The
year was 1973 and the times, they were a-changing. Roberto Clemente, Noel
Coward, Betty Grable, Lyndon Johnson and Pablo Picasso were taking their
last breaths. Tori Spelling ("Beverly Hills 90210") and rapper Wanya Morris
(Boyz II Men) were taking their first. The Vietnam War and the Nixon presidency
were rolling to a close.
The
Watergate burglars were in court. Roe v. Wade had just legalized abortion.
Arab terrorists were opening fire at the Athens airport. NASA was launching
Skylab, the first space station, Nolan Ryan was pitching his first no-hitter,
and People magazine was hitting the stands.
Hair was playing
on Broadway.
In
South Dakota, Native American activists were holding the hamlet of Wounded
Knee. In Hollywood, Marlon Brando was turning down the Academy Award as
Best Actor to show them his support. In Los Angeles, Tom Bradley was being
elected the city of angels ' first African-American mayor.
Wherever
young people gathered, a funny smell was in the air. The NCAA was making
urine testing for drugs mandatory for college athletes. In Detroit , a
lawsuit was challenging the Little League's "no girls " rule. Bras were
being burned.
On
TV, the gentle wisdom of Ben Cartwright on "Bonanza" was giving way to
the racist slurs of Archie Bunker on "All in the Family." One network was
launching a new soap opera called "The Young and the Restless."
At
PA, the young and restless were facing changes, too. Drugs were not unheard
of on cam- pus. A boy is said to have flown off a fire escape, believing
he was a bird, and broken both legs. Rules were being protested. Campus
security officers carried firearms, and the community was still reeling
from an event in which an officer fired warning shots over the heads of
students trying to break into George Washington Hall.
Into
this atmosphere had come Ted Sizer, a new headmaster with a mission. Thirtysomething
and progressive, he had been chosen by the trustees in 1972 to turn the
tide of student restlessness and declining applications by bringing PA
into step with the times. The path they had charted for him included transforming
the nearly two- century-old, all- male school into a coeducational institution.
He would do this by annexing Abbot Academy, the 145-year-old girls' school
down the road.
The
two schools had toyed with the idea of affiliating; for years, there had
been experiments in "coordinate" education, in which PA boys headed down
School Street to attend some classes at Abbot, while Abbot girls climbed
the hill to learn from PA instructors. Still, an outright marriage was
a startling development in the history of institutions that were so separate.
How
separate? So separate that one alumna, Marion Brooks '15, remembers being
forbidden to speak to her own brother, a Phillips Academy student, when
she met him on the streets of Andover. Other Abbot alumnae recall that
their house mothers read incoming letters with Andover postmarks before
passing them on--or simply ripped them up unopened.
On
the pages ahead we share some reflections from a few of the two dozen
or so Phillips and Abbot faculty members who weathered the merger
and are still on the faculty.
 "People
keep talking about a merger, but it wasn't a merger. It was a takeover.
Phillips Academy took over Abbot. It made some faculty members anxious
enough to leave. I was less concerned because I had grown up in Andover,
and my father and mother had taught at Phillips and Abbot, respectively.
After the so-called merger, I found myself working with people I had
known for years."
"In
some ways, becoming a Phillips Academy teacher was a treat. I got to move
into one of the huge, wonderful dormitories on the middle of campus that
previously belonged to boys, and I got to do some things I never would
have dreamed of doing. At Abbot, faculty members were not expected to be
teachers, dorm counselors and coaches all at once. I was determined to
prove a woman could be a triple threat."
-Mary
Minard '55
History
"I
had gone to an all-male prep school, then to Amherst College, then into
the Air Force. I didn't have a lot of experience with women as real people,
as opposed to dates. So I came with a whole lot of prejudices, I'm sure.
But as a teacher of English it was wonderful from the start, because right
off the bat girls were talkative, curious, more disciplined as far as doing
homework was concerned. They just generally were a delight. The classes
were more alive. The guys started talking more, too-it had a ripple effect."
"Not
everyone on the Andover faculty looked forward to the merger. Dick Pieters,
a senior faculty member and chairman of the math department, quieted things
down at a faculty meeting where he gave a very stirring but short speech.
He said, in essence, 'All of you know that I've been opposed to coeducation,
but now that we've become coeducational, let's make this the best damn
coeducational school we can."
-Meredith
Price
English
"There
was a dramatic change in what was expected of girls in sports. I can see
with my mind's eye some of the Abbot soccer teams, where the girls appeared
to be walking, barely running and certainly not sweating. They had these
billowy bloomers on. But starting in the early '70s those girls just seemed
to get faster and rougher each year. By the late '70s, you wouldn't want
to have one of them running into you."
"Before
the merger, I found a girl in my dormitory, and I asked her where she went
to school. She said Abbot, so I said, 'Go on back to Abbot.' The point
is, we had so little contact I didn't even know the name of anybody down
there I could call."
-Nat
Smith
Math
"The
last year of Abbot Academy was an amazing year. People kept referring to
the upcoming change as an engagement and a wedding, but those of us at
Abbot saw it as a death and a funeral. However, the creation of the Abbot
Academy Association and the powerful commitment of Ted and Nancy Sizer
to keep the Abbot flame alive eased our fears."
"For
the boys, it was a great adventure. Nothing changed very much for them.
But for the Abbot Class of 1974, who came into Phillips Academy as seniors,
the pain of dislocation was very clear. For the most part, the merger was
harder on the faculty than the students, probably because older people
are more afraid of change than are younger people."
-Jean
St. Pierre
English
and Theatre
 "I
went on sabbatical in1972-73, and when I left it was a very unhappy
school. When I came back, it was totally different. The Vietnam
War had ended, we had a new headmaster with vibrant new ideas, and
we were coeducational. For young faculty members like me, it was
exciting, a challenge. Those who were in their 50s or 60s tended
to see it as an invasion of their space. Some of them fought it,
kicking and screaming."
"In
our first evaluation after becoming coeducational, we were accused by the
National Association of Independent Schools of being androgynous. They
thought we had bent so far over backward to treat everyone the same that
we weren't appreciating the differences."
-Hale
Sturges
French
 "The
merger had an impact on the biology department because it made our
classes swell. More girls than boys tended to take biology, and
of course the school was just bigger. The physical size of the department
is smaller than the size of the chemistry and physics departments,
so the labs got really crowded."
-Tom
Hamilton
Biology
"I
really felt like a woman in a man's world through a lot of it, but you
can't expect such changes to come overnight. For instance, down in Evans
Hall there were two bathrooms. The girls' bathroom is the larger one but
it had urinals. The girls came out and asked, 'What are they?'"
-Judy
Hamilton
Former
Cluster Dean
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