This is the second of our Lowell Stories series, and the second by Melissa Franks. The first story was about Melissa’s dad, the late Bill Franks. We plan to make Lowell Stories a regular feature on this website. If you have a story to share, get in touch and we’ll help preserve it in print.

Richard Howe

 LOWELL STORIES: “Twirling and other twists”

As told by Connie (Pigeon) St. Pierre, LHS Class of 1960

By Melissa Franks

In 1960, for the 25^th Anniversary of the Lowell High School Baton Twirlers, the team’s instructor Wilfrid T. Boulger broke with tradition.   Rather than designate just a handful of the seniors as “Leaders on the Field,” Mr. Boulger, who formed the group in 1935 with 29 members, elected instead to name as “Leaders” the entirety of the senior-class twirlers.  There happened to be 25 of them that year, and they would lead a squad of 91 strong.

Among these girls was Connie St. Pierre, née Constance Pigeon, who said: “Mr. Boulger liked all of us.  Our senior group was so large and Mr. Boulger wanted to keep us all, so he devised a different routine for all the leaders.”

Connie in LHS twirler regalia

Connie had been on the team since her freshman year at LHS.  She’d spent 4^th through 8^th grade at Sacred Heart School, not far from her London Street home in Ayres City near the Spaghettiville Bridge.  As the oldest of the six Pigeon children, she joined the twirler troupe thinking it would be fun.  It proved to be that and so much more.

For Connie, twirling became a way of life.  She and her teammates practiced several hours a day, three days a week, for the entire school year.   They twirled at every Lowell High football game, home and away.  When the football season ended, they prepped for the school- and city-wide celebrations, Field Day and Memorial Day.  “We went all school year,” she said.

LHS baton twirler seniors sported special uniforms:  white silk dresses with gold ribbons and pleated gold skirting, complete with majorette top hats.  Underclassmen donned all-white uniforms with pillbox hats worn aslant.  But while the 1960 LHS senior twirlers were all dubbed “Leaders,” Connie said a few truly stood out, including Barbara (Quinney) Capone, that year’s “Head Leader,” and Ann (Evans) Silva.  “Those girls could twirl a baton like you couldn’t believe,” she said.

Baton Twirlers kicking from the sidelines

1960 Twirler Team Head Leader Barbara (Quinney) Capone

For Connie it was more about the camaraderie.  At football games, she said you could find her in the stands “kicking my legs and singing.”   At halftime, the team took to the field to perform for the mass of spectators.  “I didn’t understand football at the time, except that I wanted Lowell High School to win.  I was just there for the fun,” she said.

Traveling to “away” games, the twirlers sang the song passed to them by prior generations of LHS twirlers, which Connie can still recite:

 –We are the twirlers, the drum majorettes: we are the Lowell high school twirlers. 

–We put on a show that we hope you will like:  we try to entertain you.

–Everybody loves the twirlers because we’re charming and oh so graceful.

Beside football games, the biggest event of the year was Lowell High School Field Day.  “Field Day was a very big deal,” said Connie.  It was the Girl Officers and Cadets who led and organized the Field Day parade.  Expertly juggling “pins,” the Girl Officers headed the LHS senior Class, followed by the Cadets leading the grades who had trained in their gym classes, with juniors mastering the “clubs,” sophomores the pom-poms, and freshman the “hoops.”

While they might have been slotted into the parade lineup wherever they best fit, the Lowell High School Baton Twirlers were, all the same, prime performers—a team with its own special character and culture.  “Mr. Boulger told us that if we were to try out for Girl Officers, we had to quit twirlers because both were such big commitments,” Connie said.  Both Field Day and Memorial Day included long parades that traversed Merrimack and Central Streets, ending at the South Common, always in-tune with the Lowell High School Band.

All these years later, the memories and friendships run deep.  Connie remains best friends with her twirling doubles partner Cindy (Bowlan) Keefe.  And at least seven of the 1960 senior class twirlers still get together monthly.

Present-day photo of twirler friends: Top row: Ruth (Bither) Cooper; Connie (Pigeon) St. Pierre; Frannie (Downes) Moore. Bottom 4: Elaine (Caunter) McKenney; Barbara (Mullen) MacNichol Cindy (Bowlan) Keefe and Pat (Silva) DeFreites

In fact, as Connie tells it, she met her husband as a result of the twirlers.  When she was 21, her twirler teammate Dottie (Moran) Toth invited Connie to join her at the bustling Commodore Ballroom on Thorndike Street.  Shortly thereafter, Raymond St. Pierre (LHS Class of 1949) invited Connie to dance.  “He was very smooth.  He was a good dancer,” she said.

While Connie regularly danced the Waltz, the Fox Trot and the Cha-Cha (to Bobby Darin) at the ballroom with Ray and others, it was several months later, when the two met by chance on Merrimack Street, that Ray asked Connie out.  They continued to dance at area clubs, including Tonello’s in Tewksbury, which featured band leader and sax player Norm Bistany.  On September 17, 1966, when Connie was 24, Bistany’s band also played at Connie and Ray’s wedding.

Newlyweds Connie and Raymond St. Pierre

Connie still cuts a rug on occasion, including when her son Jim plays drums at local establishments with a few different bands.  And, she said: “I still have two batons and I can still do a little bit.”   

Connie & Jim St. Pierre