When the nonprofit Thelma Gibson Health Initiative, Inc. hosted a birthday fundraiser honoring the legendary Miami health care advocate and civil rights leader, Thelma Vernell Anderson Gibson, she showed up for the community like she always has. Though unable to attend in person due to illness, Gibson recorded a video message from a hospital bed to be played for the event’s many attendees.
In her message, Gibson expressed her appreciation for the support that would enable TGHI to establish its permanent office on Grand Avenue in Coconut Grove, not far from the street where Mrs. Gibson was born 99 years earlier on December 17, 1926.
After the event, Gibson persevered nearly two more months. She died at her home on Wednesday, February 11, 2026, surrounded by family and her priest. Her greatest achievements, niece Misty Brown told Channel 10, were serving her community, her church, Christ Episcopal, and her beloved family.
Mrs. Gibson, a University of Miami ex-officio trustee emerita, began her nursing career as a U.S. Cadet Nurse, devoting three decades to the profession as a trailblazer in her field. After Gibson retired from nursing in 1980, she and her husband, the Reverend Canon Theodore R. Gibson, started the Black Investors of Dade County. In addition to founding Miami-Dade’s first Women’s Chamber of Commerce in 1984, Gibson served her beloved Miami-Dade community as a health department administrator, interim city commissioner, business leader, and lifelong health care advocate.
In 2000, she became a founding sponsor of TGHI. For the past 25 years, TGHI has addressed HIV/AIDS, mental health, illiteracy, substance use, housing instability, youth violence, and poverty across Miami-Dade County, stated The Miami Times. “Her life's philosophy is that everyone deserves the opportunity to better their lives. Everyone deserves quality health care,” Merline Barton, the nonprofit’s president and founder, told the Times of Gibson.
Not long before her 99th birthday, Gibson told the Miami Herald: “The fact that God let me live this long is all that I’m really thankful for, and the fact that I’ve been able to do whatever I could to help make change take place. But recognition is not something I’m looking for.”
Like Gibson, Dr. David Zambrana (DNP ’09, PhD ’15), who will become CEO of Jackson Health System this June, was a bedside nurse at Jackson Memorial Hospital early in his career. Zambrana called Gibson, one of the first Black nurses at Jackson, a “true trailblazer in the nursing profession” and “an institutional legend” who left a “permanent mark on the organization.”
The same can be said of her impact on the University of Miami School of Nursing and Health Studies, where Gibson was an ardent supporter of students, a donor, and an active member of the Dean's Visiting Committee for many years. “Thelma Gibson is an icon for us in her contribution to nursing,” said Dr. Brenda Owusu, a nursing faculty member who advises the Multicultural Nursing Student Association chapter on campus. “Rest in peace, Mrs. Gibson.”
Related news: SONHS Salutes Thelma Vernell Anderson Gibson
