Beloved staff member dies at age 25

Members of the Annenberg School for Communications' small community gathered last week to mourn the loss of a young, vivacious staff member.

A memorial service was held last Thursday afternoon in honor of Nicole Dickerson, the school's undergraduate majors coordinator.

Dickerson -- who had been suffering from lupus, a disease that begins in the immune system and causes inflammation to various parts of the body, most notably the skin, blood, joints and kidneys -- died last week.

Dickerson had first come to Annenberg seven years earlier, and eventually enrolled in the school's graduate program.

"I first met Nicole when she came in as graduate student," Beverly Henry, an administrative assistant at Annenberg, said of Dickerson. "She was so young, yet so mature. I just got an interest in her as soon as she walked in the door."

"She was so full of knowledge and spirit. Her political views were very outstanding. She was the type of person who could bring people together, and her point was just to make everybody a part of everything," Henry added.

Henry and her family became great friends to Dickerson, who died at the age of 25. Henry also spoke at the memorial service.

When Dickerson found out that she was ill, she felt very alone, as she had no family nearby.

"My family just sort of adopted her, ... just took her on as part of the family" Henry said.

Apparently, doctors did not diagnose Dickerson with lupus until she insisted several times that the diagnoses they were giving her were not sufficient. Dickerson was told she had everything from a simple virus to allergies, but she insisted that something else was wrong.

"They detected [lupus] so early because she insisted that their answers weren't the correct ones," Henry said.

Dickerson found out she had the disease after her second year at Annenberg.

Dickerson was also convinced to stay on as a staff member at Penn because of the close relationship she wa1s forming with her doctors at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

Dickerson had been planning to move back to her hometown of Chicago, as she was quite homesick.

As coordinator of undergraduate communications majors, Dickerson had a lot of contact with students, and was the person students could go to for help.

"She bended over backwards to make sure undergrads got the classes they needed," Henry said. Dickerson also always tried to spread the wealth amongst students when came time to give out awards.

But Dickerson's presence was felt all over the school. Because of Annenberg's small size, almost everyone was impacted by the death.

"She really made us all know how much we do really depend on one another here at Annenberg," Henry said. She added that people who had never really even seemed to notice Dickerson before were very concerned to hear that she had passed away.

Phyllis Kaniss, Annenberg's director of internships and alumni liason, added that Dickerson's death was a "great source of sadness to all of us here at Annenberg."

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