James Norman Dent

Julie and Martha,
Please know that my thoughts are with you. Jim was not only my mentor for my Ph.D. work (1973) but also my friend. He shared his passion for skiing with me and even gave me a pair of skis that I believe belonged to one of you (cable bindings and screwed-on metal edges). We were good friends and I regret that I had difficulty in getting in touch with him in his recent years. The start that he gave me in academia and the start that he gave me in skiing have served to shape the rest of my life. I'm so thankful for my association with Jim.
Bob Zaccaria

So many, many good memories of James Norman Dent. Not just from the laboratory experience, but out in the field, collecting salamanders in the wilds of Sherando Lake and in the caves of Tennessee. Not to mention the stimulating (to say the least) role of serving as his navigator in the Andiamo Auto Club's sports-car rallyes! I am honored to have been his student and friend.

It was a great honor and privilege to work with your father.  He will be greatly missed.

I was associated with an adjoining University department, where Jim and I became friends so many years ago.
Fred Diehl expressed my sentiments. Jim and I used to camp at Whalebone Junction, NC where he spent hours on the beach examining every sea shell found.
You were really one of a kind, Jim.

I was saddened indeed to hear of Jim’s death. Although we didn’t see one another often in recent years, I regarded him as one of the last of true gentlemen in our society, and as a real friend.

I certainly had many good and memorable times with Jim. There were hikes in Sugar Hollow in the autumn. Then there was the summer I turned him onto mountaineering by taking him to Seneca Rock once, and I was so pleased when he later ascended the summit of the Grand Teton. I always enjoyed those overnight stays at his house when I visited Charlottesville after moving away. Jim’s door was always open to me. There was that memorable evening when we went to visit Sarge (Sgt. L. E. Eaton) on what was to be one of the last days of Sarge's life. Then there was the evening he put on a new pair of ski boots in Gilmer Hall to break them in, but then couldn't get them off and had to ask Kathy Armstrong, one of my student assistants, to do it for him. Jim was certainly one of a kind, and he had an unusual knack for kindling long-term memories.

I was a part of a circle of friends in Charlottesville in which most of us were at about the same age. But Jim, twenty years older, was a part of that group as well, a testimony to his charm, wit, and wisdom.

Jim always told me that my arrival at Virginia in 1976 was twenty years too late! That is an utterance I’ll always remember because it reflected Jim’s perspective on the times, an insight that I always treasured.

I’ll miss Jim, but I’ll think of him often. I was just happy to have been able to visit him twice in his declining years.

Jim was a true friend and a good colleague. His kindly spirit, his classic southern manners and his wit, combined with a real appreciation of life's many joys as well as its sadness, stand out in my mind as I reflect on our friendship. I will never forget the good times we had in the field, and especially an incident when he visited us in San Salvador at the Gerace Research Center. One beautiful tropical morning he interacted in an uproarious and kindly way with a local lady who had cut her hand and caught a ride with us. She took a liking to Jim and insisted on singing to him a bawdy song from her youth. He sang along with her and they were kindred souls by the time we arrived at the Clinic. He was always able to laugh easily and found life full of wonder and new mountains to be climbed. I met him when I came to U.Va. as a naive graduate student in 1960 and am glad that our friendship flourished during our times together as members of the biology faculty. He was one of a kind and a remnant of a dying breed. In my mind his personage will always overshadow even his many accomplishments in research, in teaching and as a mentor to many successful students. Even in his later, painful years he maintained a dignity and class matched by few. I will miss him.

Jim was very kind to me and my students in the years after I arrived at UVa in 1991, especially is his enthusiasm for salamanders. He also has a continuing legacy at Mountain Lake Biological Station in stories about his hiking prowess.

Henry Wilbur, BFD Runk Professor of Biology