Named in honor of the mother of one of our staffers, this remarkable woman recieved her recognition in the late fifties when the Miami News (the long gone but not forgotten afternoon paper) ran a pictorial on her. Readers discovered that she had given birth to two boys. The second one died at 17-months in her arms from complications due to cerebral palsy. Less than a year later she caught the polio virus and was never able to walk again without braces and crutches. Her husband died when our staffer was only 14-years-old. Without a car and "depending on the kindness of strangers," life got tough. Still, her son reports that she never complained and was in fact cheerful throughout her life. Despite her handicap, she was for years the neighborhood organizer for the March of Dimes and Muscular Dystrophy where she made sure volunteers went door-to-door soliciting money to fight those diseases. Despite all the bad deals life handed out to her, she still managed to not only hang onto her faith, but gave large amounts of her time to her church as its kindergarten secretary where she earned a small salary that was able to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads. The church got the best part of the deal because Thelma would volunteer to write the weekly church bulletin and the monthly newsletter-- something that required many late hours at home on a manual typewriter. Since this was long before the computer age, frequent last minute changes meant using lots of Wite-Out and laborius retyping into the wee hours of the morning to prepare the "mimeograph" stencil for printing. Yet, her son never heard her complain. She was always cheerful right up to the end when a heart attack finally killed her through the side effects of muscle atrophy brought on by the stress of living for 25-years with useless legs.

In all deepest sincerity, MVB presents the first "Thelma" award to David and Sherrone Jenkins, parents of their slain 9-year-old daughter Sherdavia. Cut down on July 1st in a shootout between thugs in a Liberty Square public housing complex, Sherdavia, a bright-eyed chess champion and a student who aced her FCAT test, was destined for greatness. How her parents were able to continue on continuing on was an amazing thing to see as the media covered the story. Living in the projects is a day-to-day struggle.

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