Thelma Gibson honored at Dade Days

Longtime community activist and Coconut Grove Arts Festival board member Thelma Gibson was presented with the Helen Miller “I Am Blessed” Award at the recent Dade Days celebration in Tallahassee. She is a native Miamian and the widow of the late Reverend Canon Theodore Roosevelt Gibson.

The award, which recognizes individuals for their exemplary public and community service, bears the name of Helen Miller, the first African-American female mayor in Florida. In the late 1970s, Ms. Miller began a 20 year career of political serve to the citizens of Miami-Dade County and the City of Opa-locka.

For more than fifty years, Ms. Gibson has been a trailblazer in education, mental and physical health, community and professional leadership, volunteerism and service to her church, community and family. In August of 1997, she was appointed as Interim City Commissioner and served on the City of Miami Commission through November 1997. Ms. Gibson is President Emeritus of the Theodore Roosevelt Gibson Memorial Fund Inc.; Founder of the Women’s Chamber of Commerce of Dade County; board member on “GUTS”(Grovites United to Survive); “BIDCO” (Black Investors of Dade County); United Home Care Services; Women’s Guild University of Miami; a Life Member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., and Charter Member Nu Chapter Chi Eta Phi Sorority, Inc.(National Nursing Society).

She attended Coconut Grove Training School for Colored Elementary School, Coconut Grove Junior High School, and George Washington Carver High School, from which she graduated in February 1944. After graduation, Ms. Gibson attended Saint Agnes School of Nursing at Saint Augustine’s College in Raleigh, North Carolina and graduated in August 1947, as a Registered Nurse with a specialty in operating room techniques. She then returned home with hopes of working at Jackson Memorial Hospital in the operating room where she had been approved for a position. However, upon realizing that she was of Color, the alternative was to work on the Colored wards.

During her 30-year professional career, Ms. Gibson was a Staff Nurse at Jackson Memorial Hospital, 1947-49; Clinical Nurse, E.J. Hall Clinic, Miami, Florida, 1949-50; Staff Nurse, Gallinger Memorial Hospital, Washington, D.C., 1950-51; Staff Nurse, Jackson Memorial Hospital, 1951-55; Public Health Nurse, Dade County Health Department, 1955-59; Head Nurse and Nursing Supervisor, Riverside Hospital for Teenage Drug Addicts, New York City, 1959-1963; Nursing Supervisor, Dade County Health Department,1963-67; and, Nursing Supervisor and Part-time Social Worker at Mount Sinai Hospital,1967-80.

Ms. Gibson has received many honors, awards, recognitions, and certificates. She counts her membership as a Founder at the Jewish Home for the Aged, among one of the highest, as this honor resulted from the generosity of Judge Irving and Mrs. Hazel Cypen.