Jonathan Hanford Olds:
A Legacy for the Future
Judith A. Lopacki
Director of Planned Giving
Academy of the New Church/Bryn Athyn College
General Church of the New Jerusalem
I
n the fall of 2013, Jonathan Hanford Olds, Academy Class of 1942, received
the usual Charter Day mailing. He was living in Florida and had not been to
Bryn Athyn since the 50th reunion of his class in 1992.
This gentle reminder of his roots prompted him to call his attorney and
cousin, Bob Adams, and ask to have his will rewritten. He wanted to leave
an endowed scholarship to the Academy Secondary Schools. We didn’t hear
anything more until August 2015 when we received an email from Jonathan’s
nephew, Jonathan Smith of Glenview, telling us that his uncle, Jonathan Olds,
had passed into the spiritual world and had left most of his estate to the
Academy Secondary Schools.
Jonathan was born on January 22, 1924, in Huntingdon Valley,
Pennsylvania, to the late Charles Lewis Olds M.D. and his second wife, Irene
Ayres Mansfield Olds. Charles and his first wife, Mary Johnson, a Smith
College graduate also educated at Oxford, were both homeopathic physicians
who became pioneers in the wilderness of Marco Island, Florida. There they
raised three daughters: Saloma, Rosalie and Orida. With Mary’s death, Charles
returned to the Bryn Athyn area where he married Irene, who gave birth to
Joselyn Olds Smith and her brother, Jonathan.
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