Mary Bernice Kaack

December 20, 1926 - April 3, 2021

Mary Bernice Kaack was born in New Orleans, LA, on 20 December 1926, the last of 8 children born to John Henry Kaack and Annette Raphael Kaack. She passed peacefully at Trinity Trace Care Center in Covington, LA, on 3 April 2021. A graduate of Dominican High School in New Orleans, Louisiana, she entered the local Dominican Sisters of St. Mary’s Convent at age 18 and took the name of Sister Mary Albert, following Albert The Great, a scientist. She held a Bachelor of Science degree from St. Mary’s Dominican College, and in 1961 she received a PhD in Biology from the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. She returned to New Orleans to teach sciences at Dominican schools. Following her conscience for teaching, she left the convent in 1966. In 1973, she returned to Louisiana and began work at the then Delta Primate Center, a Covington, LA, biomedical research facility now called Tulane National Primate Research Center. Her forty-year career at the Center was filled with research in Microbiology, Pathology, Neurobiology, Urology, and Comparative Pathology. She is the author/co-author of numerous articles in scientific journals. She advanced in both science and academic positions to become an Adjunct Professor of Microbiology in the Division of Comparative Pathology. While an active member of the Center’s research team, Dr. Kaack also taught science classes for north shore campuses of Delgado Community College, Southeastern Louisiana University and Tulane University. She contributed generously to numerous local, national and international non-profit organizations. Her hobbies included travel, horticulture, cooking, woodworking, geology, astronomy, reading and a continuing interest in biomedicine. She was the beloved owner of yellow Labradors, Pan and Dora, and a number of comforting cats! Mary Bernice Kaack was preceded in death by her parents and her seven siblings: Milton Raphael Kaack, Elizabeth Kaack, Ruth Ann Kaack, Henry Joseph Kaack, Norman Kaack, Annette Elizabeth Kaack Busch and Rita Genevieve Kaack. She is survived by nieces Cynthia Busch and family, Sandra Marie Busch Lacour and family, and nephew Alfred Gordon Busch, III and family. Mary Bernice Kaack, an extraordinary woman of science, thought, and kind generosities, will be well remembered by extended family, her Dominican family and students, faculty and staff at the Tulane National Primate Research Center, staff and caregivers of Home Instead, Passages and ANVOI Hospice personnel, staff at Trinity Trace Community Care Center, and the multitude of friends she made during her well lived 94 years. Following cremation, she will be interred at the Dominican Cemetery at Rosaryville in Ponchatoula, Louisiana.