Editing a page-slug.php page with Wordpress pages tool

So, I have inherited the maintenance for an older Wordpress site, and recently upgraded it from 2.8->4. I have a page-front.php file that works as the front page, and which the professor who uses the website previously edited like a normal Page in the Pages interface.

What confuses me, is that there was no custom template for this page; it appears to have been simply showing up, using the exact code in the page-front.php file, but editable using Wordpress' Pages function. Since the upgrade, the redirect works, and I see the custom page when I go to mysite/front.php, but in the Pages interface, Front Page appears and is blank (does not show any content). Is there a way to duplicate the former functionality in the current version of Wordpress, or do I have to write a custom template to format the page in the desired fashion, and then add the content in using the Pages interface?