Jacksonville Retired Firefighter Association expresses our deep sympathy for the loss of a good friend of the JFRD. Her work at the Florida Times Union always shed a good light on our department and she will be missed. Our thoughts and prayers go out to her family and her son Jason Kerr; a firefighter - engineer on Hazmat 21.
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KERR Jessie-Lynne Kerr, 73, of Jacksonville, FL passed away Thursday, April 28, 2011. Jessie-Lynne Forrest was born and raised in Staten Island, N.Y. She attended the High School of Performing Arts in Manhattan. After high school, she spent a year at Hunter College in Manhattan. On Dec. 7, 1959, she began work as a reporter for the women's section of the Staten Island Advance. Mrs. Kerr spent about three years at the Advance before she moved to Neptune Beach in 1963. Later, Mrs. Kerr applied for a job with the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville, FL and was hired, becoming the only woman working on the newspaper's Metro staff when she went to work on March 9, 1964. The story that saved the Treaty Oak was the first of many that dramatically affected the community. She was preceded in death by her oldest son, Adam; she is survived by her son, Jason Kerr of Jacksonville, FL and a sister, Carol Marriott Gibbons of St. Croix, US Virgin Islands. Memorial services will be held at 11:00 am on Saturday, May 7, 2011 at St. Johns Cathedral, 256 East Church Street, Jacksonville.
Her first story in the Times-Union, 47 years ago, was an interview with an
urban forester. He told her the Treaty Oak, decades older than Jacksonville
itself, was dying.
A junkyard stood next to it and the tree’s roots had become entangled with a
chain-link fence. Nobody seemed to care.
Her story caught the attention of the landowner, Jessie Ball duPont, who evicted
the junkyard and gave the land around the legendary tree to the city. And Treaty
Oak Park was established.
Now the ancient tree has outlived the young reporter whose story saved it.
Jessie-Lynne Kerr, a journalism pioneer whose stories over the years made a
dramatic impact on the community, died this morning of complications from lung
cancer. She was 73.