Paschal High School class of '56

This page will provide links (below) to pictures from various activities over the years

Send me digital pics by email by clicking here Mail Photos to Webmaster and attaching digital photo

Here is a picture taken in Dallas at Mort's Mom's "Mother of the Year" award luncheon. This was one of the last pictures I (Bill Frost) have of Charlie Hillard before he was killed in the plane crash in Fl. The picture depicts Arthur Baird, Charlie Hillard, Morton Meyerson and Bill Frost

This picture was included in the Fort Worth Star Telegram during the Fort Worth City Football District - 1955 Season. Included in the picture are Ann Harbison, Bill Frost, Adrienne Hendrick and Morton Meyerson. Paschal won the district championship and the 1955 team had great support from the entire Paschal student body

Paschal '56 Chorus

Large photo to help ID people. Click to open

Alumni in the News

Golfing great calls El Paso home, earns PGA honor

Bill Knight
El Paso Times
Monday, October 24, 2005

The man, quite simply, owns the most precious of gifts. He carries it deep in his heart, way down there in his soul.

Bill Eschenbrenner journeys into each new day with a joy, a love ... with a deep passion for what he does.

"It's funny," he said. "I can't explain it. But it's something I've loved since I found my first club in the neighborhood back in Fort Worth. And there was never a doubt. I knew what I would do. And I still love it. Every day. It was like I was born to do it. I've never had a single day where I didn't want to go to work."

Bill Eschenbrenner is 67 years old now and still spends much of each day on his most beloved turf -- a golf course. Any golf course. He has long been a very visible face in the city, one of the faces of El Paso. And the passion on that face -- and within -- has never waned.

El Pasoan Kristi Albers, a 20-year veteran of the LPGA Tour, said, "Bill cares so much about people and he just cares so much about golf. He is really passionate about golf. I was injured and I told him I took three months off without hitting a ball. Bill couldn't believe it. I don't think he could take even a week away from the game."

Eschenbrenner, still professional emeritus at El Paso Country Club, recently received one of the nation's highest golf awards, being named National PGA Golf Professional of the Year. "It's the biggest honor I could ever receive in my career," he said quietly.

He grew up in Fort Worth, learning some of the more colorful intimacies of the game from some of the sport's more colorful characters. He was a 14-year-old caddie at Worth Hills Municipal Golf Course when he began learning to play. Soon, he was a high-school kid playing in the madcap midst of writer Dan Jenkins and his cronies at what they called "Goat Hills." Many of the stories ended up in the now defunct Fort Worth Press.

Laughing, Eschenbrenner said, "Those stories were hilarious and the sad thing is, they were all true."

They played everything for a buck or two or more and the games were hardly restricted to any stuffy structures. They chipped onto porches. They putted onto a crack in the sidewalk. They once played from the first tee to the 12th green and from the 13th tee to the 18th green at Goat Hills. And then they expanded.

Laughing at the recollection, Eschenbrenner said, "We once played from the first tee at Goat Hills to the first green at Colonial Country Club. We played through a parking lot at TCU, through a vacant lot, right through a barbed wire fence and right through the Colonial members onto the first green. There were about 10 of us."

Eschenbrenner is almost a permanent part of the landscape of this city through his love of golf. He became the assistant pro at El Paso Country Club in 1961. He served two years as head professional of a nine-hole course in Jal, N.M., from 1963 to 1964.

"That was like getting your PhD in golf; you learned every aspect of running a club," he said.

He then settled in as head professional at El Paso Country Club in 1965 -- and has been an integral part of that scene since.

Before all that, though, he was quite the talented young golfer. And he stepped alongside some of the game's legends back in Fort Worth.

"I won the Fort Worth Junior City Championship when I was 16," he said. "Ernie Vossler (PGA professional) got me a junior membership over at Colonial Country Club and I was able to meet all the members."

He won Colonial's club championship twice, when he was 17 and 18. He also won the Fort Worth Men's City Championship while still in high school.

"The final of that tournament was 36 holes, and Ben Hogan came out to watch me play nine holes," he said. "That was pretty awesome."

Eschenbrenner got a full scholarship to the University of North Texas, playing on one of the country's elite teams. They were second to the University of Houston by one shot at the NCAA Championships one of those years. He finished his degree at North Texas and followed Horatio Alger's age-old advice. He went west ... all the way to El Paso.

And he has been here ever since -- save that two-year sabbatical in Jal.

"Bill is such an excellent teacher," long-time professional Steve Haskins said. "One of the best in the country. He is the consummate golf professional and businessman. The number of people he has touched is amazing."

Eschenbrenner has worked with the great and the near-great, helping hone the game of many young golfers along his journey. But he has also been an influence on the city's golf in other ways. He helped get the UTEP golf team going by starting the program's fund-raising arm, The Century Club. He is also responsible for the idea of the city's best golf event, the Sun Bowl's Western Refining College All-America Golf Classic -- a tournament that has brought young collegians like Tiger Woods and Davis Love III and Payne Stewart and David Duval and John Daly and ... literally a Who's Who on today's PGA Tour, to El Paso Country Club.

"I was so proud to be the head pro at El Paso Country Club," he said. "The club was struggling a little when I first got here. Coronado Country Club had just been built, so the membership was split. And the course was not in real good shape. But the membership allowed me to do the things to make it the great course it is. Those were a lot of fun times."

For many years now, Eschenbrenner has extended his golf influence. He has leased the old Cielo Vista Golf Course from the city and turned it into a much nicer public course, with the new name of Lone Star Golf Course.

One long-time fixture at El Paso Country Club has been former UTEP basketball coach Don Haskins.

"I met Bill the first day he arrived here," Haskins said. "The thing I remember most was the course was in terrible shape, and within a couple of years Bill had that turned around. There were fairways with no grass; half a fairway. Now it is just luxurious. Bill is a great teacher and he is a perfectionist. He will be out there playing at Lone Star, riding in a cart and he will see a couple of weeds and he'll go right over and pull them up."

Eschenbrenner has also always found time to take care of his own game, his own passion. He shot a 62 in his youth. He also has nine holes in one. Nine.

"Those are always exciting," he said. "Every one is a special moment. My first one was very special. I was still in high school, and I was playing in an exhibition. There was Babe Zaharias, George Bayer and Ernie Vossler (all professional golf greats). Someone had dropped out and they put me in there, and I aced the 15th hole. That was pretty special."

But then again, every day is special when you have that gift.

It has been a long journey since that teenager in Fort Worth picked up a 5-iron and began swinging it all over the neighborhood.

"I don't know why. As I said earlier, it was like I was born to do it."

He was given that special gift. And it has been a joy forever. He has taken good care of it, shared it with others and nurtured it for a lifetime.

Bill Knight may be reached at bknight@elpasotimes.com; 546-6171.

ACLU lawyer finds success, respect - in Texas

By DAVID CASSTEVENS

STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER

David Broiles, a partner in the Fort Worth law firm of Kirkley, Berryman & Broiles, was given the Blackstone Award by the Tarrant County Bar Association last month.

STAR-TELEGRAM/JOYCE MARSHALL

David Broiles, a partner in the Fort Worth law firm of Kirkley, Berryman & Broiles, was given the Blackstone Award by the Tarrant County Bar Association last month.

A 1949 Texas statute made it unlawful to sell horse meat for human consumption.

It is not a crime, however, for a person to slaughter a horse and serve it free of charge at a picnic.

David Broiles, palms cupped like parentheses, lifted an imaginary burger to his lips and then hesitated, as if struck by a thought, his eyes darting right and left.

"Where's Old Paint?" he asked.

Rocking back in his office chair, Broiles burst into hearty laughter.

The 68-year-old partner in the Fort Worth law firm of Kirkley, Berryman & Broiles is something of a novelty in his conservative home state, a civil trial lawyer who wears tropical-print shirts and Bermuda shorts to work and whose wide-ranging client list includes war protesters at the president's ranch and two North Texas slaughter plants that process horse meat for foreign tables.

When the Tarrant County Bar Association honored Broiles last month for his long and distinguished career, the recipient of the Blackstone Award accepted the applause and extended a special greeting to those in the audience who had heard of, but perhaps never seen, a real live, card-carrying American Civil Liberties Union lawyer.

He proudly produced his membership card.

A lifelong Democrat, Broiles is a Lone Star Liberal -- capital L and proud of it.

He attends seminar cruises sponsored by The Nation, a weekly opinion magazine, the self-described flagship publication of the political left.

He is welcome at the Peace House in Crawford.

Among his treasured mementos is a small wooden bird that a Vietnam War draft resister, a former client, carved while in jail.

Broiles joined the ACLU in 1960. That was before he earned a master's degree in philosophy at Southern Methodist University and his doctorate in philosophy at Ohio State; before he burned a Confederate battle flag in his classroom at the University of Georgia; before he left that institution -- to the administration's relief -- and went to Yale Law School.

Broiles has been lawyering, trying cases before Republican judges, doing what he loves, for almost 40 years.

A grandfather, he and his wife, Patty, live with their two dogs in a stone home overlooking Lake Worth.

What draws him from his boathouse and keeps him young at heart is the joy of practicing law alongside his daughter, Karin Cagle. At this point in his career, Broiles picks and chooses his cases and immerses himself in the constitutional issues about which he feels most passionate. Broiles devotes much of his time to legal work for the ACLU of Texas.

"David Broiles emulates everything that is righteous about a true, honest, ethical civil rights lawyer," said Will Harrell, executive director of the ACLU of Texas. "He's so damn good. Some lawyers take civil rights cases, but they're interested in what's in it for them. With David, it's never about his ego or pocketbook. That's not even on the table."

Broiles has argued cases in traffic court and the U.S. Supreme Court.

He has represented Bell Helicopter and Fort Worth U.S. District Judge John McBryde, who faced sanctions for judicial misconduct.

"Everything David does is completely honest," McBryde said. "He's very aggressive, but one of his qualities is an ability to make his opponents think highly of him no matter how aggressive he becomes. That's very rare in a trial lawyer."

A federal judge ruled last year in favor of two of Broiles' clients.

The Texas law that prohibits slaughtering horses for human consumption was declared unconstitutional.

In April, after Daniel Ellsberg and 13 other peace activists succeeded in being arrested to test the legal validity of county ordinances prohibiting parking and camping near President Bush's ranch, the attorney helped bail them out of jail.

Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers to the news media during the Vietnam War, presented Broiles a signed copy of his memoirs, titled Secrets.

"Thank you for getting us out of jail so fast last night," the author wrote, "and for all you're doing to protect the Bill of Rights."

The Texas lawyer felt a sense of accomplishment, given his client's 35-year history as a war protester and political activist.

As Broiles said, with a note of admiration, "Ellsberg has been arrested 75 times."

A lasting impression

Rowland Broiles had a special treat for his young son.

One April day in 1949 they drove to old LaGrave Field, home of the Fort Worth Cats.

David Broiles, then 11, loved the minor league club managed by Bobby Bragan and faithfully followed its fortunes. That afternoon the Cats played an exhibition against their parent team, the Brooklyn Dodgers, whose second baseman was the celebrated Jackie Robinson, who broke baseball's color barrier.

Robinson endured taunts, insults, threats of boycotts and immense pressure to become one of the game's best all-around players.

The Dodgers won that game, and Robinson collected three hits and scored twice.

But it wasn't Robinson's performance that made a lasting impression on the child who sat with his father in choice seats behind home plate. What he remembers is those in the crowd, and to this day he can see them, all those black faces huddled along the outfield fence, eager to watch Robinson play. For the boy it was a moment of dawning.

"I realized that the only reason I got a seat behind home plate and they had to stand along the fence was because we were different colors," Broiles recalled. "I thought, 'Why me?' Here were these men and women who couldn't even get a seat. I became very race-conscious about the discriminatory practices here."

Seventeen years later, Broiles sat in the company of black friends and witnessed an event far more significant than a baseball game. The venue in that summer of 1966 was a courtroom in Athens, Ga. The federal government was trying two members of the Ku Klux Klan in a case related to the murder of a black man.

Two years earlier, a U.S. Army Reserve officer named Lemuel Penn was driving home to Washington, D.C., from summer active duty at Fort Benning, Ga., when a station wagon pulled alongside his car on a road outside Athens. Penn was killed, shot in the head. The driver later admitted his involvement and identified two Klansmen as the shooters, but an all-white jury found the defendants not guilty.

Determined that justice be served, federal prosecutors charged the men with civil rights violations.

Broiles was teaching philosophy and attending law school at the University of Georgia, and he witnessed the dramatic trial.

He watched intently as the prosecutor, a Georgia lawyer, covered his head with a hood, the symbol of terror in the South, and picked up a long-barreled pistol.

In his summation, Floyd Buford paced theatrically before the jury box.

"What do we think about people who put on hooooods and have little beady eyes?!"

Clack!

The pistol he clutched was bent, so the cylinder wouldn't close. When he waved the weapon, the cylinder made a cold metallic sound. An exclamation point.

He developed a cadence, a rhythm that to Broiles brought to mind the pulpit oratory of a fire-and-brimstone preacher.

"What kind of people go around scarin' other people?!" Clack!

"People who beat people up with bicycle chains?!" Clack!

At last the prosecutor snatched off the hood and slammed the weapon onto a desk. He wheeled toward the Klansmen and delivered his condemnation.

"I think they're cowards! Cowards!"

In the first conviction of its kind under the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the Klansmen were sentenced to 10 years.

"That was something I'd never seen before or seen since," Broiles recalled. "It inspired me. It had a big influence on my thinking I might want to practice law."

Broiles demonstrated his own flair for showmanship. While teaching an ethics class at the university in Athens he led a provocative discussion on Confederate Memorial Day about the reasons for fighting the Civil War. He challenged students, pressing them when some mentioned tariffs or states' rights.

"What should we think about people killing each other over slavery?" he asked finally.

In an answer to his own question Broiles took a cigarette lighter and lit a Confederate battle flag he had brought to class.

This was the mid-1960s. Students watched in disbelief as flames engulfed the banner and Broiles threw it out a window.

The university terminated Broiles' contract, ostensibly because he was attending law school at the same time he served on the faculty. To his surprise and amusement, the university awarded him a Sarah Moss Fellowship, which provides outstanding University of Georgia faculty "a broad outlook and acquaintance with conditions and standards in other parts of the world."

"I was told that meant outside the South," Broiles said. "I had never heard of the fellowship. I didn't even apply. Believe me, they wanted me to leave."

Before the Supreme Court

Broiles headed to Yale, where he earned his law degree. In his first jury trial, a protest demonstration case, the young lawyer launched into a 90-minute closing argument during which he asserted that picketing a residence was an act of expression protected under the First Amendment.

Finally, the judge interrupted.

"Mr. Broiles, could I see you for a second?"

The young lawyer dutifully approached the bench.

"Counselor," the judge confided, just above a whisper, "I've only got one kidney, and I'm about to explode. How much longer are you going to take?!"

Broiles lost -- the jury was out only eight minutes -- but the convictions were reversed on appeal.

In January 1973, he experienced the highlight of his career in an ACLU case. Fre le Poole Griffiths, a Dutch citizen and Yale Law School graduate, sought to practice law in Connecticut, but state law required her to be a U.S. citizen. Her application to the New Haven County Bar was rejected.

On appeal, the case went before the U.S. Supreme Court, where Broiles successfully argued that the citizenship requirement was unconstitutional.

He remembers preparing for the big day with the help of two ACLU lawyers. He remembers climbing the steps of that imposing marble edifice. Standing at last, alone, before the black-robed jurists. Broiles wore a tan polyester suit, the only suit he owned.

"I'd probably just come from police court in White Settlement," he recalled.

From the bench, Chief Justice Warren Burger leveled his gaze at the Texas attorney and posed the question Broiles had hoped for.

"What do you think is the highest position your client could have in the United States without being a citizen?"

"Yours," Broiles flatly replied. "You don't have to be a citizen or a lawyer to be chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States."

Burger's countenance turned as cold as the winter weather outside.

"I learned not to [anger] the chief justice if you want his vote," Broiles said.

The oral arguments over, his work done, Broiles found his mother, who had traveled from Fort Worth to the nation's capital to witness her son's performance. As they left the building, she turned to him.

"David, let me understand this," she said. "Are you saying that your client wants to be a lawyer, but she doesn't want to be an American citizen?"

"Yes, Mom," her attorney son replied. "That's the whole point."

"Well," Hazel Broiles replied. "I hope you lose."

David Casstevens, 817-390-7436 dcasstevens@star-telegram.com