Obituary: Amy Kleppner, 1931-2024

Amy M. Kleppner was born in 1931 in Boston, Mass., and over the course of her 93 years had several long careers.

Her career as a teacher started in the early 1960s, when she taught philosophy at Howard University, where her students included both future civil rights leader Stokely Carmichael and future novelist Claude Brown. After taking a few years off to start a family, Amy went back to work and taught English in Maryland high schools for decades.

She was a public speaker and a writer and published numerous articles on subjects ranging from historical art to driver safety to hiking and more. She also published three books, the last of which, about Amelia Earhart’s advocacy for women’s rights, will be released in early 2026.

She had a lifetime of adventuring, starting as a teenager in the 1940s, when she biked from Boston to Québec City. She climbed all 46 of the High Peaks in the Adirondacks; she led her young son and nephews in hiking end to end on Vermont’s Long Trail (250 miles); she canal boated in France; she trekked in Siberia, Alaska, Spain and New Zealand; and she went swimming in Antarctica. She celebrated her 63rd birthday by climbing Half Dome in Yosemite, her 77th birthday by kayaking the 350-mile Connecticut River end to end, her 85th birthday by doing a 100-mile hike in England and, at the age of 92, set off for the Mediterranean to retrace some of Odysseus’ voyage.

Always active, she played basketball, field hockey, lacrosse and volleyball in high school and college and enjoyed tennis, volleyball, hiking and cross-county skiing in later years.

During all those years of teaching, writing and adventuring, Amy was a wife, a mother, a grandmother and a beloved aunt. She married Adam Kleppner in 1958, and they were married for 59 years, until his death in 2018. They were both teachers in Maryland during the school year. In 1963 they bought an old farmhouse in Wardsboro, Vt., where they lived during the summers, until they retired and moved to Wardsboro full time. That home became a family gathering place where two generations of cousins and second cousins have grown up together. During those summer days in Wardsboro, she organized games of spud, croquet, badminton and tennis. Amy took her two children and various nephews, nieces and grandchildren hiking, camping and swimming across Vermont and across continents.

Amy was a pioneer and lifelong advocate for women’s rights and racial justice. In the 1950s, after attending Smith College (BA) and Mount Holyoke College (MA), she became one of the first women ever to earn a PhD in philosophy from Columbia University. She was active in the campaign to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, appeared in a campaign video for Hilary Clinton, and was a long-time supporter of women’s organizations such as Planned Parenthood, the Safety Team and the Population Media Center. After Amy retired from teaching, she became only the second woman in Wardsboro’s 200-plus-year history to be elected to the board of selectmen and the first to insist that it change its name to the selectboard to eliminate the gender bias in the word selectmen. She was reelected four times before retiring from that position. In retirement, she established the Shared Opportunity Scholarship at Purdue University for a young woman of color who otherwise would not have been able to attend college.

Her advocacy for women’s rights, her adventurous spirit and her athleticism were all traits she shared with — and were perhaps inspired by — her aunt, Amelia Earhart. Amy was almost certainly one of the last people who personally knew Amelia, who disappeared when Amy was just shy of her 6th birthday. Amy became the steward of Amelia’s legacy and worked to ensure that Amelia’s lifelong advocacy on behalf of women’s equality wasn’t overshadowed by her celebrity as a pilot or her dramatic disappearance.

Amy stayed active until the end: She wrote that book about Amelia’s activism for women’s rights (completed at age 90); added a stone terrace to her house (completed at age 91); built a community solar farm in her field to provide Wardsboro families with lower-cost electricity (completed at age 92); and converted her 220-year-old home’s heating system to heat pumps (completed at age 93).

The evening she died, at age 93, she had dinner with family in her home, had a bowl of pistachio ice cream for dessert, made her way to her favorite chair in her living room and died in her son’s arms, ending her long, rich life with a peaceful death.

She is survived by her sons, Bram and Caleb; her daughters-in-law, Genevieve Henry and Susannah Bernheim; six grandchildren; a brother-in-law and two sisters-in-law; many nephews and nieces; and her longtime roommate, care provider, chief of staff and dear friend, Suzanne Harrington.

To honor Amy, please make a contribution to the Wardsboro Public Library:  Planned Parenthood of Northern New England; the Safety Team; or the Population Media Center.

This article appears in Dec 11-17, 2024.