Jenkins

After battling a rare and aggressive form of cancer for five and a half years, Dr. Kelly Susan Jenkins passed away peacefully in her Lake Oswego, Ore., home on Jan. 9 with her family by her side.

She was born on Aug. 18, 1956, in Butler, to Dorothy and Joseph Jenkins and was the middle child of seven.

As a youngster, she enjoyed being a member of the color guard for the General Butler Vagabonds Drum and Bugle Corps.

She graduated from Butler High School in 1974. She then enlisted in the U.S. Army as a preventive medicine specialist and served tours of duty with medical battalions at Fort Meade, Md., Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, and with the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, N.C.

She began her lifelong pursuit of higher education in 1980 at Oregon State University. The following year, she was thrilled to welcome her first child, Rebecca, who was born in the home that she built with her husband, Roy Gaffney. Her subsequent marriage to Mark Nielsen, was blessed with a son, Christopher, in 1992.

Kelly earned a bachelor's degree in general science and a bachelor's degree in animal science from Oregon State University in 1985, a bachelor's degree in veterinary science from Washington State University in 1986, and a doctorate in veterinary medicine from Oregon State University (OSU) in 1988.

She was a small business owner, opening her own mobile veterinary clinic, House Calls for Pets, which served the Portland metro area.

After many successful years as a doctor of veterinary medicine, she decided to pursue her interest in alternative medicine and expanded her education to include Chinese medicine. She completed an accelerated program at the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine, earning a master's degree in acupuncture and oriental medicine in 2006. She was the first doctor in Oregon licensed to perform acupuncture and herbal medicine on both people and their pets.

She opened Kindred Spirits Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine clinic in Lake Oswego, Ore., where she used a mix of Western and Chinese medicine to treat animals and people. As her disease progressed, she had to make the very difficult decision to stop attending to others and closed her clinic in the spring of 2010 to focus on her health.

Kelly was able to spend her remaining days with family and friends and was grateful for the love, support, laughter and prayer that they provided. She was overjoyed to welcome her first grandchild, Brooklyn, in 2011, and enjoyed spending every day watching her grow.

She had a love for gardening, hiking, Bible study and shopping at Costco, and could often be heard cheering for the Portland Trail Blazers and OSU Beavers. Above all, Kelly was extremely proud of her children and her grandchild and always considered them to be her very best work.

Kelly is survived by her daughter, Rebecca Gaffney Harris (Gregory); her son, Christopher Nielsen; and her granddaughter, Brooklyn Harris, all of Lake Oswego, Ore. She also is survived by her father, Joseph Jenkins (Joanne) of Butler; her siblings, Sally Jenkins of Vancouver, Wash., Joseph Jenkins of Grove City, Professor Daniel Jenkins (Alese) of Ukiah, Calif., Dr. Jody Jenkins (Dr. David Knapp) of Sierra Vista, Ariz., Rebecca McCalmont of Sierra Vista, Ariz., and Patrick Jenkins (Jen) of Highland Mills, N.Y.

She was predeceased by her mother, Dorothy “Dot” Jenkins.

<B>JENKINS</B> — A memorial service for Dr. Kelly Susan Jenkins, who died Monday, Jan. 9, 2012, was held Feb. 10, 2012.Donations in her name may be made to the Christian Veterinary Mission for Africa's livestock revolving loan program at www.cvmusa.org/africavet, see the link for “Share the Doe.”