Twenty-six years before her death, Thelma Gibson laid out the plans for her funeral very simply: “I don’t want anyone to talk about my life’s accomplishments or failures. I want a simple mass of the resurrection with no sermon or eulogy,” she wrote in her autobiography “Forbearance, Thelma Vernell Anderson Gibson: Life Story of a Coconut Grove Native.”
Instead, the words written in her autobiography served as the guide for the two-hour service filled with hymns and scriptures, as Christ Episcopal Church rector Father Jonathan Archer read a passage from the book which was published in 2000 during her memorial on Friday.
“She believed in receiving her roses when she could see them and smell them,” Archer told the more than 250 people who gathered in the historic Coconut Grove church to pay their respects to Gibson. “The work that she did spoke for her.”
The native Miamian who championed her Coconut Grove community and was a pioneer in the health care field, acknowledged her request may seem odd, but wrote she had a reason…