Catherine L. Livingston Torre

Catherine L. "Kay" Livingston was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 25, 1917, a daughter of Andrew J. and Bridget M. (McCluskey) Livingston. She graduated from the Cambridge High and Latin School, and her family moved to Billerica in the 1930s. She trained as a teacher at the State Teachers College at Lowell, where she earned a Bachelor of Science in Education, and joined the Billerica schools in 1937 as a first grade teacher at the Talbot School in North Billerica. By 1939 she had moved to the Ditson School in Pinehurst, where she taught first, second and fifth grades. On November 13, 1943 she married Joseph F. Torre of Billerica, and her resignation from the Ditson School is recorded among the school changes of that year.

Mrs. Torre returned to the Billerica schools in 1951, one of a large group of teachers appointed that year. She taught fifth grade for six years, in the Old Howe School building at Billerica Centre, at the new Parker School and at the Pollard School, where she taught in 1956 under Esther A. Moglia. When the Vining School opened in 1957 and Helen E. Remick left the Howe Elementary School to lead it, the Superintendent reported that "Mrs. Catherine Torre was appointed principal at Howe Elementary School."

As principal she also taught a fifth grade of her own. The school held four fifth grade classes, about 150 children, more than nine in ten of them brought by bus from North, East and West Billerica and River Pines. Her reports noted that the building was "over a hundred years old" but in good condition, that new flooring had been laid, and that a "hot soup program" in cold weather was "a great asset to the children in the absence of hot lunch facilities." She grouped reading classes by ability, held individually scheduled parent conferences, and opened her classrooms to music students of the State College at Lowell for their practice teaching. In 1963 she moved to the Pollard School, then 216 fourth graders, and urged that its coal burning boiler be replaced with an oil burner; in 1964 she was principal of all the "Center Elementary Schools," the Pollard, the Howe Elementary and the sixth grades housed in the Howe Junior High School, where she arranged a home-to-school telephone service so that a sixth grader kept at home by injuries could follow the class.

In 1965 she was named the first principal of the John F. Kennedy School in East Billerica. The building was not ready that fall, so her 631 pupils in the first five grades spent the year on double sessions at the Parker School. The school opened in February 1966 with 724 pupils in 24 classes, and in her report she thanked the School Committee, the Permanent Building Committee and the townspeople for "such a beautiful and functional building" to stand as "a lasting memorial to the late president who valued education so highly." It filled quickly: by December 1967 it held 880 pupils, the library had been turned into a third grade classroom, and eleven buses brought 88 percent of the children. She led the Kennedy School for sixteen years, and when she retired in 1981 the Superintendent recorded that she had served the town for thirty-six years.

She later received a master's degree from Salem State. Mrs. Torre was a communicant of St. Theresa Church in Billerica, where she belonged to the Women's Club and the St. Vincent de Paul Society, and she was a member of the Billerica Historical Society and the Retired Educators Association of Massachusetts. Her husband, Joseph F. Torre, died before her. She died at the Palm Center in Chelmsford on April 21, 2018, at the age of 100, and was buried in Fox Hill Cemetery in Billerica.

References

1. Billerica Town Report: School enrollment tables, 1937 (Talbot School, Miss Livingston, Grade 1)
2. Billerica Town Report: Report of the Superintendent of Schools, 1943 (resignation of Catherine Livingston, Ditson School)
3. Billerica Town Report: Report of the Superintendent of Schools, 1951 (appointment of Catherine L. Torre)
4. Billerica Town Report: Report of the Superintendent of Schools, 1957 (Mrs. Catherine Torre appointed principal at Howe Elementary School)
5. Billerica Town Report: Report of the Howe Elementary School, 1961 (enrollment, busing, building over a hundred years old; signed Catherine L. Torre, Principal)
6. Billerica Town Report: Report of the Center Elementary Schools, 1964 (Pollard, Howe Elementary and Junior High elementary section; signed Catherine L. Torre)
7. Billerica Town Report: John F. Kennedy School report, 1965 (school not yet ready, double sessions at the Parker School)
8. Billerica Town Report: John F. Kennedy School report, 1966 (opened February 1966 with 724 pupils; "a lasting memorial")
9. Billerica Town Report: Report of the Superintendent of Schools, 1981 (retirement of Mrs. Catherine Torre, Kennedy School Principal, after thirty-six years)
10. Find a Grave: Catherine L. "Kay" Livingston Torre (1917 to 2018), Fox Hill Cemetery, Billerica; obituary from the Lowell Sun, April 23, 2018