According to local historian Mike Leibrandt, Ashton Baldwin Carter, former U.S. Secretary of Defense, attended Highland Elementary School and graduated from Abington Senior High School in 1972.

Born in Philadelphia in 1954, Carter grew up on Wheatsheaf Lane, and in high school, he was a member of the cross-country, lacrosse, and wrestling teams and served as president of the Honor Society.

As a child he was nicknamed “Ash” and “Stoobie.” He was fired from a job at a Philadelphia car wash at age eleven for “wise-mouthing the owner.”

Thirty years ago, Carter took his first major political appointment as Assistant Secretary of Defense for President Bill Clinton. He went on to serve as the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, United States Deputy Secretary of Defense, and Secretary of Defense under Barack Obama. His role as Secretary of Defense ended when the Trump Administration took office on January 20, 2017.

He was also a physicist and a former Harvard University professor of Science and International Affairs. He earned undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate degrees from the University Edinburgh, Yale College, the University of Oxford, St. John’s College, Rockefeller University, and MIT.

Carter died from a heart attack at his home in Boston, Massachusetts on October 24, 2022, one month after his 68th birthday.

In 1989, he was inducted into Abington Senior High School’s Hall of Fame.

He visited his alma mater on March 30, 2015 to deliver remarks and kick off his Force of the Future tour. For more on his visit to Abington Senior High School, you can click here.

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Photos courtesy of Abington School District, Wikipedia Commons