The Late Mother Emily Louise Gibson Parsons
The funeral of Mother Emily Louise Gibson Parsons, a prominent Liberian nurse of yesteryear, is scheduled to take place today at the St. Peter Episcopal Church, Caldwell.
According to her granddaughter, Counselor Althea E. Sherman, the body will be removed from the Samuel Stryker Funeral Home at 8 o’clock this morning and taken to St. Peter in Caldwell, where wake keeping will start at 10 o’clock a.m. The funeral service will start at 11 o’clock a.m.
Mother Gibson-Parsons died on December 4 at the Caldwell home of her daughter, Caldwell Commissioner Rev. Alexine Mendscole Howard.
The nonagenarian was in her 99th year.
A graduate of the Julia C. Emery Hall, Bromley Mission, Mother Parsons later obtained nursing training and became one of Liberia’s renowned nurses from Caldwell. She was one of the first nurses at the Liberian Government Hospital on Ashmun Street, Snapper Hill, Monrovia, serving under Dr. Dingwall.
Mother Parsons later joined the Liberian Mining Company (LMC), working in the pharmacy and later became head of the dispensary unit. She thereafter returned to the Liberian Government Hospital and worked at the Maternity Center.
She opened and headed the first clinic in the Township of Caldwell and ran it for 25 consecutive years but left because of the Liberian civil war.
Mrs. Parsons was born in Caldwell, Montserrado County on June 7, 1918 to the union of Senator John Clement Alexander Gibson, Sr. and Mrs. Eliza Prichard Wilson, also of Caldwell.
Emily received her early education at the Saint Peter’s Episcopal School in the Township of Caldwell and graduated from the Julia C. Emery Hall, Bromley Mission in Clay Ashland, Montserrado County.
She was baptized at an early age and became a member of St. Peter’s where she was awarded several certificates for hard work. She was a member of Queen Esther Chapter, Order of the Eastern Star.
During the 165th Independence Day Celebration of Liberia, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, as Grand Master of the Order of Distinctions of the Republic, conferred upon Mother Parsons the Grand Band, Order of the Star of Africa-Nonagenarian.
Mother Parsons’ survivors include her children, Commissioner and Pastor, Alexine Marina Mends-Cole Howard; Mr. Benoni A. Parsons (Fatima); Ms. Emily Karen Parsons; Mrs. Florence Neufville (Christian); Ms. Minty Mends-Cole; grand children Mrs. Althea Emily Eastman Sherman; Bernadine Lavern
Eastman; Mrs. Freda Alexzene Eastman; Mrs. Debra Jane Eastman Oladosu (Vance); Daphane Edwina Eastman; Candace Blachamka Eastman; Benedict Arma Parsons (Precious); Benoni A. Parsons, Jr. (Tina); Bennett Ahmed Parsons; Rachel Bentima Parsons; Mrs. Legendre Parsons Carter (Christina); Julius Tonia Coleman; Velma King and Shirley.