Extension School Student Dies in Car Accident

Kirsten P. Kent, a Harvard Extension School student, died Jan. 4 following a car accident in Florida on New Year's Day.

Kent and her sister, Kerren, were driving home after celebrating the holidays with their family in the Florida Keys. One of the car's tires split open, causing the car to flip several times. Both Kent and her sister, who was driving, were hospitalized.

Kent died after several days in a coma. Memorial services were held in Sarasota, Fla., where her family lives, and at St. Dominic's, where she attended high school on Long Island in New York. Her sister was treated and released.

For several years, Kent's passion had been treating children with autism--work she planned to continue after her schooling.

According to her father, Erik Kent, she started by working with children whom doctors had told her could not be helped.

"Her idea was touching and talking, not just going by the book--and she had some breakthroughs," he said.

In 1997-98, when she attended Goucher College in Baltimore, Kent walked through inner city projects to visit with children afflicted by the neurological disease.

Nina L. Babcock, a friend of Kent's, said what interested Kent at first was why the children hated to be touched.

"She decided at that point to make working with children with autism her career," said her father.

Friends remembered that Kent, who registered with the Extension School this fall, wrote whole "collections" of poetry. Some of her poems, including one titled "Finding Perfection," were read at the memorial service in Sarasota.

Her father said a collection of poetic works she wrote in high school will remain buried in a time capsule at St. Dominic's until 2100.

Friends said Kent eventually wanted to return to the South after her schooling.

"She just loved Florida," her friend Babcock said. "She always described herself as sunshine and happiness."

Her father said she often talked about her future in treating children with autism in Florida.

"She had a little plan for me," he said with a chuckle. "She was going to work in Sarasota Memorial [Hospital] and was going to have a private practice in a building I was going to buy for her."

Several of Kent's friends who worked with her at the Crimson Sports Grille, where Kent was a waitress, traveled to Sarasota for the service and visited a stretch of beach she had frequented.

Over the holidays, Kent and her family had enjoyed the water and warm climate.

"She got me out on the jet-ski, which I had never done before," her father said. "But the next thing she wanted to power-sail. She was always on the go."

Though Kent was not enrolled in a degree program, her father said she had hoped to enter the College and go on to get a Ph.D. to give her the formal training she would need to be in education and speech therapy.

Kent's childhood passion was horseback riding. Her father said the family even relocated so she could raise a horse, after a surprising first performance when she was five.

"[The trainer] said, 'Oh, she's too young.' And lo and behold there she went," he said. "She was born to be a rider."

In the recent years, Kent had attended a number of schools.

After a year at Goucher College, Kent attended the University of Florida for a semester, then Boston College for one term before coming to the Extension School this fall.

Kent is survived by her parents, Deirdre and Erik, and by her younger sister Kerren, a senior in high school.