Caroline Burgess Dickens Kent, a retired research scientist, died at home in the arms of her husband, William Mallory Kent, on Saturday, July 14, 2018. Caroline was 63 years old.
A Memorial Mass will be celebrated for Caroline at Assumption Catholic Church, 2403 Atlantic Blvd., Jacksonville, Fla., at 6 p.m. Friday, August 24, 2018. Organ prelude will begin at 5:45 p.m. All are invited.
October 16, 2018 would have been her 26th wedding anniversary. She died following a courageous fight against a metastatic cancer that caused her to endure months of great suffering, during which she did not once complain, but simply accepted and fought with every therapy that could be attempted.
Caroline was born in Jacksonville and raised in Fernandina Beach, Fla. She started college a year early at Jacksonville University, transferred to Florida Institute of Technology and then transferred to the University of Florida, where she earned a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry and Microbiology in 1977. She was one of the first women to work in the then-male-dominated field of industrial chemistry, applying for and being hired as an industrial chemist at Allied Chemical Company in Brunswick, Ga., where she worked two years while saving money for graduate school. She then was accepted in 1979 into the graduate microbiology virology program at the University of Miami, where she earned her Ph.D. Her dissertation was titled, “Antiviral activity of lidocaine HCL against the replication of herpes simplex virus Type 1.”
She later worked in basic research for many years at the Mayo Clinic Jacksonville. She was one of the first scientists employed in basic research at the Mayo Clinic Jacksonville, working under Michael McKinney, Ph.D., in a set of temporary trailers while the Birdsall Research Building was being built. After Dr. McKinney retired, she worked under Dr. Matt Farrer until he accepted a chaired professorship in Vancouver, Canada, at which time Caroline retired. Caroline had at least 31 scientific publications to her name from her work at the Mayo Clinic, notably including “Differential expression of GAP-43 mRNA in adult central cholinergic neuronal populations,” which was published in Molecular Brain Research, June 1994, “Expression of Superoxide Dismutase Messenger RNA in Adult Rat Brain Cholinergic Neurons,” published in the Journal of Molecular Neuroscience in March 1999, “Pontine cholinergic neurons depend on three neuroprotection systems to resist nitrosative stress,” published in Brain Research in April 2004, and “Impaired dopaminergic neurotransmission and microtubule-associated protein tau alterations in human LRRK2 transgenic mice,” published in Neurobiology of Disease in December 2010.
Her work “Adult neurogenesis and neurite outgrowth are impaired in LRRK2 G2019S mice,” published March 2011 in Neurobiology of Disease, earned her a Faculty of 1000 Award. Her work with confocal microscopy resulted in a cover of Neuroscience.
Before Caroline died, she completed a book to be published titled, “Methadone – The Quiet Cure.” Caroline was a persistent advocate for methadone maintenance therapy for persons addicted to opiate drugs.
As a youth Caroline won the Nassau County Talent Contest, was a lifeguard at the Fernandina Beach Atlantic Recreation Center and protected the children there, never missed a Sunday at church as a child (Caroline was a devout Christian and regular communicant at both San Jose Episcopal and Assumption Catholic churches), played the piano and saxophone, and as an adult competed twice in the Three Mile Ocean Swim.
Caroline took in many stray and abandoned cats over the years, getting them needed medical care and providing them with a loving home. In addition, Caroline was a friend to the homeless and people suffering from drug addiction and mental health issues. She was an angel who saved her husband’s life.