The Legacy of John Burkhart

The Legacy of John Burkhart

By Ray Bailey OPC '09

John Burkhart OPC '72 has been many things during his five-decade connection with Penn Charter: student, teacher, coach, archivist, Alumni Society secretary and documentary photographer, to name a few. But among his many contributions to campus life outside the classroom, he seems to have found a particular calling in the role of Class Record advisor. 

The 2019-20 school year marked Burkhart’s 40th and final year overseeing production of PC’s yearbook, a complicated, months-long process that many would balk at taking on even once. Yet decade after decade Burkhart, along with small teams of students, has quietly set about the work of creating, collecting, editing and arranging vast amounts of copy, art and photos, finally transforming them into a handsome, embossed blue leatherette record of a year at Old Penn Charter. 

“Burky,” an Upper School history teacher by trade, approached this parallel vocation with the utmost seriousness and care, according to those who have worked with him closely. When Upper School English teacher Liz Crockett Jones thinks of John Burkhart, Class Record advisor, she pictures her colleague “tucked away in the basement, without any fanfare, doing his faithful, diligent work to create history and memories for generations of students.” 

And Jones just might know that side of him better than anyone at this point. She spent the 2019-20 school year shadowing Burkhart in order to learn the production process before taking over as Class Record advisor in the fall of 2020. Her first year on the job only further revealed to her the complexity of the task and the enormity of this piece of Burkhart's legacy.

An old proverb would sometimes ring in her head while Jones grappled with one yearbook dilemma or another for the first time on her own: “You never miss the water till the well runs dry.” 

“Burky’s a well filler,” she said. “You notice as soon as he’s gone.” 

Abrupt Beginnings

Covid-19 pandemic aside, Jones was lucky to have had a relatively smooth onboarding process during the 2019-20 school year. Such was not the case for Burkhart, who came into the job abruptly and unexpectedly in the spring of 1980. 

As his colleague Stephen A. Bonnie OPC ’66 remembers, the faculty returned from spring break that year to “a bit of commotion.” Penn Charter librarian and longtime Class Record advisor Edwin Owrid had fallen ill, putting production of the unfinished book in limbo. Then-Head of School Earl Ball called on Bonnie and Burkhart to take over the project, and they divided up the work to make it more manageable.

“Burky was the real brains of the operation,” Bonnie explained. Burkhart oversaw the editing process while Bonnie coordinated the senior class’s fundraising effort selling advertising space to family, friends and local businesses. It’s a Class Record tradition he calls “chasing the ads.”

“As usual,” Bonnie said, “a third of the kids were pretty good at getting them in, another third you sort of had to yell at, and another third you had to put on a dramatic performance for.”

A letter in the 1981 Class Record from student editor Andy Schut OPC '81 thanks Burkhart, first, for “demand[ing] so much” of yearbook staff and credits Bonnie with “salvaging our class from financial collapse”—a bit of comic overstatement that hints at the chaotic circumstances of that year’s production. After helping to get the wheels turning again, Bonnie stepped away from the Class Record and eventually found a niche in the Admissions Office, while Burkhart reconsolidated yearbook duties and settled in for another round, officially taking over from Owrid the following year.

“I think the job fit his personality because it requires a lot of organization,” Bonnie said about his longtime colleague. He’s not entirely surprised Burkhart stuck with it for so long, either: “John’s dedicated to the school, and he’s dedicated to the kids.” 

A School Book 

If there’s one clear trend from the past 40 years of Class Records, it is that they’ve become more thorough in their documentation of campus life and, by extension, significantly longer. 

That trend began early in the Burkhart era. In 1981-82, his second year as advisor, yearbook staff decided to expand the book to include all three academic divisions; the addition of class photos for grades K-11 marked a major shift in the structure and length of the book, and in the space of one year the Class Record grew from 167 pages to 210. Student editors noted the change and explained their reasoning in the yearbook staff section of the book: 

“The 1982 Class Record set two important precedents: coverage was given to every aspect of Penn Charter, from Kindergarten through the Seniors, and underclassmen were part of the process. The contributors on these pages hope to have begun a new tradition, making the yearbook a school book.” 

Dan Lai OPC ’82 remembers how he and co-editor Evan Jones, both PC lifers, felt strongly about including the entire community in the Class Record that year; they also wanted to beef up the clubs and activities section. Burkhart was on board with it all. 

“It meant a lot more work,” Lai said, “but John was really open to our ideas and worked side-by-side with us to make them happen.” In the years that followed, Burkhart took those ideas and ran with them, continuing to expand the Class Record so that recent editions extend well into the 300-page range, often doubling the length of the 1982 book—a reflection, too, of PC’s growing class sizes. 

Despite some similarities from year to year, each yearbook has its own unique design, meaning the Class Record presents not only logistical but also aesthetic challenges for staff. According to Lai, Burkhart’s temperament made him particularly well-suited to balancing those demands: “There’s a creative side to him, but he’s also someone who’s very structured and goal-oriented.” 

A Family Penchant 

According to Carl Burkhart OPC ’58, his brother John’s work on the Penn Charter yearbook is consistent with a family penchant for recordkeeping and documentation. “It’s almost genetic—it’s just the kind of thing we’re attracted to,” he said by phone from his home in North Carolina.

The Burkharts’ father, George Hon. 1689, spent much of his professional life producing reports for an insurance company; in his free time, he researched family genealogy and served as the secretary for his local bowling league. “The dining room table was always filled with bowling statistics,” Carl said. The elder Burkhart son— who made his living as a technical writer and engineering project manager, and is the official “correspondent” for the Coast Guard Academy’s class of 1962—recognizes the family disposition in himself, too.

Late in life, George Burkhart found another outlet for his record-keeping tendencies in the Penn Charter Alumni Office, where he volunteered for more than a decade beginning in the mid-1980s. His work researching OPC news and contact information, and occasionally stuffing envelopes and making calls, earned him an Honorary 1689 diploma in 1988.

The Burkhart-Penn Charter connection can be traced to former headmaster John Flagg Gummere, who had previously taught George at West Philadelphia High. The two men remained in contact after George’s graduation, bonding over their common service in the U.S. Coast Guard’s Volunteer Port Security Force. By the time George’s son Carl entered PC in 1950 as a fifth grader, Gummere was in his ninth year as headmaster, a post he would hold until 1968. Carl himself went on to the Coast Guard Academy after graduation, due in large part to Gummere’s encouragement. “He was a giant,” Carl remembered of his former headmaster. “Not physically but intellectually, and as a leader.”

George Burkhart’s younger son, John, came to PC in 1964 as a fifth grader, matriculated at Gettysburg College in 1972, and returned to School House Lane in the fall of 1979 to take up his post as a social studies teacher and alumni secretary.

“I think he just found a home,” Carl said of his brother’s extended tenure at the school. “Penn Charter was a place where he could enjoy himself and excel.”

Dedications 

John Burkhart is known for his modesty, but his reputation for avoiding the limelight hasn’t stopped students from publicly celebrating his Class Record leadership. Twice, in 1993 and 2014, Class Record staff conspired to secretly honor him with a yearbook dedication by submitting a fake page to the book’s printer and then swapping it out at the last minute.

There are common themes in both dedications: Burkhart’s reputation as a tough teacher who cares deeply about his students, his patience with seniors when faced with their perennial disregard for yearbook deadlines, and his presence at seemingly every school event, camera in hand.

“Even though it was extremely difficult to pull off,” reads 1993’s dedication, “we managed to slip this one by you. All of the sneakiness was well worth it for we could not think of a person more deserving of this distinction. … You have devoted your entire self to Penn Charter, yet you never ask for anything in return.”

The 2014 dedication declared Burkhart “a legend” and spoke to the various perspectives he brings to PC: “As a teacher, Mr. Burkhart comes off as intimidating at first, but as the year moves on, it is impossible not to like him. … As an OPC, he knows what it is like to be a student at Penn Charter. … As Class Record advisor, he continues to take on the task year after year of organizing a whining group of procrastinators, also known as the senior class, to produce a yearbook that we will all look back on to revisit our PC memories.”

In April 2021, Liz Crockett Jones and yearbook staff took one final opportunity to honor Burkhart for his service, presenting him with a plaque that bears the inscription Class Record Advisor Emeritus and features a Class Record cover in replica. The gesture was conceived of in secret, in the tradition of past yearbook staffs, and carried out as a surprise before their humble teacher and colleague could object.

In His Own Words 

Burkhart retired from teaching after the 2018-19 school year and has continued to lend his talents to the Penn Charter archives and School Store. It’s a welcomed change of pace, he said, and though he looks back fondly on his Class Record days he’s happy to finally put the job behind him. 

What kept him motivated for so long? "I've been blessed with very good editors,” Burkhart said, “and wonderful writers, photographers and artists. … I wouldn't say they made my job easy, but they definitely made it more palatable." 

Ever the historian, Burkhart was determined to publish yearbooks that would capture "a really good sense of what life was like at Penn Charter" at any given time. From the '60s to the early '80s, Class Records were sometimes a bit unstructured in this regard: "Those books don't always allow you to gather much historical understanding of the school,” he said. “I always tell the students, you're not just writing a joke book for your classmates, you're writing something for your grandchildren." 

Aside from those general guidelines, Burkhart preferred to give his staff free rein. So while he always helped students weigh the consequences of their editorial decisions, he ultimately left those decisions up to them. It's an approach that allows staff to develop a greater sense of responsibility for their work, he explained—"and that's necessary because it's a very long process." 

Throughout that process, students experience the value of sustained commitment to a long-term goal, and the delayed gratification that goes along with it. Burkhart would often instill this expectation in yearbook staff early on in the school year, offering a pep talk to prepare them for the difficult task ahead: 

"I’d tell them, ‘You're going to work really hard for the next six months, then you'll go on spring break and be biting your nails waiting for the book to come in. But when it finally does you're going to open it up and see something you created and it's going to feel meaningful to you.’" 

A lesson in dedication, you might say, from an authority on the subject. 

– Ray Bailey OPC '09