Kennedy School

The John F. Kennedy School, an elementary school at 20 Kimbrough Road in East Billerica, stands on the westerly 25 acres of an old farm that lay behind Salem Road. For more than a century the deeds described that farm in the same words: a thirteen-acre lot "Northeasterly by the road leading to Salem", bounded by land of Joel Baldwin and Theophilus Manning, and behind it a forty-acre lot bounded by Baldwin, Perkins Holden, John Crosby and Manning. Ebenezer Page, a Billerica farmer, put it together in the late 1820s, buying the thirteen acres from Ezra Allen in March 1827 and the forty acres from Joseph Kendall Jr., administrator of Cyrus Kendall, in July 1828.

On September 2, 1862, Ebenezer Page deeded both lots to his youngest son, James Page, for $1,500 and "other good and sufficient considerations", and James gave his father a mortgage the same day to secure a bond, evidently for his parents' support. Ebenezer's will, written that day and allowed in 1868, divided only his Tewksbury land and his household goods, since the farm had already passed to James. The farm later belonged to Martha F. Page, and under her will it came to Anne M. P. Hall, Mabel H. Hall and Lucy Hall Hyde, who sold it in August 1918 to John and Annie Thomas of Billerica.

The Thomases sold the farm in December 1927 to Alphonse Gaidamovich, then of Boston. In April 1928 he and his wife Annie granted the New England Power Construction Company a strip 250 feet wide across their land for a high-voltage transmission line, the line that still runs along the north and west sides of the school grounds. In September 1929 Gaidamovich sold the farm to John Wortowik of Boston and took a mortgage back. When Wortowik fell behind, the farm was sold at auction on the premises on July 26, 1930, and the mortgagee's deed gave it to Annie Gaidamovich for $700. Annie conveyed it to Ona Kassell in March 1938, and Kassell deeded it back to the couple that November and again, by a confirming deed, in August 1947. In 1944 the family also granted the Colonial Beacon Oil Company an easement for a petroleum pipe line. In September 1947 the Gaidamoviches sold the farm, "with the buildings thereon", to John D. Cooke and Gerard Bruno, who sold it in January 1948 to James H. and Marie E. Finney of Salem Road.

By the early 1960s new subdivisions in East Billerica and River Pines had crowded the elementary schools, and the school department's report for 1962 warned that East Billerica would soon need a school of its own. In January 1963 a special town meeting let the Permanent School Building Committee take options on land in East Billerica. At the March 1963 town meeting the voters ordered the Selectmen to buy twenty-five acres of the Finney land on Salem Road, with a fifty-foot right of way to the road, for $25,000, and gave the committee $5,000 for borings and preliminary plans. The Finneys deeded the lot to the Town on October 11, 1963, as shown on a July 1963 plan by Emmons and Fleming made for the building committee. The March 1964 town meeting appropriated $1,175,000 to build and equip the school, borrowing $1,125,000. The same warrant asked the town to name the new West Billerica school for John F. Kennedy, who had been killed the previous November, but that article was postponed indefinitely. The West Billerica school became the Dutile School, and the East Billerica building, reached by the new Kimbrough Road, became the John F. Kennedy School.

Construction ran through 1964 and 1965, and payments to the contractor came to more than $900,000 by the end of 1966. The school's pupils had to wait. In the fall of 1965 its first through fifth graders attended double sessions at the Parker School, and its sixth graders were housed at the Pollard School. The building opened in February 1966 with 724 pupils in 24 classes. By December 1966 there were 820, and the remedial reading room had become a classroom. The principal called the building "a lasting memorial to the late president who valued education so highly", and the town accepted Kimbrough Road as a public way that year. Later town reports call it the John F. Kennedy Memorial Elementary School.

Enrollment kept rising. By December 1967 the school had 880 pupils and was using its library as a classroom. In 1975 the town meeting voted down a plan to add kindergarten wings to the Kennedy, Dutile and Vining Schools. In 1976 the Park Department graded fields and built tennis courts on the school land, and in 1984 the Kennedy roof was among those repaired under a $651,000 bond issue. The Kennedy School Sports Complex was rebuilt in 1999 and 2000. The school still belongs to the Town of Billerica, on a parcel of 26.3 acres, and is one of the town's elementary schools.

References

1. Billerica Annual Reports 1960-1964: 1963 town meeting Articles 5, 61 and 62 (options, $25,000 for the Finney land); 1964 Article 51 ($1,175,000 for the East Billerica school) and Article 56 (Kennedy name for the West Billerica school, postponed)
2. Billerica Annual Reports 1965-1969: 1965 Kennedy School report (pupils on double sessions at the Parker School); 1966 report (opened February 1966 with 724 pupils in 24 classes; "a lasting memorial to the late president")
3. Billerica Annual Reports 1975-1979: 1975 Article 26 (kindergarten additions to the Dutile, Kennedy and Vining Schools defeated); 1976 fields and tennis courts at the Kennedy School
4. Billerica assessor, 20 Kimbrough Rd (parcel 44-61-0): Town of Billerica School Department, 26.342 acres, school built about 1966, deed Book 1621 Page 490, Plan 99-39

Title References Expand all

Recorded is Book/Page at the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds unless noted; Probate # is a Middlesex probate case, Ctf a Land Court certificate of title.