Celebrating the Women of Northwood
Gay Longenecker and Darcy Prime
by Stephen Reed
When students look back upon their Northwood years, their first and most treasured memories are of the bonds forged with friends. Only seventeen girls were part of the group that entered in 1971. Two of them, day students Darcy Prime and Gay Longnecker, enrolled in part because they knew their friendship would sustain them as they joined the first cohort of young women at Northwood. Gay wrote, “Without Darcy, I might not have been brave enough to go it alone.” Darcy, who had been boarding at a school in New Hampshire, was delighted by the chance to go to Northwood, less than a mile’s walk through the woods from her home. Gay’s presence was to Darcy “the cherry on top.” What follows are some of their reflections on that year, quoted directly from recent correspondence with me.
Darcy: I remember Northwood’s warm welcome well. I now belonged to a large family consisting of 16 sisters and 125 brothers. I had felt isolated and somewhat imprisoned at St. Mary’s the year before. With the full support of Northwood behind me, I flourished in this novel environment.
Gay: We both lived in town and were day students, not boarders, which made us outsiders just a bit, but not because we were female. Entering Northwood was a new adventure – academically challenging, socially unfamiliar, and exciting.
Darcy: Every day was an adventure inside and outside the classroom. I remember classes taught by you and John Scott, for example, as both deeply motivating and fun; a lot of dynamic learning, heated discussions, and laughter emanated from those classrooms. I would later major in English at Stanford and pursue a career in education inspired by those years.
Gay: I think it is accurate to say that the female co-eds were an interesting attraction and distraction. In the classroom, I felt as if I was in focus, and I wanted to make a good impression to affirm that I was academically prepared and could match wits with the young men who surrounded me. In retrospect, the two years I spent at Northwood gave me a certain confidence in the years that followed. Specifically, I remember the impact you and John Scott had on me – both of you had a gift for teaching the humanities. You two challenged kids to think beyond themselves, not a natural state of mind for teenagers. I credit you both with my decision to spend 36 years in education as a high school English teacher and an assistant principal in New Hampshire.
Darcy: Never a dull moment when class ended for the day, and I got to work with Linda Friedlander and the indomitable Steve Dennin on The Mirror. I remember Steve asking me to cover Northwood hockey, so I hunted down Rex Steele, who had to teach me the rules of this unfamiliar boys’ sport minutes before the first game. This began my life-long love for hockey, which I still follow today (I have a season pass to the San Jose Sharks). I also covered the ski team of which I was one of only a handful of girl racers. We trained with the boys’ team under Bruce Colon’s patient coaching. I recall my racing improved a lot, which I attribute to the boys’ more aggressive skiing and watching the likes of Tom Woodman and Dean Gigantelli’s perfect form. I eventually competed on my college ski team thanks to Bruce and the boys.
Gay: I remember feeling at home as the weeks rolled into months. I have warm memories of becoming friends very quickly with many of “the guys” and of our times together in and between classes sitting on the couches and oversized chairs in the grand living room. On the weekends, we cruised Main Street together, went to the hockey games at the arena, and planned ways to sneak the boys off campus after hours – totally breaking the rules. Of these times I have many memories, none of which are academic! Life then felt safe and relatively uncomplicated, and when juxtaposed to the lives of today’s teenagers, it was simple and harmless.
Darcy: As one of Northwood’s first girls, I can only say the school had a profoundly positive effect on me and my future. The school did an amazing job of welcoming us with open arms and respecting our minority status. It encouraged freedom to explore and develop life-long interests as well as encouraging me to think out of the box. Where else could I have completed my senior project on the history of textile arts, resulting in my final “paper” being a needlepoint rendering of the Northwood crest?
Gay: Shakespeare mentioned the notion of remembering things “with advantages” and Hamlet claimed, “Nothing is either is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” When I reflect on those long-ago days, I smile on how lucky I was: without a doubt, my Northwood experience influenced and guided my path forward.”
Darcy: Fifty years later I still miss my nightly calls with Gay delighting in discussing how our Hemingway papers were progressing and how well Collier, Steele, Liming, and Remington played lacrosse that afternoon and who had a crush on whom. If only those walls could speak…
After reading their thoughts, you can understand why I remember these two so fondly. For me the “icing on the cake” was their decision to devote their lives to education: Gay, as a teacher and administrator; Darcy as an admissions officer at Stanford and as an advisor in the college application process. Northwood has much reason to be proud of both.