Amelia Earhart, the Kansas-born aviation pioneer, once attended the Ogontz School for Young Ladies, an elite girls’ boarding school which became Penn State Abington in 1950.

According to local historian Chuck Langerman, Earhart began studying in 1916 at the Ogontz School’s site at Jay Cooke’s estate in Elkins Park, located at Washington Lane and Ashbourne Road. Her second year at Ogontz was in Rydal after the school moved to what is now Penn State Abington. 

Her accolades at Ogontz include serving as the student body vice president, secretary of the Ogontz Red Cross Chapter, and secretary and treasurer of a group called Christian Endeavor. She was also a member of a sorority and known for trying to make sororities more inclusive for women. According to University archives, Earhart clashed frequently with the school’s owner and headmistress Abby Sutherland.

According to The Historical Society of Montgomery County, Earhart left the school to become a nurse’s aide. She and her husband later visited the Ogontz School, during which she told the Times-Herald, “My husband considers himself an alumnus of the school he has heard me speak of it so frequently.”

From Penn State University’s Outstanding Alumnae page:

Amelia was not raised in the luxury enjoyed by most Ogontz girls. Though her maternal grandfather was a successful judge in Atchison, Kansas, where Amelia was born, her father had a checkered and botched career that kept the family on the move, and far from wealthy. After attending many schools, she graduated from Hyde Park High School in Chicago in 1916. Soon after, her mother came into some inheritance funds that offered an opportunity to send Amelia and her sister, Muriel, to private schools. With Bryn Mawr as her ultimate goal, Amelia entered The Ogontz School at the Jay Cooke estate that fall. She was 19 years old.

Most widely known was a battle over the retention of sororities. Finding them too exclusive, Amelia—who was already a member of one—sought to have more societies created so that all girls could join. Miss Sutherland’s solution was to disband them entirely. Amelia wound up on an Honor Board, created in part to prevent the sorority girls from disobeying the rules and meeting in secret.

Obviously a natural leader, Amelia was voted class vice-president as a senior. She also was secretary of the Ogontz Red Cross chapter—a group that knitted sweaters for the allied troops in World War I—and secretary/treasurer to a group called Christian Endeavor.

Earhart said in a 1936 lecture in Norristown that she had no concrete plans for another flight. However, the following year, she attempted to fly around the world with her navigator Fred Noonan. In July of 1937, Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra disappeared over the Pacific Ocean.

Experts interviewed for a 2017 History Channel documentary titled “Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence” say an image proves that Earhart survived. According to The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, there is also evidence in the form of bones and a shoe which suggests that Earhart may have crash-landed on an island and died waiting for rescue.

Though she never graduated, Earhart was named an honorary member of the Class of 1930. A collection of photos, letters and her report card, as well as books and articles about her during her time at Ogontz can be found here.

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Photos courtesy of The Historical Society of Montgomery County, Penn State University