Longtime Akron educator Vera Cogan O’Neill began her career as a teacher, but she really was a lifelong student. O’Neill, Akron’s first female high school principal and a former school board member, died July 16 in Sarasota, Fla., where she had been a resident since 2002. She was 97.“She was always interested in so many things,” her niece Lyn Guinter Phelps said.