In Memory

Carolyn Dunkle (Faculty)

St. Petersburg Times - St. Petersburg, Fla.
Caroline H. Dunkle, a retired Pinellas County educator who served as dean of students at Northeast High School, has died at 79.

Mrs. Dunkle, who also taught American history at Mirror Lake Junior High School, died Monday (April 17, 2000) at home. The cause was emphysema, said her son, Kurt.

The daughter of a veterinarian, she was born Caroline Hughes in Scottsbluff, Neb. Her father, Dr. Harbard Clinton Hughes, and mother, the former Maybelle Leeper, moved with her in 1925 to Jacksonville, where Dr. Hughes was the vet at the Jacksonville Dog Track for 20 years.

A graduate of Andrew Jackson High School in Jacksonville, she went on to earn a bachelor's degree in Spanish from Duke University and become a member of Delta Delta Delta Sorority. At college she met her future husband, Harry, a Lock Haven, Pa., native who was captain of the University of North Carolina football team.

With her husband and parents, she moved to St. Petersburg in 1952 and went to work for the Pinellas County school system, first at Disston Junior High and later at Mirror Lake. Her husband was a building contractor, and her father opened a small-animal hospital west of Woodlawn Park.

In 1965 she began her 18-year career at Northeast High, teaching an Americanism vs. Communism course before becoming a dean, a rare office for a woman in those days. She retired in 1983.

Active in the Church of the Good Shepherd in Hayesville, N.C., where she spent summers, she also belonged to St. Thomas' Episcopal Church on Snell Isle. At the St. Petersburg church she wrote a history and guide for its stained glass windows.

In 1970 she received a master of education degree from the University of South Florida.

Survivors include Harry, her husband of 57 years; two daughters, Karyl D. Davis, Fort Myers, and Barbara D. Reiff, St. Petersburg; a son, Kurt H., Jacksonville; seven grandchildren; and a great- grandson.

A funeral will be at 11 a.m. today at St. Thomas' Episcopal Church, 1200 Snell Isle Blvd. NE. Burial will be at the church columbarium. National Cremation Society, St. Petersburg, is in charge of arrangements.