August 21, 2024
Snow day magic (and shenanigans)
An alumnus recounts a rare break from studies due to inclement weather and the camaraderie it conjured.by Dr. Ray Healey ’66 | Photos by Joe Seamans ’66
On Sunday, January 23, 1966, an epic nor’easter began blowing through around noon and continued for two days, dumping close to four feet of snow on the Phillips Academy campus.
Andover was all boys then, and the more than 800 of us in residence were thrilled to read the headline in The Phillipian: “Classes Canceled Monday in Unprecedented Decision as Snowstorm Buries PA.”
According to that stunning report, “A long tradition of austerity was broken when Dean G. Grenville Benedict succumbed to nature and canceled Sunday chapel and declared the following Monday a school holiday.”
The dean added that he could remember no precedent for the event in the school’s history. When the snow failed to relent on Monday, Dean Benedict declared that Tuesday would also be a snow day.
Even more memorable than the storm was the sport that it inspired: snow jumping.
Jubilant students began jumping out of dorm windows and leaping off the roofs of houses.
The most spectacular aerobatics took place outside the third-story window of my dorm, Foxcroft North, where a squad of varsity swimmers and divers and some skiers leaped repeatedly out of a back window into a mammoth pile of snow.
1966 Snow Jumpers in Action
A couple of divers performed flips, but the most remarkable feat of the day was executed by the late Robby Browne ’66, who launched himself into the air wearing only a bathing suit and boots.
Earl Maxon ’66, who lived in Foxcroft North senior year, was one of the shovelers trying to keep the snowpile fresh as photos were being taken from above. And all the excitement even compelled me to make the jump from a second-story window, right down the hall from my dorm room. Michael Tansey ’66, who thought nobody should ever jump out of a perfectly good second-story window no matter how much snow had fallen, remembers promptly leaving the dorm after.
“I was concerned that the ‘fever,’ which seemed to overcome you, might afflict me,” he said.
These days, winters seem to bring far less snow than they used to but, even now, almost 60 years later, whenever a big blizzard hits my neck of the woods, I immediately flash back to that magical day in January 1966—and it still puts a smile on my face. Happy landings!
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