Authors' Biographies
Gerry became interested in the Kent family of Fluker while listening to stories told by his father-in-law, Richard A. Kent, Jr., about his life growing up in Fluker during the twenties and thirties, and tales about Kent ancestors.
A graduate of Amite High School, Amite, Louisiana (6 miles south of Fluker), Gerry attended Southeastern Louisiana College, and graduated from Auburn University and Louisiana State University with degrees in Mechanical Engineering. After a tour of duty in the Air Force as a C-141 pilot, Gerry worked for Texaco and General Dynamics before joining Braniff International as an airline pilot. He later worked for the State of Louisiana, founded and owned two computer companies, Corporate Computer Systems (Microage of Baton Rouge) and Express Claim Processing, a medical computer services company, and served as a hurricane pilot in the Air Force Reserve. He retired from Continental Airlines in 2005 as a B-767 Captain, and lives in Daphne, Alabama, with his wife Brenda.
Gwynette
Kent Dixon, a great-granddaughter of James Fluker Kent, graduated from Amite
High School. She later graduated from Southeastern Louisiana
College and Louisiana State University. After a career in teaching
high school biology in Columbus, Georgia, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana,
she was the co-founder and CEO of Corporate Computer Systems, Inc (Microage
of Baton Rouge), a position she filled for twenty years. After the
death of her father, Richard A Kent, Jr., she assumed the management of
Spreading Oaks, a company in Fluker, providing financing for bus
sales by Kent-Mitchell, the school bus distributorship her father
founded in 1961.
In 2004 she married Jim Dixon, and they reside in Fluker.
