By Jenie Michael

Staff Writer

Most people can’t wait to graduate and get out of this school and this town. On the other hand, Michael Towers, playwright, teacher, and head of Westford Academy’s theatre arts department, came back after his four years for more of Westford Academy.

After graduating in ’88, Towers attended St. Anselm College, in Manchester, NH, but shortly transferred to Boston College, where he had originally been wait-listed. Towers didn’t plan on coming back and teaching for WA, and after graduating college, moved to New York City to pursue his career in acting.

“A series of events brought me back to Massachusetts [from New York], and in that time I was looking for work in California. During that interim time [when I was in Massachusetts], I pretty much got an offer from the principal of WA at the time, which was Joe Licci,” said Towers.

Towers had originally denied the offer, on the basis that he was headed for a different career path. But after finding reason to stay in Massachusetts, he came back to Licci and asked, according to Towers, “What in the world were you talking about? Tell me this vision of yours for me.”

“He said, ‘You’re going to come to Westford Academy, and you’re going to teach in the English department, and you’re going to open the theater department’… so he carved a place for me here,” said Towers.

Once back at the school, Towers was in among many teachers who he once, not long before, had studied under. He says that it wasn’t awkward for him while it may very well have been for the older teachers. Though he did have a bit of trouble fitting in at first.

“[Dr. Spadano] was the first person [among my colleagues] to say ‘come and sit with me.’ Because before that time, all my teachers, everybody was Mr. and Mrs. and Dr. to me, and I was a little bit alone in terms of fitting in with my teachers as a teacher. And Dr. Spadano was the first to actually sit at a table alone with me. Nobody else joined us that day, I’ll never forget that,” said Towers.

And Dr. Spadano, who teaches math at WA, says he’ll never forget Mike Towers either. Spadano, an alumnus himself, says he didn’t know Towers all that well until he became a teacher because he wasn’t in any of his classes. When he did go and sit with Towers, it was out of politeness. A new teacher, a returning student, he was trying to make him feel at home. Evidently, he succeeded.

For Towers, school was more than just an obligation when he attended WA as a student. He actually enjoyed coming to school, and rarely, if ever, tried to find a way out of class. He remarked that this was perhaps his romantic recollection, but he remembers wanting to be in school and wanting to learn.

“I loved being here. I didn’t miss school; I wasn’t sick because I wanted to be here. It was a warm, comfortable  place where people truly…cared about each other…it was very apparent to me that the faculty was a very pro-student focused group. … It was a very healthy place to be, so I consider myself lucky, which is why I’m back here now,” said Towers.

In the years Towers attended WA, he was extremely involved. He was a three-sport athlete, in the band, involved in theater, and his class’s president.

“He was new to the school, a transfer student. He was just a guy who wanted to make friends right away,” said Mark Lucey, who was Towers’s guidance counselor at WA, and still works here as Towers’s son’s, “So he went out for everything, he played instruments, he became a class officer, and he just wanted to make an impact on the school.”

And there is no doubt that he has made an impact. Now teaching at the same school, Towers is still very involved. His range isn’t quite so broad, but he takes on a plethora of roles within the school and on the faculty. He is a teacher of multiple courses and electives, the founder and head of Westford Academy’s Theater Arts department, and even spends his summer here running SSPA [Summer School for the Performing Arts] for six weeks.

Towers is constantly lecturing his students on the human condition, and one of the things he describes a healthy human to have is buoyancy, which he defines as the ability to bounce back. Coincidentally, he has done just that. He left WA, and bounced right back.