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EHS: The Magazine of Episcopal High School
A Weekend to Remember
Finals wasn’t always just a dance. It was once an entire weekend.
David Dougherty ’64 recalls, “At any school, Commencement Weekend is a feast. But at Episcopal it was larded with two dances, a concert, three sit-down meals a day, and a campus bursting with the visitation of hundreds of young women. The mind boggles.”
Through most of the 19th century, the four- to five-day celebration began with the completion of the last final exam, usually spelling, and concluded with Commencement. The festivities included chapel services, the Joint Literary Society Celebration sponsored by the Fairfax and Blackford Literary Societies, and music performed by a local, often military, band.
The bands Episcopal High School booked set the tone for what always promised to be a thrilling weekend. Sometimes the Hop Committee would book the big-name bands working the colleges and universities, such as Duke Ellington for the 1954 Finals and the 17-member Tommy Dorsey Band for the 1961 Finals.
With the construction of Stewart Gym, the School was able to host its Finals Dance on campus for the first time in 1914. Moving the Finals Dance on campus allowed the School to expand the weekend’s festivities to include a jazz concert in the afternoon following the last final exam and preceding the informal, Friday night dance. Upon completion of Centennial Gym, the dance relocated to this more expansive space beginning in 1938.
Sometimes Finals was forever. Perry Epes ’65 will be celebrating his 50th wedding anniversary this year with his 1965 Finals date, Gail Allinson, who drove down from Philadelphia. But things didn’t always go as planned. For the 1943 Finals, the sister of Hugh Richardson ’48, Frances, took the train to Alexandria for the weekend. But because her date, Tommy Schneider ’43, contracted measles and was quarantined in the infirmary, Tommy’s roommate, Comer Train ’43, assumed the role as her escort for the weekend.
Dates invited from out of town were hosted by faculty families. Jackie Phillips, wife of beloved faculty member Allen Phillips, who taught at Episcopal for more than four decades, remembers the girls arriving with suitcases full of clothing for the weekend’s events. Randy Ruffin, daughter of Dick Thomsen ’30, EHS Headmaster 1951-67, recalls that her family, too, hosted quite a few dates for school dances, and as a young girl she admired the girls “coming down the stairs in their formal dresses with lots of tulle and crinolines.”
Randy later attended as a date herself while she was a student at the Madeira School. But her fondest memory of the event comes from early childhood, when she would watch the Finals Dances from the balcony of Centennial Gym, where she enjoyed a cherished dance with her father.
