“Let’s go Wildcats!”
Wait, which wildcats?
Lakewood residents may assume we’re talking about Woodrow Wilson High School Wildcats. But our neighbors to the north in Lake Highlands also cheer on the wildcats — Lake Highlands High School Wildcats.
How can two high schools within 8 miles of each other have the same mascot?
Being a “wildcat” in high school is not unusual. Out of over 20,000 U.S. high schools, Sports Illustrated reported that 743 have the mascot, and Central Texas radio station KOXE FM named “wildcats” the fifth most popular mascot in Texas high school football teams in 2019. (Eagles took the No. 1 spot.)
It’s not clear why Woodrow Wilson High School picked its mascot upon opening in 1928. One possible reason is that the school’s namesake, former U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, played baseball on a team called the “Fighting Wildcats,” according to the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum’s website.
The mascot could have been chosen for the alliteration it creates — Woodrow Wilson Wildcats. WWHS alumnus Stephen Cargile also points out that “wildcat” has a double meaning — an animal but also an oil or gas well drilled outside of an established oil field. After all, high-ranking officials from Magnolia Petroleum Company, which eventually became part of Mobil Oil Company, lived on Swiss Avenue.
As a 4-year-old, LHHS alumnus Keith Whitmire was the Woodrow Wilson Wildcat mascot and donned a spotted cat costume. Photo courtesy of Whitmire.
What is clear is that the school’s mascot has always been the wildcats. Two alumnae, Jennifer Wheeler Hall and Teresa Musgrove Judd, say Woodrow Wilson’s inaugural students and the principal chose the mascot, which was done at all schools established before the ’60s.
Woodrow Wilson High School’s logo has a story all of its own. The University of Arizona sent a cease and desist letter to WWHS in the 2010s for using a similar wildcat logo as the university. After that wild turn of events, Cargile created today’s logo.
Cargile, who lives in California and works for The Walt Disney Company, made the logo in memory of his father, who spent his career teaching drafting at WWHS.
“At the time that I did (the logo), my father had just died, who had taught there for so long, so I kind of did it as a memoriam to him,” Cargile says. “I consider that what I know about the school and what I love about the school and the school building in particular, which I think is really special, is because of him and the kind of classes he taught. He taught an appreciation for the building and used the building as a teaching tool for his advanced architectural drafting students.”
If you look closely at Cargile’s wildcat logo, you’ll find three “Ws” — on the forehead and each side of the face. The wildcat’s mouth is open in a roar, and its tongue is an abstracted heart, referencing the school’s motto, “Keep Thy Heart With All Diligence.”
On the other side of Northwest Highway, the first Lake Highlands High School graduates crossed the stage for their diplomas in 1964, and the Church Road campus opened the next year. A 2011 Lake Highlands Advocate article quotes Alan Walne, former City Council member and LHHS graduate, as saying the PTA President Imogene “Gene” Evans (former Dallas Mayor Jack Evans’ wife) attended Woodrow Wilson High School and adopted the mascot.
“When they had the meeting to determine what Lake Highlands’ colors and mascot would be, Gene said, ‘Well, I’ve always been a Wildcat, and we’re going to be the Wildcats,’” Walne said in that previous article.
Keith Whitmire was both a Woodrow Wilson Wildcat and Lake Highlands Wildcat. He graduated from LHHS in 1983, but as a 4-year-old, he acted the part at WWHS football games and pep rallies, complete with spotted cat costume (made by his mother, Mary Ann Whitmire, a teacher and the cheer sponsor at Woodrow Wilson) and face painted whiskers.
During pep rallies, Keith Whitmire would be on all fours inside a bamboo cage that was meant to provoke the crowd to cheer and yell anytime the door swung open. He felt like a little brother to the cheerleaders.
“My biggest memory of the football games is that we had a big flag, similar to the flag the LH Bell Boys run across the field. They kept the flag laid out on the sideline. I liked seeing the cheerleaders wave the flag, so occasionally I would go over and toss a handful of dirt on it,” Whitmire says. “That forced them to pick up the flag and wave it to get the dirt off. I never said I was a well-behaved Wildcat!”
