Faculty Flashback: Bob Jorgensen: A Master of

1996

After 40 years, Bob Jorgensen retires. He served many roles at Roxbury Latin and brought several new programs to the school throughout his tenure, including woodshop, computer science, and jazz band.

A Master of Many Talents Reinvents Himself Over 40 Years

by MIKE POJMAN

Bob Jorgensen met Headmaster Fred Weed one spring day in 1956 for lunch, and for a casual interview regarding an opening on the Roxbury Latin faculty. On that day, Bob had no idea that this meeting would lead to an RL career spanning four decades, under four headmasters, during one of the most consequential periods in the school’s long history.

Having just completed two years in the Marine Corps— happily married to his college sweetheart, Bobby, the father of a newborn son, Dean (RL Class of 1974)—Bob was looking to settle into a career as a teacher of woodshop. As fate would have it, Mr. Weed was looking for a visionary who would launch a shop program at Roxbury Latin—long a dream of his. That he might also fill an opening in the math department would be a bonus. Ever versatile, Bob was willing to tackle that challenge, too. His connection with Mr. Weed and Roxbury Latin was immediate. “My starting salary was to be $4,000,” Bob recalls with a smile, “but I think I talked him into $4,300. Of course, prices were different back then. My rent at the time was $85 per month.”

When I sat down with Bob recently, I asked him what kept him going for 40 years. “Perseverance,” he laughed. “Perseverance. But seriously, it was a marvelous career. I enjoyed working with the boys so much. I looked forward to going to work, going to school, every day. I was there just when the Gordon Field House had been completed, so I was able to build the woodshop from scratch [in the space previously used as a makeshift gymnasium]. Everything was brand new, all new equipment. Shop was for Fifthies and Sixies, so I taught a couple of sections of that, and second year Algebra to start. The next year I added first year Algebra and eventually Geometry and Pre-Calculus.”

Subsequently, over the years, headmasters Fred Weed, Dick Mayo-Smith, Bill Chauncey, and Tony Jarvis recognized and tapped Bob’s wide-ranging talents. In the 1960s he served as the school’s Business Manager, “during which time we built the Ernst Wing, in 1965.” His wisdom, experience, and common sense were invaluable throughout the “building boom” of the ’80s and ’90s, as he oversaw construction of the Gordon Wing, Smith Arts Center, Bauer Science Building, and Gordon Field House—not to mention the addition of three new playing fields and two parking lots on newly acquired land at the end of Quail Street. Bob was the voice of reason at building committee meetings, with a keen eye for detail, indisputable credibility with contractors, and a down-to-earth approach (literally!) that kept each project manageable and on schedule.

When I brought up the subject of technology, complimenting Bob on his foresight in bringing computers to the school in the early 1980s, he demurred, with characteristic humility: “I didn’t actually start that program. We already had a computer called a ‘PolyMorphic’ with something like 56K of memory.” But as an eyewitness at the time, I know that it was Bob who saw the potential of the newly released IBM PC. It was he who convinced Tony Jarvis that computers in schools were not only the wave of the future but, more immediately, a necessity of the present. With full faith in Bob’s vision and expertise, Mr. Jarvis put him in charge of designing a new computer facility in the lower level of the Perry Building—where the women’s locker room is now—fitting it out with the latest technology. (Ever frugal, Bob furnished the room with repurposed study tables that he converted into computer stations.) He introduced computer programming into the Fifthie curriculum, guiding the boys through the fundamentals of BASIC (if-then statements, error trapping, nested loops…), the predominant coding language at the time.

I asked Bob to recall some of the things that brought him the greatest satisfaction over the years: “I loved being a homeroom teacher [the equivalent of today’s “classmaster”]. You got very close to the kids. I really enjoyed that. I was the homeroom teacher for Class IV for a number of years.” He mentioned his lifelong passion for music, too—for playing the saxophone— which meshed with his love of teaching when he founded the Jazz Band in 1992. “We started with just three players back then,” he remembers. Over the next ten years, the group grew and prospered under Bob’s direction, and it continues to thrive to this day—an enduring part of his legacy.

Roxbury Latin has been blessed with titans on the faculty who have dedicated their long careers to the betterment of the school: Chauncey, Bridgess, Whitney, Davey, Hubbard, Ligon, Kerner, Dower, Ward—and many more. Although he has assiduously avoided self-promotion, content to work behind the scenes, Bob Jorgensen is certainly to be counted among that pantheon of greats, more valued than he knows, less celebrated than he deserves. Perhaps, as is my hope, this modest panegyric will rectify that. //

Bob lives with his wife, Bobby, at Wingate in Needham, and he continues to play the sax with his band “The Olde Kids on the Block.”