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Living in Bigelow Hall, 1954 –1956 into its classrooms and locker rooms (the 1956 football team was undefeated and nearly unscored upon); many such boys were a bit rough around the edges, Art says.
Art Tsigas ’56 moved into his third-floor room in Bigelow Hall in the fall of 1954, with the Godfrey family on the first floor. Leaving behind Lowell High School to become a boarding student at Lawrence Academy brought him literally into the halls of history. Although Waters House (1783) is the oldest building on campus, Bigelow Hall (1863) is the oldest campus building constructed for the express purpose of serving as a dormitory.
The school wasted no time in educating its charges, however, beginning with family-style dinners every night. “The first week you were there,” Art recalls, “you learned how to set a table. You learned how to serve—from which side you serve and from which side you retrieve. I’m sure that some of the boys came to Lawrence knowing all those rules, but for a lot of us it did take off the rough edges.” Recalling how Arthur Ferguson instructed someone at his table about how to spread butter on his bread, Art noted that Mr. Ferguson and his wife had a knack for doing so without scolding the boys.
The plan had been for Art to attend Lawrence Academy for only one year, but when Headmaster Fred C. Gray met with his parents, Mr. Gray said that the school could do more for Art Art Tsigas ’56, speaking over two years. As Art watched, his fondly of the good old days parents immediately agreed. “I’ll never living in Bigelow Hall forget it. It wasn’t even a discussion between the two of them or even with me. They just said, ‘That’s fine with us,’ and that’s how it happened.”
Such “finishing,” Art says, was part of the boarding school experience of his day. “For the most part, it was a good experience. It was very much a home-like atmosphere, with a lot of talk about what was going on during the day in sports and academics—and it gave you a chance to get to know the masters and for them to get to know you. They also had families with them most of the time, and the dinners gave you a chance to sit and eat with a family.”
As a boarding student repeating a year of high school, Art fit right in. A majority of the approximately 120 students attending Lawrence Academy in the mid-1950s, he says, needed the structure provided by a boarding school to mature a bit more before attending college. It was an era during which Lawrence Academy, like most boarding schools, welcomed postgraduates
On Tuesday and Friday afternoons, the boys could go into town, perhaps patronizing Bruce’s Drug Store. The same MacNeil Lounge that offered socializing and soda on Saturdays, when there wasn’t a movie in the gym, was the site for Vespers on Sunday evenings. Twice a year or so, Art remembers, girls from an all-girls
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