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The bell tower on top of the building

• Is filled inside with signatures of students who would sneak up there (or sweet talk the custodian) via the stairs on the 4th floor to place their names and class year among the decades of other signatures
• Used to be lit at night.  It also had a blue/gold light that was lit to signify a win after the football games
• The dome had a weather vane topped by a panther (Fort Worth is “The Panther City”…but Paschal’s mascot is a panther, of course!) for many years before it disappeared in the 60’s.  There was no weather vane for several decades.
• The dome was restored to its original copper and a new Yellow Jacket-topped weather vane was installed several years ago – a project sponsored by the Alumni Association
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• Originally extended to about where the west lanes of the current freeway lie
• Land was used to expand I-30 – twice

Pranks related to football rivalries with Paschal

• The most infamous:  the 1963 bonfire at Benbrook Dam for the Homecoming Game with Paschal.  According to one report:  “A group of rowdy seniors from Paschal, members of the Paschal POSSE and also a frat-like group called Barons, made elaborate plans to ignite this bonfire and disrupt the Heights festivities.  A botched attempt was made to set an old junker car on fires and drive it down a slope into the wood that was being prepared for the bonfire.  A rather large Paschalite was driving and managed to roll his corpulent body out of the vehicle before it burst into flames.  Another Paschal student was flying overhead in a small private plane while a passenger was tossing rolls of toilet paper out the window.  Police and Fire departments responded and all hell broke loose.  It was big news locally and even made the morning news on the Today Show.  That same morning a very angry Mr. Berry, the Paschal principal, chewed the Paschal student body out at a special assembly.  The game went on as planned, but I seem to remember that Homecoming events were cancelled.  Paschal won the game and the championship that year.”
• Paschal painting the dome purple
• AHHS supporters kidnapping “Rascal” the papier mache panther and painting him with yellow stripes
• AHHS students taking a balloon launcher and an ice chest full of water balloons full of blue and gold paint and launching them at the big white wall on the front of PHS
• The infamous yell:  “POOOOOR PAAAASCAL”
• Being called “tea sips” and the chant “Heights Bites, Hills Kills!”
• The ex-county commissioner’s son who drove the bulldozer through the AHHS fieldhouse
• Driving down a row of Paschal students’ cars with a can of blue paint in one hand and gold in the other

 
Pep rallies

• At the outdoor amphitheater to the west of the building (torn down to make room for the west parking lot)
• Men and women cheerleaders
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Western Hills High School is opened…on the Heights campus

• When Western Hills was supposed to first open its doors, construction on their building was behind schedule.  Hills students had to attend classes in temporary trailer-type classrooms set up on the Heights campus.
• Hills classes had a separate intercom system and the two student bodies were scheduled different times to have lunch in the cafeteria and use athletic facilities
• Only the seniors who lived within the Hills attendance boundary were given a choice of which school to attend.

Parking lot

• In the 80’s, after an article in Texas Monthly which mentioned AHHS as being one of the wealthiest public schools in the state and included pictures of the parking lot and all the new cars, it became a hotbed for thieves.  They had to hire full time parking lot security to protect the expensive cars.

Landmarks lost and lamented:

• The amphitheater where the west parking lot now sits
• The gazebo (aka the Smoke Shack) on the south edge of campus on the middle field
• “The wall,” torn down for the construction of the 1980 addition
• Ornamental globes on top of the facades of the auditorium and gymnasium