Phillips Andover Academy – A High Society Secondary School
Phillips Andover Academy was established in 1778 by two brothers from the Boston area. Everything went swimmingly for a few years until the brothers got into a terrible argument. I have never been able to determine, the subject of that argument which obviously was of great consequence. Due to this critical disagreement, one of the brothers stomped off to Exeter, New Hampshire and founded Phillips Exeter Academy. Both academies are extremely well considered in the realm of private boarding schools in this country.
Some years later, 1829, Abbot Academy, one of the first educational institutions to be founded exclusively for the education of girls in New England was founded in the town of Andover, a scant ½ mile from Phillips Andover Academy. I spent the academic years of 1956-1959 at Abbot and thoroughly enjoyed it. I loved my classes and the freedom I had to sign out after my classes were done and take walks in the countryside. You could earn points toward athletic awards for taking a specified number of walks during the semester and I got all the points I could. Sometimes, on a walk called “Appletree”, I would accidently run into my boyfriend and we would continue the walk together returning to our separate campuses as required. I walked to “P.A” as it was known on numerous occasions to watch the Andover boys play their intercollegiate football teams, learning the basic rules of football. I also went to many tea dances there. In my sophomore year, I received a Christmas present from my boyfriend. Since Andover scarves were quite expensive to buy at the school, my boyfriend’s mother had knitted me an Andover scarf as a Christmas present to me from her son. Though we did not stay together through our years at school, I still have that scarf and it gives me warm feelings for Bill and my experiences at boarding school
Both President George Herbert Walker Bush and his son George graduated from Andover. George graduated five years after I did. Some other celebrity graduates include Jack Lemmon, Dr. Benjamin Spock, John F. Kennedy, Jr., and Paul Bremer (Class of 1959, my class). Humphrey Bogart attended but flunked out. The two schools, Abbot Academy and Phillips Andover Academy officially merged and became one educational entity in 1973.
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