A Love Letter to Farrington Field

I’ll be the first to admit that as a lover and student of history, my historic sense sometimes sweeps me away to another time and place, where the past feels as vivid as the present. It’s not so much getting lost in my imagination as it is being transported to another time and place.  Call it a sixth sense. Who needs Doc Brown? 

And so, it was at Farrington Field, the art deco classic on the near West Side, many years ago as I sat perched high atop the stadium in the press box — spartan by any measure compared to today’s modern suites of gawdawful Suburbia, Texas — awaiting kickoff of a high school football game, one of several dozen I’ve written about over the years at the historic grounds, which sit at the corner of University Drive and Lancaster Avenue. 

I looked to the southeast as the open-top car pulled into the entrance of the stadium. Its driver navigated past the visiting team locker rooms and down the concrete ramp onto the track. 

Its occupants — one of the most brilliant and able, albeit controversial, men of his age, and his wife and their young son — waved to cheering onlookers. When the car stopped, they got out and walked to a podium set up on the south side of the field.  

The weather on this Saturday morning in June was tolerable. Threatening rain clouds dispersed, evidence, I heard one man say, that the weatherman was a Republican. Surely, the skies would have opened on the reviled President Truman, the “accidental tyrant and patron saint of containment.” 

Gen. Douglas MacArthur came to demonstrate a clear distinction between himself and his archnemesis, President Truman. In doing so, he’d fire off a number of figurative Howitzer shells at the commander-in-chief. Texas would be crucial to his presidential campaign the next year in 1952.  

“Make America great again,” I thought. What a novel idea. Breaking new political ground in 1952.  

“It has been a rare privilege for me to travel during the past four days through the heart of Texas and observe with my own eyes the almost miraculous progress which has been made in the development of your great state. I have found here a vast reservoir of spiritual and material strength which fills me with a sense of confidence in the future of our nation. It confirms my faith that with such resources none can excel us in peaceful progress nor safely challenge us to the tragedy of war.” 

I snapped out of my trance as the public address announcer asked us to stand for the national anthem, but an epiphany had occurred. This place — Farrington Field — had through the years become something far bigger than football or track.  

Farrington Field is the binding thread in the story of Fort Worth in the last 100 years. Everybody born or raised here between the ages 16 and 100 — hell, older than 100, if, God willing, they are still with us — shares a connection to the place. It is the place that binds us, regardless of the dividing lines of age, ethnicity, gender, and neighborhood. Everybody has a memory there whether as a player, track athlete, cheerleader, dance team, the band, a homecoming game or date, or some mischief teenagers have become famous for — like, for example, Paschal rascals 40 years ago breaking into the stadium to bleach “Heights Bites” at midfield.  

(The city’s law enforcement authorities caught wind of the incursion and led a chase of the vandals, who beat a path south down University into Trinity Park. But I digress. You didn’t come here for this.) 

From that particular Friday night forward, Farrington Field became my fixation and fascination. I was Captain Ahab; Farrington was my whale — minus the self-destruction. Or maybe I was Hinckley and it was Jodie Foster, without the long stay at St. Elizabeths. 

My all-consuming interest sent me off to research whatever I could find. I began to write about it. Whenever I was there, I looked upon the stadium like an artist studying his muse.  

It was love, there was no confusing it.  

And then, boom — the news dropped. The Fort Worth school district, without adequate resources to maintain it, much less upgrade it, planned to put an aging facility that no longer served its needs on the market. 

Not to mention that the public entities undoubtedly saw the upside in the possibility of one of the most valuable pieces of property in town going on the tax rolls.  

My stomach turned as if I’d downed a lipful of Copenhagen. Suffice to say, I took that news the way one does after stubbing a toe on the biggest, meanest, ill-willed doorframe in town.  

No! No! No! 

You can’t just discard Farrington Field like a used Whataburger wrapper. The stadium is an icon in the Cultural District, a poetic reminder that fulfillment includes healthy in body, mind, and spirit. Mens sana in corpore sano: “A healthy mind in a healthy body.” 

There is much learning yet to be done here.  

For a city with a grand history, it is essential for preservation. Places like Farrington Field — its charm, character, history, and architecture — distinguish Fort Worth from the likes of Allen, Frisco, and Plano.  

Has a name better encapsulated a town quite like Plano? The city fathers nailed that one. 

Its football heroes have included two future NFL Hall of Famers — Yale Lary and Earl Campbell — and NFL standouts, including Elijah Alexander, Victor Bailey, Blake Brockermeyer, Marcus Buckley, Raymond Clayborn, Henry Ford, Doug Hart, Greg Hawthorne, Sherrill Headrick, Joe Don Looney, Mike Renfro, A’Shawn Robinson, Frank Ryan, Jim Shofner, Tylan Wallace, Darrent Williams, and Tariq Woolen. Certainly, I’m missing someone, such as the notable kickers — Tony Franklin and Uwe von Schamann. The others who turned heads in college also began here, with guys like Carlos Francis, Turner Gill, James Gray, Terry Pierce, Roy Lee Rambo, and Roland Sales. 

And, of course, the literally thousands upon thousands of others who have suited up there, stars and role players alike.  

The Masonic Home Mighty Mites’ feats at Farrington have been retold in literature and Hollywood. They had two NFLers, too, in Hardy Brown and Dewitt Coulter. 

And who could forget Arlington Heights star Harry Moreland, who, according to Dan Jenkins, said of Bob Lilly at TCU: “If I were as big as Lilly, I would charge people $10 a day to live.” 

A sign in the home locker room greets every player who takes a step onto the field: “Since 1938, thousands of athletes and coaches have made the walk down this tunnel into historic Farrington Field. You just became a part of HISTORY.” 

There is no doubting the neglect the stadium has sustained over the years. The school district spends much of its budget simply trying to keep the school doors open, and books and laptops, or whatever they’re using these days to supplement learning the three R’s.  

For the preservationists, however, white knights have appeared, as if Commissioner Gordon 911’d Batman. The heroes of Historic Fort Worth Inc. — notably Jerre Tracy, the executive director — have worked tirelessly to save the stadium. Through Historic Fort Worth’s advocacy, as well as the grandson of the namesake, Farrington Field earned its rightful place in the National Register of Historic Places.  

That doesn’t protect it from demolition. Only the school district — the owner of the property — or city or city manager can make that decree. It doesn’t appear to be forthcoming.  

The National Register designation, though, appears to have turned on a light switch. Voters turned down a more than $105 million bond proposal to build three 5,000-seat stadium complexes.  

And now the city is taking positive steps toward preservation. It’s more like a giant leap. 

In June, the City Council voted to approve a Tax Increment Financing district — better known by its shorthand, a TIF — that will allocate $55 million of collected tax revenue to renovate and upgrade Farrington Field. The TIF’s main purpose is to fix notorious stormwater issues and make road improvements. Those are keeping developers away.  

However, it now looks possible to redevelop and preserve the stadium for high school sports and who knows what else — a youth sports destination, maybe? High school playoffs? Destination football games between a Texas team and one from another state? Nolan Catholic plays in the “Catholic Bowl” with five other teams. Why not on occasion play that at a refurbished Farrington Field? 

The breakthrough has gotten us preservationists out of our funk.  

“Preservation is always about money,” Tracy says. “You can talk about it, but it’ll still fall down if you can’t find the money. We have hope! We have a shot.  

“The National Register nomination really turned the game around. It woke people up. People are seeing and understanding that what you already have built in your city is an asset.” 

In Why Old Places Matter: How Historic Places Affect Our Identity and Well-Being, Thompson Mayes argues that preservation isn’t about nostalgia — it’s about using the past and the built environment to deepen our present and shape a meaningful future. His essays push back against the emphasis on placemaking through new development, instead advocating for “place-sustaining,” which values longevity, memory, and the ways our surroundings influence identity, well-being, and our collective sense of a shared future.  

Preservation is about the kids.  

Shortly after the vote to approve the tax district, two renderings of what a future Farrington Field could look like with development on its north and south ends suddenly appeared on social media channels.  

No one, including the city, seems to know where they came from. With AI capabilities, it could have come from anybody with a smartphone. 

But finding a good solution for preservationists and ambitious developers will require the same kind of vision of the stadium’s founder. 

We look to be on the right path.  

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It was a brisk November morning in 1937 when Coach Herman Clark of Fort Worth’s North Side High School made his way down the linoleum-floored hallway to the office of his boss. 

Clark, always one to think of his boys first, had a modest list of necessities in mind for the coming gridiron season. Stepping into the office, he doffed his hat respectfully, then cleared his throat. 

“We could use a few supplies,” he began. “A pair of cleats or two, some shoestrings … maybe a little rubbing alcohol and cotton. The usual.” 

Across the desk, E.S. Farrington — his former coach and now the athletic director — broke into a wide grin that gave Clark pause. 

“You’ll get your supplies,” Farrington said, pausing for effect, “and more than that. We’re getting a new stadium.” 

Clark blinked. 

Not just any field, but a bona fide stadium, a showpiece for the city’s high school athletes. The district had at last come to terms with the city on 38 acres at the corner of University and Lancaster — $7,600 sealed the deal. To Clark, it might as well have been Christmas morning. 

Farrington had spent 10 years working to get to this point. And it was worth every inch of blood, sweat, and tears. 

“It’s for my boys,” he remarked then. 

The final bill to build Farrington came to about $400,000 in 1939. 

“He was a broad shouldered, stocky young man,” is how a Star-Telegram reporter described Evan Stanley Farrington. “He had a ready smile, a quiet air of efficiency. And as soon as the Steers went out to work on their old rocky field west of the old school, the boys discovered at once that he knew his football.” 

Evan Stanley Farrington was a young man of 30 when he arrived in Fort Worth to become the head football coach at North Side. Born in Lewisville, he had lettered at Baylor in football, was a regular on the theater stage and the senior class president of 1913. After graduation, he moved to Grapevine where he was principal and then superintendent of schools for the 1914-15 school year. 

“I aspired to build up the schools to the highest standard, to place them second to none in the country. Encourage your children in their schoolwork and watch their growth and development with careful interest. See that they observe proper hours for study and then see that they do study.” 

He left education to work in private industry, but his calling, he discovered, was teaching and education. And his new home was the North Side of Fort Worth. 

His connection to the city was through his wife, Sidney King, the niece of John P. King, the “Candy King” of Fort Worth. They had met when both were teachers in Grapevine. She taught in primary grades and left when her husband became superintendent. They married at Magnolia Avenue Christian Church in Fort Worth.  

Farrington coached two seasons at North Side before moving into athletics administration and making history. Both were led by Herman Clark, the quarterback of those teams.  

Twice, though, under Farrington the Steers won the city championship. In 1921, they beat Masonic Home 38-14 to claim the title. In those two years, North Side also twice beat Central — now Paschal. In 1922, the victory over Central was for the city championship. 

North Side’s 1922 team was in reality making a run for a state title until it was derailed by Cleburne through what I’ll just simply call the tactics of a sore loser. 

The Steers had defeated Cleburne that season, but the Yellow Jackets coach, Fred Erney, filed a protest with the State Interscholastic League, alleging that Clark and teammate Walter Holland had been paid to play baseball the summer before. (Cleburne, by the way, had been co-state champions two years before with Houston Heights after a championship game that ended in a 0-0 tie.) 

“An effort is being made to prove Clark was paid for playing baseball with Gainesville last summer,” Farrington said at the time. Holland, as it turned out, had also played baseball, in Waco. 

Both players, the coach said, indeed did play baseball and were paid, but only for their expenses, “which is legitimate.” In other words, legal, according to the rules of the State Interscholastic League. 

The State Interscholastic League ultimately sustained Cleburne’s protest, taking away the Steers’ victory and allowing Cleburne to move on in the playoffs. The outcome was the only blemish on the Steers’ record that season. 

Farrington remained steadfast in his defense of his players. 

Farrington left for athletics administration, becoming the Fort Worth athletic director.  

Back in a trance, I watched him tell a newspaper reporter about his grand vision of a football stadium and track. 

“Think of this. West Lancaster will run right by the stadium when the new bridge is built over the Trinity. TCU and south side traffic can move over Burleson Street [now University Drive], through Forest and Trinity parks, directly to the stadium. North Side people can drive straight to the stadium from the north on Burleson Street. Arlington Heights folks have a straight shot down El Campo. Poly comes in over Lancaster, and Riversiders use Belknap and West Seventh.” 

As athletic director, Farrington quickly earned a reputation for running a tight, financially sound athletic operation. By 1932, Fort Worth’s school sports programs — aside from coaches’ salaries — cost nothing to the taxpayers. In a city of 165,000 residents, some 33,000 students, both Black and white, participated in athletics. Game attendance generated real economic momentum for the city’s athletic programs. 

By the mid-1930s, crowds were swelling. In 1934 alone, Paschal and Poly drew more than 16,000 paying fans to LaGrave Field for their game. Farrington had reason to believe that Fort Worth needed its own dedicated stadium. He could point to a surge in paid attendance at LaGrave and Wortham Field over four consecutive years: 51,745 in 1932; 54,940 in 1933; 78,476 in 1934; and 72,994 in 1935. Low ticket prices — 25 cents for general admission and 50 cents for reserved seating — helped fuel the surge, making games accessible and popular, to the point that marquee matchups were pushing existing venues past capacity. 

With numbers on his side, Farrington set about advancing his vision for a new stadium. He shifted from rallying athletic support to lobbying political allies — among them Fort Worth’s power broker Amon G. Carter Sr. Carter’s influence helped secure federal Works Progress Administration funding and persuade the city to sell a tract of land east of the Fiesta Grounds, which Carter had promoted as part of Fort Worth’s own centennial celebration. 

Blueprints were completed and made public on Nov. 9, 1937. Plans called for 10,000 seats on each side of a north-south gridiron, with open ends to the oval. To maximize capacity between the 20-yard lines, the central sections would rise 54 rows high, arranged in semicircles to provide optimal sightlines. A complete lighting system was included for night games. 

The financing came together through a combination of $160,000 in WPA support for labor and materials, $90,000 in revenue bonds, and roughly $82,000 from the school district.  

The stadium was designed by architects Arthur George King and Everett Lee Frazior Sr., with oversight from Preston M. Geren Sr. It featured advanced overhead lighting and 70-foot columns that framed the west entrance. 

The city agreed to sell the land with one condition: It must be used for school district athletic purposes. The property had originally been donated to the city for public benefit, and if its use ever changed, ownership would revert back to the city. 

Precedent has been set on any past deed restrictions with a Tarrant County District court ruling in 2008 that restrictions mandated by the Van Zandt Land Co. to be unenforceable because there was no longer a Van Zandt Land Co., which disbanded in 1947.  

A city official told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in 2020 that the city and school district had an agreement to split the net proceeds of 1.7 acres surround the stadium in the event of a sale.  

“From the city’s perspective, there is nothing in the agreement that would prohibit Fort Worth ISD from selling Farrington Field,” the city official said.  

At any rate, by 1937, Fort Worth was on the cusp of having athletic facilities to rival any in the nation. For Farrington, it was a long-pursued goal finally taking shape. 

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E.S. Farrington never saw the completion of his prized legacy project.  

Farrington had a heart attack and died at his home on Waits Avenue in 1937. He had been watching an I.M. Terrell football game, a team “he has done much to help and encourage,” when he was stricken with what felt like a knot the size of a fist in his stomach near the heart. He was able to drive home, but a doctor was “hastily summoned.”  

He was 46.  

“Fort Worth and Texas have lost one of the finest men in athletics,” said TCU coach Dutch Meyer. “It is a real blow.” 

His very last words he spoke were about the stadium. He discussed it with the doctor. Farrington and his wife are buried in Greenwood Cemetery.  

Wrote Amos Melton of the Star-Telegram: “We wish to be among the first to suggest that the new field, when and if completed, be named for the man who made it possible. ‘Farrington Stadium’ should stand for many decades as a tribute to one of Texas’ greatest schoolmen. Every football game, every track event, every function in the new plant should be held in affectionate memory of a real man.” 

The very first part of my Farrington Field fixation was a Google of the name “Evan S. Farrington.” 

Sure enough, Evan S. Farrington III came into view. He lived near Austin. I called a number provided.  

That began a close friendship between us — Farrington Field serving as yet another bind between people, though we’ve discovered many other common interests. Evan, an attorney, and his wife Melaine have since moved to Fort Worth.  

He spoke to the City Council in June in favor of the new tax district, as did Jerre Tracy, the executive director of Historic Fort Worth Inc. Evan more recently has begun to carry around a copy of his presentation to the Texas Historical Commission. He passed out copies to the City Council.  

Evan’s father, Evan S. Farrington Jr., who went by Stanley, was part of the ceremonious groundbreaking festivities in 1937 as a 10-year-old. In 1939, for the dedication ceremonies — young Stanley made the ceremonial first kick. It’s an event that makes son Evan chuckle.  

“Dad was not an athlete,” says Evan. “It skipped a generation. Of course, when you’re the athletic director’s son, you got to be an athlete, but he just wasn’t. He said he practiced for that kick for three months. And when it came time, he was in front of the whole city and he kicked it 15 yards. He said he felt like Charlie Brown. He kind of turned around and walked off.” 

Amarillo beat Paschal 31-13 in the first game.  

Stanley Farrington, who went to Paschal and then both TCU and Texas, later had a long career in medicine. He was also the recipient of a Bronze Star with valor as a medic during the Korean War.  

Father and young son — Stanley and Evan — were in attendance at Farrington Field for Arlington Heights’ playoff game against Tyler John Tyler, featuring Earl Campbell in 1973. 

“We lived in East Texas, and my dad loved Earl Campbell,” Evan recalls.  

“There was no ESPN or internet, nobody really knew outside the city who the really good players around the state or nation were,” said Mike Renfro, Heights’ star. “We started to hear about Earl Campbell about two weeks before the playoffs. 

“I like to tell this story, that [Heights’ coach] Merlin [Priddy] was so nervous about what we’d see on film that he wouldn’t even show us the tapes because he was afraid no one would show up for the game. 

“I have been corrected on that, but I must have been sick the day we saw film because I don’t remember any film because I may not have shown up either.” 

Campbell led a 412-yard Lions rushing attack by running up and down the Farrington Field turf and through Heights’ defenders, racking up 183 yards and four touchdowns on 18 carries in a 34-12 victory. 

No one beat John Tyler that season. The Lions and their future Hall of Famer won the Class 4A state crown. Earl and Renfro would later become teammates and close friends as members of the Houston Oilers.  

The day Evan made his presentation to the City Council would have been his late father’s 98th birthday. “It’s like it’s meant to be,” he said to them. 

He and I dropped into Angelo’s last month.  

“Here’s the thing, it’s not about the city or my grandfather or anybody,” Evan says. “It’s about the school kids. It’s about the schoolchildren of Fort Worth. His vision was to give them a top-notch facility that everybody could use. Period. I mean, if it were really in such bad shape and needed to be torn down, so be it. But I don’t think it is, and I actually think times have changed and so we have to look at the dynamics now. What are the dynamics? We have this stadium that seats 20,000 people. It’s solid. It needs to be upgraded and improved, but just by fate, the way the city’s grown, it’s right in the heart of the city and it could be a really cool sports venue with some vision. 

“People just need to have a little vision. Just love it a little. Love it a little.” 

Some months before, Evan presented me a pocket watch.  

“I’m giving it to you on loan,” he says. “Until I want it back.” 

The inscription on the back of the watch reads: 

“Presented by 

N.S.H.S. Foot Ball Team 

1922” 

This is a watch presented by E.S. Farrington’s North Side High School football team.  

The damn thing still works. Symbolic, methinks. 

Just like Farrington Field.