 other elementary school classes from elsewhere.

For whatever reasons, the Richland cheerleaders, all of them older 8th & 9th grade women, caught my attention.  Of course, they caught the attention of every other lad in the school, too.  A 7th grade kid is mostly 12-years old all year long, which means that if a girl, she was probably firmly in the transition to becoming a young woman; however, if a boy....well, not quite !  I think a girl's 6th grade was similar to a boy's 7th grade, since girls tend to lead boys through that period (yes) by about 18-months.

About the only way I could think of to get a little closer to them was to ask them sign my yearbook.  Already a fairly accomplished autograph collector with signatures of Ty Cobb and Mickey Mantle in the book, I had them all sign on the same page...which became my "pretty girl" page in that 1958 yearbook.

At Meadowbrook the next fall, I already knew that finding a way to be noticed by one or more of the cheerleaders was very likely a way to speed the transition into the new school population.  So, before Gay, Julie, and Celia there were these lovely gals showing the way....

   

 Go Buffs