Jane Mackenzie

MACKENZIE, JANE ATKINSON died peacefully at home in Rumford, February 4, 2015. Jane was born December, 26, 1930 in Milton, MA, to John Eric Atkinson and Elizabeth Couch Atkinson, the second of four daughters. She attended Milton Academy, Wellesley College, and Columbia University-Presbyterian Hospital School of Nursing where she met her husband, the late Dr. Malcolm Mackenzie. They moved to Gates Mills, OH, in 1954, and had three children before Jane completed her nursing degree at Columbia in 1966. The family celebrated her graduation from Columbia with the first of many memorable trips to Nova Scotia, Canada, where she later bought and expanded a vacation house in Ingonish overlooking the ocean. In her later years, Jane and her spoiled-rotten dog, Vickie, spent whole summers there, walking in the Cape Breton highlands and savoring the local Celtic music. Jane's professional career focused on home health care. As the family moved from Ohio to Greenfield, NH, and then Providence, Jane worked for the Monadnock Visiting Nurse Association, taught community nursing at the University of Rhode Island, earned a master's in public health from Harvard in 1976, and served as Executive Director of the Visiting Nurse Association of Rhode Island from 1977 until retiring in 1993. She continued to advocate for universal single-payer healthcare for the next two decades. Jane lived her life by Dag Hammarskjöld's dictum: "In Thy service, not mine." Jane was predeceased by her parents, her husband Malcolm, and her sister Celia Atkinson Locke. She is survived by her sisters Emily Stabler and Susan Lukens of Washington, DC, her son John Mackenzie and his wife Gail of Newark, DE, her daughter Jane Mackenzie Dennison and husband Allen of Rumford, RI, and her son Malcolm "Kip" Mackenzie and his wife Sandy of Cambridge, MA and Nelson, NH. She is also survived by eleven grandchildren: Eric, Ethan (and wife Julia), John (and wife Elizabeth) and Malcolm Dennison; Samuel (and wife Natalie), Rebecca (and husband Jonathon), Sarah and Katherine Mackenzie; and Cameron, Johanna and Eleanor Mackenzie; as well as five step-grandchildren: Carl Eppich (and wife Emily), Trae, Scott, Brett and Chase Humphreys; and a first great-grandson, Henry Malcolm Mackenzie. The whole family thanks Gloria and Leslie Aird for their help in caring for Jane over the past year. A memorial service celebrating Jane's life will be held at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, 50 Orchard Ave., Providence, on Saturday, March 14th at 5:00pm. In lieu of flowers, family and friends may make memorial contributions in Jane's name to Planned Parenthood of Southern New England or the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra.