IUP Receives Quarter-Million to Fund Swimming Scholarships

While sitting on the deck of the Memorial Field House pool one day last fall, Jack Pidgeon, retired prep school headmaster turned volunteer IUP coach, asked Head Coach Dave Caldwell, “Do you mean to tell me that they come up here and take all this baloney from us every day just because they love it?” Caldwell confirmed there were no swimming scholarships at IUP.

He was floored. And so the John A. Pidgeon Endowed Swimming Scholarship was established, thanks to Pidgeon's $250,000 donation to IUP.

Recipients of the scholarship will be chosen annually by the coaching staff of the IUP swim team, the director of intercollegiate athletics, and the Pidgeon family.

While volunteering with IUP’s team, Pidgeon, who resides in Indiana, was impressed by the performance and attitudes of the swimmers. While he said he had expected to work with wet-behind-the-ears swimmers, he was thoroughly surprised by the heart and dedication that many of the swimmers possessed.

“This is an incredibly generous gift to IUP, building a solid foundation of what will become an extraordinary legacy of academic and athletic excellence for IUP and its student athletes,” said Dr. Diane L. Reinhard, IUP interim president. “Donations like these have the power to literally change lives and shape futures. We are very grateful to Jack and his family for this commitment to our students and to IUP.”

Pidgeon, the son of woolen-mill workers, attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., on a scholarship. At Andover, he excelled academically and athletically, becoming noted for his abilities in swimming, football and baseball.

Following his time in prep school, he entered the Navy and served in the North Atlantic during World War II and is a decorated veteran. While serving, Pidgeon received injuries to his leg and back but later participated in the 1948 U.S. Olympic swimming trials while attending Bowdoin College in Maine. Joining the faculty at Deerfield Academy in 1949, he taught Latin and coached swimming. While at Deerfield, he developed more All-American swimmers than any other coach in history.

In 1957, Pidgeon became the headmaster of the Kiski School in Saltsburg, a private boarding school for boys. During the next 45 years, he turned Kiski into one of the most prestigious single-sex, college-preparatory schools in the U.S. He received honorary doctorate degrees from Bethany College in Bethany, W.Va., and from Washington and Jefferson College in Washington, Pa.

Father of four and married to Barbara Hafer, treasurer of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Pidgeon holds the distinction of being the longest reigning headmaster of a single-sex preparatory school by the National Association of Independent Schools.

“Swimming is a wonderful sport and depends almost solely on character and determination, and these are qualities I admire greatly,” Pidgeon said. “This scholarship will enable the graduates of this college to assume their rightful positions as leaders of this country in the future,” he said, urging others to join him in this effort.