Remembering the Heist
Editor’s note: A group of 1966 classmates presented us with this version of the events surrounding Bevo’s capture in 1963. Franklin “Gus” Harris Jr. ’66 shares their story below.
There were seven of us in the Corps of Cadets who planned and executed the heist of Bevo in November 1963 . This included Bill Duncan ’66, Lester Hatcher ’66, Don Mika ’66, Conrad Burks ’66 and myself from Company B-2 (Buzzard Company), along with Joe Judith ’66 and Bill Towery Jr. ’66 from Squadron 1. We met to draw a map of the Austin hog farm where Bevo was kept and gathered our supplies. We then traveled to the hog farm around midnight on Nov. 13, 1963, in two vehicles: a truck pulling a trailer and a sedan, our decoy car.
On arrival at the pens, we found the steer snorting and running around. Most of us, not being sure what to expect of an animal that size, stayed outside the pen while Lester and I went in and roped the steer. We were off. As we neared the farmhouse, a dog started barking, but we kept walking. Then the lights came on. We walked faster, sweating bullets. We made it back to the entry gate, where we tried to load the steer. At first his horns wouldn’t fit in our trailer, but eventually we got him inside and headed back to College Station.
Bevo (still in the trailer) was paraded around the Quad with much hullabaloo from Aggies, who poured out of the dorms. At this point, we weren’t sure what to do next. With all the prior planning on how to steal Bevo, we hadn’t made plans as to what to do after. We never had intentions to barbecue or brand him, as some speculated; it was just Good Bull. The steer was penned up near campus, and the next day, all of us posed with Bevo as a fellow corpsman took pictures.
The unsanctioned visit of Bevo to the Texas A&M campus in 1963 caused quite a stir.
Things started to get hot as the Texas Rangers began investigating the theft. Within a day, some other corpsmen took the steer to a different off-campus location without our knowledge. Soon, we found ourselves facing the Commandant and a couple of Texas Rangers. The rangers told us in a very convincing way that cattle rustling was an offense that carried severe penalties. We spilled our guts! The steer was located, taken to a veterinarian for a checkup and returned to Austin in the hands of the Texas Silver Spurs.
I guess we were lucky. We didn’t end up in jail, and we weren’t shot by the farm owner. A few days later President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, the bonfire was cancelled and the Bevo incident faded away.
Franklin “Gus” Harris Jr. ’66
Orange, Texas