Jennifer Susan Brison Palmer

On June 14, 2025, Jennifer Susan Brinson Palmer (Jen) passed on to wherever loving, selfless, kind and good souls are bound. Her husband and partner for 51 years, Rick (“Beeks”), was with her at their home in Chapel Hill, NC. Also at or near her bedside were her daughter, Chase (“Bebbe”), her BFF Beth (“Beth”), and her sister Caroline (“Cack”), a group of folks dedicated to helping her live her life to the fullest over the past 10 years, and providers of encouragement, support, and comfort in recent months and days.

Jen was born on January 3, 1951, in Buffalo, NY, to North Carolina natives John Rockefeller Brinson and Matilda Bragg Brinson. At the age of 5 she moved with her family, including older brothers John and Ben and younger sister Cack, to Belhaven, NC, and was raised there in a home on Pantego Creek… a misleading label for a body of water half a mile wide at her back door. She attended John Wilkinson High School there and enrolled at St. Andrews College in Laurinburg, NC, in 1971, then transferred to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1973 and earned a BS degree in Dental Hygiene in 1974.

Jen and Rick started dating in the fall of 1973. Her short-term goal was, after graduation, to go to Alaska to practice her trade in a place she had never been before. She was naturally adventurous and spontaneous, so Rick knew that this was no idle threat. Motivated by desperation, a whirlwind courtship ensued, and she somehow got talked out of going to Alaska and into marrying him in the front yard of their rental home on the edge of Chapel Hill on March 9, 1974.

After graduation, Jen started work as a dental hygienist at a practice with offices on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill. Though technically skilled and socially adept, she tired of dental work after a few years and quit, much to the chagrin of her employer. She went on to work as a day care teacher, an insurance claims processor, a children’s clothing store owner and operator (“The Velveteen Rabbit” in Carrboro), a legal assistant and notary public, a cash funds manager for a vending company…bringing to each venue her unmatched sense of humor, her love of life and idiosyncratic people, and an astonishing competence that made her good at nearly anything she tried. And then she’d get bored.

Jen loved to travel; to see new places, people and things. She was always up for a road trip. She visited England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Switzerland, France, Canada, Hawaii, Holland, Belgium, and in tribute to her post-graduate dental hygiene aspirations, Alaska. She enjoyed “walkabouts” in Paris, London, Vancouver, Dublin, Zurich, Toronto, Edinburgh, New York. She cruised the Yonne and the Seine Rivers and the Burgundy Canal in France, and the canals of Belgium and Holland at tulip time on a passenger barge; the inner passage route to Alaska on an ocean liner; the Mississippi from Memphis to New Orleans on a paddle wheel steamer; white-water rafting on pontoon boats in North Carolina and Colorado.

Jen also loved the state and national park systems. She explored Acadia, Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, Canyonlands, Arches, Redwood, Haleakala, Hawaii Volcanoes, Mammoth Cave, Great Smoky Mountains, Crater Lake, Mesa Verde, Rocky Mountains, Carlsbad Caverns, Denali, Shenandoah, and Mount Ranier.

She was an avid Walt Disney fan and enthusiast. She visited Disney resorts in Los Angeles, Orlando, Hilton Head, and Paris, and was a Disney Vacation Club member since 2000. When asked how many times she had been to Walt Disney World in Florida, she would respond that she had stopped counting. In early 1979 she took her daughter, Caroline Chase with her in utero, and the following year in a baby sling. Her favorite activity was sitting peacefully on a comfortable bench, watching other people ‘do Disney.’ She’d call the family groups she observed exploring the parks and resorts “nerd herds,” knowing full well that she was herself an integral part of one. She would often describe experiences that transcended the normal parameters of joy and meaning as having “dazzle marks” around them, those lines that radiate from sparkling objects like gemstones in printed materials. She found a lot of those moments at Disney.

Whoever invented the phrase “arts and crafts” must have known Jen personally. She had miraculous hands and fingers, wondrous fine motor coordination, a keen eye for detail, and a restless, creative imagination which led her to excel in every art or craft that she chose to pursue. Sculpture, ceramics, watercolor painting, decoupage, mosaics, scrapbooking, needlepoint, rug-hooking, building miniature objects for dollhouses, folk art, upholstery, knitting, quilting, refinishing furniture, machine sewing. The only thing that kept her from becoming the best in any one of these categories was her inability to let go of all the rest. She was a jack of all arts & crafts and no matter where she was, she was on the lookout for raw materials, natural or manufactured, that might feed her various avocations. Her collection of supplies was truly mind-bending. It was breathtaking to watch her gather resources and get to work...or rather get to play.

Jen had an easy smile, an infectious laugh and was always up for a good prank. She loved children, three cats, a good party, the Tar Heels, her grandson Tommy, her friends and family...and me. “Just a minute,” she might say, when we start telling stories of her and her exploits. But we’ll tell them anyway and tell them often and love her right back… ‘til infinity.